SONG/VIDEO PREMIERE: Bob Bradshaw’s “Call It What You Will” Delivers Quiet Singer-Songwriter Strength

Bob Bradshaw’s seventh album American Echoes (set for release October 20) is a title 25 years in the making. The set a tribute to the time this Irish-born singer/songwriter has spent absorbing the music of his adopted home, the United States.

Drawing from classic American genres ranging from country and folk to bluegrass and the blues, the twelve original compositions on American Echoes spin tales of the dreamers and pickers; the losers, poets, and sinners Bradshaw has encountered on his journeys across the nation’s landscape.

The album builds on the strong critical response to Bradshaw’s acclaimed 2013 release Home (“[A] rich mix of engaging melodies, catchy hooks and inspired lyrics” – Tom Franks, Folkwords) and 2015’s Whatever You Wanted, which was named as one of the best Americana/Country albums of the year by the Telegraph UK and was praised as “a wonderfully paced example of how he has lifted the sights, sounds and moods of America and sparkled them with originality”(Lisa Torem, PennyBlackMusic).

On American Echoes, Bradshaw masterfully adds touches of regional and historical sonic treats – from the Kansas City jazz of “My Double and I” to the Tom Waits-ian film-noir of “Exotic Dancers Wanted”; from the Paul Simon-ish Afro-Americana of “Workin’ On My Protest Song” to the old-timey Civil War flavored “Old Soldiers” with its fiddles and banjo.

Such experimentation is the focus of the album overall: “If an echo can be said to travel in two directions at once, then these songs travel forwards and backwards at the same time,” notes Bradshaw of the project’s title. “Backwards to the folk and country music that first inspired me to sing and write songs, and forwards to the more complex, layered sounds I encountered in Berklee.”

Glide is proud to premiere the song/video for “Call It What You Will” (below) off American Echoes. Bradshaw excels in his patient and smooth timbre that reflects the durability of John Hiatt and the gritty directness of Jackson Browne.

“Even though there’s no mention of New York City in the song ‘Call It What You Will,’ I always pictured it being set there,” says Bradshaw. “In this video for the song, the sun and the moon are a lower-east side couple caught in the gravitational pull of each others orbit. Manhattan is the backdrop for the actors, and for the sun and moon. We shot the video in mid-jury during ‘Manhattanhenge’, when the setting sun aligns with the city’s grid to create a unique solar display. We see the actors travel around the city, as the sun and the moon show through the clouds and cross between buildings.”

Bradshaw will be playing select dates in support of American Echoes; you can keep up with his schedule by visiting www.bobbradshaw.net.

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