VIDEO PREMIERE: Mike Delevante Offers Sunny and Infectious Dose of Power Pop Hope with “The Rain Never Came”

Not many artists release their first solo record two decades after their debut album. That’s the case for Mike Delevante, whose September Days is due out April 11 on Truly Handmade Records (PRE-ORDER), an imprint created by Guy Clark LLC. It’s hardly the first musical endeavor for Delevante, who spent the 1990s recording and touring as half of trailblazing Americana duo the Delevantes with his older brother Bob. But it’s an important step for a musician who’d never put the spotlight directly on himself, until now.

It started, fittingly enough, as a follow-up to the first Delevantes album of this century. More than two decades after they’d helped to launch the Americana genre with acclaimed albums on Rounder and Capitol, the Delevantes resurfaced in 2021 with A Thousand Turns. Its instantly appealing melodies and trademark sibling harmonies were a welcome return to form for the duo, whose mix of country and rock flowed naturally from brothers who came of age in New Jersey before moving to Nashville.

To produce September Days, Mike enlisted fellow traveler Joe Pisapia, who coincidentally also had moved to Nashville from New Jersey with his own brother in the 1990s. They worked at Pisapia’s Middletree Studio in East Nashville, with Pisapia — whose production credits include work with Ben Folds, Guster, k.d. lang and many others — playing guitar, keyboards and pedal steel on the sessions.

Joining them in the studio was Garry Tallent, best known as bassist for Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band but also the producer or co-producer of all three Delevantes albums. On drums were a pair of Nashville aces, Bryan Owings and Jamie Dick. (And while Mike handles all the vocal leads and harmonies himself, he did bring in brother Bob to play harmonica.)

The end result is 13 tracks of shimmering melodicism that lure listeners into Delevante’s world of carefully crafted and pointedly emotional lyrics. Themes range from the regretful ruminations of “The Rain Never Came” and “Only Sometimes” to the determined resilience of “Don’t Count Me Out” and “Still Me,” from the quiet desperation of “Make Believe” to the new-beginnings redemption of “I Wrote To You.” Echoes of youthful Jersey glory days haunt several songs as well, notably the impressionistic “By Far And Away” and the wistful album-closer “Going Home.”

And so, September Days marks not only a return to the Americana turf the Delevantes staked out a quarter-century ago, but also a fresh debut from a singer-songwriter and guitar player who has earned his turn at center stage. 

Today Glide is offering an exclusive premiere of the standout tune “The Rain Never Came” (PRE-SAVE) and its accompanying music video. Within the opening notes, it’s clear that Mike Delevante’s Americana chops are still very much intact. Delevante’s mix of jangly guitar and warm harmonies give the song an underlying power pop quality that complements the optimistic lyrics. In our divisive and unpredictable current moment when there is no shortage of alarmism and doom and gloom, Delevante offers up a sunny and infectious dose of hope.

Delevante describes the inspiration behind the tune:

“This is for all the doomsayers out there trying to scare everyone by predicting the end times. Often, it’s a mix of politics and religion with built-in motives. How many times have we been given a date on the calendar that’s come and gone? And they just keep coming. Maybe they’re right, and maybe the end is soon but what I remember from my years of Catholic school is the Bible says we will never know the day. And it’s foolish to predict.”

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