The South Austin Moonlighters found themselves with plenty of new music to record, but without a home to release it. Armed with a devoted fan base and a dozen or so tunes worth committing to tape, the legendary Austin-bred group set-up a Kickstarter and asked for the support of their legion of followers to help the album get made. If they came up short, they’d be left with nothing. $25,000 later, the group –which consists of Lonnie Trevino Jr., Chris Beall, Daniel James, and Hunter St. Marie – had the adequate budget to begin working on the follow-up to their 2019 opus, Travel Light. That album earned the group top billing on the Alt-Country Charts and a number of European festival appearances; things were breaking right for The South Austin Moonlighters, and then all momentum previously gathered shriveled up as the pandemic arrived. But the group – veterans of the DIY, rugged music scene in Austin – built themselves back up stronger than before, and the result is From Here To Home (releasing June 30th), the band’s most daring and accessible work to date.
At its core, From Here To Home is an album of rebirth and acknowledgement. It’s a recognition of where The South Austin Moonlighters have been, and a peek at all of the exciting places they are going and want to head towards in the future. Take the title track for instance, which is a song that Beall and Trevino Jr. wrote together. It’s a tale of finding oneself on the road, not necessarily lost, but unmoored. Despite this estrangement, the group finds power in the songs they write, carrying them through another day. “From Here To Home is a journey back to rediscovering why we started doing this in the first place,” Trevino Jr. says, before his co-conspirator helps him complete the thought in a way only the closest of collaborators can: “Because that’s the only thing we want to do–make joyous music.”
Today Glide is excited to premiere the standout track “Deltaman,” a song that finds the band fusing a Southern blues sound with a laid back rock and roll groove. With its sharp guitar licks, soulful harmonies, and straightforward, driving drum beat, the song feels like a musical journey of sorts that feels like a proper road song. Occasional flourishes of slide guitar accentuate the imagery of the Gulf Coast wetlands that Lonnie Trevino let’s flow out through his lyrics and vocals. For the band, the song captures the kind of rocking energy that they often inject into their live performances, and one can imagine “Deltaman” opening up with a little more jamming when played in front of an audience.
Lonnie Trevino describes the inspiration behind the song:
“This song was co-written with Chris [Beall] and my favorite co-write songwriter Amy Hooper. This happens to be the first song Amy and I wrote together. Four and a half years ago I made a move to New Orleans, Louisiana from Austin, Texas. I would often drive from New Orleans to Austin and back, and on these drives, I fell in love with the Gulf Coast wetlands. In particular, the Atchafalaya basin. I knew that when I got to the Atchafalaya basin on my right, I would feel the peace that I was almost home. On one of those drives, I came up with the story of snow-capped mountains melting; the water flowing into the rivers becoming muddy and dirty in the Mississippi, then reaching the Gulf of Mexico becoming clean again, and how this was a great metaphor for life. We start innocent & pure, we go through life making some wrong decisions becoming dirty and/or muddy, and then at the end of our life, when we make right with our maker, we become clean again. I told this story to Amy while we were filming the video for our single ‘Travel Light’ on our home stage of The Saxon Pub in Austin, Texas. She loved the idea, went home and wrote the first draft for the song. I loved it immediately, and was inspired to write the music and melody just based on that first draft. In my mind it was done. I presented it to Amy and she was very pleased. I wrote and added the chorus, ‘take my hand, Lord, I’m coming to ya’ to finish it. I showed the guys in the band the crude iPhone demo and they really loved it and insisted that we work on it. Steve suggested the key changes for the solos. We thought it was the perfect way to end the record just based on the story and having been through the ringer these last few years. It’s nice to know we’ve made it through to the other side with this album.”
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Where can I find can I find “Long Time Coming” by the South Austin Moonlighters