Blaine Todd ⫸ ⫸ ⫸ ⫸ ⫸ ⫸ ⫸
Blaine Todd lives in Alameda, a former naval base and island in the San Francisco Bay. His songwriting blends low-rent tragedy with a reverence for nature and rural life. In addition to an obvious outlaw country influence, his music is informed by the melodic guitar playing of Sterling Morrison, Mississippi trance blues, and Norteño music.
Todd is an active collaborator, lending his talents to projects like Night Collectors, Common Eider King Eider, and Real Life Rock & Roll Band. In addition, he helps run Other Minds, an experimental music nonprofit and presenter in San Francisco.
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Goodbye 'Til I Do Good By You
Blaine Todd returns with a new solo album, Goodbye 'Til I Do Good By You, a set of dusted country songs intent on delving into humanity’s basics—fate, love, mortality, resilience, cosmic insignificance, and a dogged albeit futile pursuit of meaning in the face of madness.
Recorded while simultaneously constructing a cabin in the Sierra Nevada mountains, the meadows, peaks, and rivers leave their mark throughout the album’s eight tracks. Oscillating between low rent tragedy and alpine daydreams, Blaine’s latest offering represents an evolution on his homespun psych/folk sound while continuing to blur lines between the traditional and experimental.
Todd draws on a litany of touchstones from literary giants such as Raymond Carver and Lucia Berlin, to the lilting waltzes of Flaco Jimenez, the raw sardonicism of David Berman, and, on occasion, the sprawl of artists like Earth or Henry Flynt. Perhaps most pervasive, however, is the search for equilibrium between traditional sounds and contemporary candor plied by many associated with the outlaw strain of country music. And, like the latter, the album indulges in many of the conventions of country music—tack piano, fiddle, and pedal steel guitar— while reveling in the genre’s endless plasticity in an evocation of wide-open sky and heart.
The album was self-recorded primarily in Alameda, California in the small personal studio of composer Brian Baumbusch. Fiddle and pedal steel were phoned in by A.L. Lee and Henry Birdsey from New Haven. Percussionist Scott Siler played piano and drums in situ. Some of the record was made after hours at work (Todd helps run a small experimental music nonprofit in Berkeley). The album was mastered by Andrew Weathers out of Windtide Studio in Littlefield, Texas, home of Waylon Jennings.
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Bandcamp: New & Notable Release
Release Date: July 19, 2024
Purchase from Official Store or Bandcamp