"This history is designed now and ever to keep the sneers from the lips of sour scholars."—John Steinbeck, Tortilla Flat
After the breakup of seminal Orange County country-rockers Shuffledown in 1998, lead guitarist Dave Clucas hit the road for Denver and spent the following three months in a basement, writing songs and occasionally emerging to lounge about in Golden, Boulder, and Idaho Springs. He returned with a sheaf of songs and a new name for a new group--The Horsepainters.
Approaching the microphone with a Buddy Holly meets Richard Manuel and Rick Danko mentality, Clucas croons, lullabies, and belts his lyrics with a conviction rarely seen in todays bars, clubs, studios, and living rooms. Along with lead guitarist JD Bogan, drummer Blake Oswald, and bassist Davey Meshell, Clucas leads followers of his band down a dirty alleyway of injured love, healed love, solo drives, broken bottles, broken spirits, flowers, gravel, piss, mohair suits, sunshine, and hope. A native of Upland, Southern California, he spent every day with the desert, the mountains, Los Angeles, and the ocean within arm's reach. Every one of those places shot a different kind of music into his soul.
The standard influences are there, of course, but not exploited. The Band, the Stones, The Byrds, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, and friends all find their places in the songwriting, comfortably dancing next to the likes of Junior Wells, Allen Toussaint, Sam and Dave, Jim Croce, Otis Redding, Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and the Jayhawks, by way of Townes Van Zandt, John Denver, Otis Redding, Muddy Waters, and Mac Rebennack. Its just plain good music that was forged in the fires of a million little grooves on a thousand different records, all cooked over a pit on a dry lakebed outside of Calico Ghost Town. Or was it the ruined remains of a factory in Detroit?
We hope you like it. We think you will.
