Ghosts is the sixth solo album from Chicago-based musician and songwriter Steve Dawson. It’s being released June 7th on venerable Chicago label Pravda Records on CD, 12” LP vinyl, digital download and on streaming platforms.
Hope, a poet wrote, is a thing with feathers, perched in the soul and singing a tune without words. In the hard-won and hopeful songs of Steve Dawson, the words are very much present – supple, wise, spilling out hard truths – and the tunes are crystalline – often they offer the clearest glimpse of hope after all.
On the new album, Steve, well-known for the impassioned alternative country of the band Dolly Varden, crafts ten songs that find reasons to believe – in music, in human connections, in desert vistas – even as the ghosts move all around him, all around us. But those ghosts, those presences of the past, are part of why we hope.
“My last album was pretty much all me,” Dawson says. “It was recorded and mixed mostly during the pandemic – I played all the instruments and sang all the parts (except for Diane on one and my friend Alton [Smith] playing keys on one song). So for this album I wanted to NOT do that. I wanted to play a ‘dream band’ of amazing Chicago musicians I’ve worked with over the last 15 years or so.”
Those longtime relationships, of musicians who are a band in everything but name, suffuse these songs, some of the finest Dawson has ever written, with harmonies, rhythms, and textures that make them come alive and imbue them with hope. The rhythm section of drummer Gerald Dowd (in Dawson’s words “the hardest working man in Chicago; a brilliant musician”) and bassist John Abbey (who recorded both albums by Funeral Bonsai Wedding, Dawson’s jazz-folk fusion project) provide a supple connective tissue between the ten tracks. When many “singer/songwriter” albums stall rhythmically these songs pull the listener forward into the light.
For vocal harmonies, Dawson enlisted close friends Nora O’Connor (vaunted Chicago singer who tours with the likes of Neko Case and Andrew Bird) and Ingrid Graudins (who appears on the album’s final song, “Weather in the Desert”; Graudins passed away unexpectedly shortly after that recording) and, of course, Diane Christiansen, his wife and artistic confidante of 35 years.
There are others on the album as well, adding to Dawson’s collaborative ensemble approach.
Today Glide is excited to offer an exclusive premiere of Ghosts, an impressive collection of tunes that brings to mind the breezy folk-rock of artists like Jackson Browne, Wilco, The Jayhawks, Dawes, and Emitt Rhodes while also being filled with plenty of musical alt-country flare. There is a smoothness and easygoing comfort to Dawson’s vocals that is complemented by tasteful musicianship and lyrics that feel rich in their storytelling. Across all ten songs, Dawson’s voice, with his soulful, golden burr, communicates with searing emotion and resilience. That visceral and instantly recognizable tone finds an ideal complement in an ensemble of principally Chicago-based musicians and close friends. Ultimately, Ghosts offers an exciting evolution for Dawson and is surely a contender for one of the year’s best albums.
Dawson describes the inspiration and process behind the album:
“Many of my favorite albums were recorded live in the studio,” Dawson says. “I was reading about Neil Young making Zuma and Tonight’s The Night, all the 1970s Dylan records, the Band’s second record. The arrangements on this new album were created on the spot, and rather than a collection of overdubs, the album is a performance.”
“As I think through the songs on this album I come away with the overwhelming feeling of mortality and the passage of time. Since the pandemic time has become fluid, unreal. I’ve heard this reflected back from a lot of people. 5 years ago feels both very recent and very distant. We’ve lost family and friends, often very unexpectedly. We carry people and memories from the past around with us in our brains and hearts, sometimes with joy and sometimes with regret and longing. It is my goal to embrace the moment, find gratitude and not fixate on the past. Some days I can do that. Other days I can’t. This record is a collection of songs that explore that duality. The album was recorded live in studio with an “A list” of Chicago musicians – people I’ve wanted to record with for a very long time. I am very happy with the results this time around.”
LISTEN:
