SONG PREMIERE: Joel Timmons Lets Sonic Textures Shine on Dreamy Rocker “End of the Empire”

Photo credit: SCOTT SIMONTACCHI

Guitarist, songwriter, and producer Joel Timmons has been a lifelong collaborator, a veteran as one musical part of a greater whole. Now, with his debut solo album, Psychedelic Surf Country (releasing February 7th), the career musician, band leader, and sideman finds himself as the focal point, center stage. The songs and stories in this collection – and the vibrant community that helped make them – are the starlight guiding Timmons to his very own moment. This may be a solo album, but it’s certainly not a solitary one.

Psychedelic Surf Country effortlessly combines so many varied parts of Timmons’ life, loves, and experiences dressed in just as many genres and styles. Produced by Maya de Vitry – an artist he often tours with as a band member – Timmons’ first album under his own name is wild and free, but equally intentional and deep. Country sounds blend with bluegrass pickers and the down-to-earth grunge of folk rock; poetic lyrics walk hand-in-hand with hilarious honky-tonking numbers and meditative, cyclical ponderings. There are moments of psychedelia, of jamgrass, tinges of Jimmy Buffett and recollections of Marty Stuart.

Born and raised in Charleston, South Carolina, the lowcountry and coastal life have always been a huge part of Timmons. He was just a teenager when he met his future Sol Driven Train bandmates, later forming the group together in college. Still active more than two decades later, touring around the country, the Caribbean, and the world, Sol Driven Train have carved a pathway to success that’s always been self-defined, while giving Timmons a canvas for honing and re-honing his songs and playing. It’s a huge part of why Psychedelic Surf Country also feels equally at home on the beach or in a honky tonk – or even beneath the black lights and lasers at a late night festival set.

The textures, inputs, and influences of this album don’t come from a post-modern hipster vision board of fads and trends, but each represent keystones of Timmons’ personality, of his life, his community, and his story. All of which are woven deftly through these fun, earnest, engaging, and danceable songs.

Today Glide is excited to premiere ethereal and dreamy tune “End of the Empire,” a standout track that properly captures the sprawling sonic soundscapes and drama Timmons is capable of conjuring through his music and lyrics. Complementing the lyrics is a blistering and airy guitar as well as the subtle textures of an organ. Timmons co-wrote the tune with his wife Shelby Means, best known as the bassist of bluegrass sensations Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway.

Timmons describes the inspiration behind the tune:

My wife, Shelby Means, started writing this song on a small boat in the Virgin Islands while surfers rode waves across a nearby reef. My recurring dreams of doom and nightmares of being hunted by an unknown predator as well as a sense of apocalyptic loss figured into the co-write. This recording ended up being a rocker and the guitar is howling.

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