Whisky Hearts
A few summers ago, I was in the Canomills shop of my pal, Sandy, the fashionable Edinburgh district of Muirhouse's greatest ever hairdresser. And no, it wasn't a business call. Being a real Muirhouse boy, Sandy has a great taste in music, and always has some interesting stuff on. I was bowled over by the passion blasting out from the demo of Whisky Hearts, which he explained was by a local guy, Dean Owens from Leith, who was causing a bit of a stir.
It wasn't hard to see why. The songs resonated with the beauty and power that only a truly committed writer and performer can bring to the table. I immediately obtained a copy of the songs and I've been a fully-paid up member of Dean's growing and diverse fan base ever since. Whisky Hearts is treasure chest brimming with rare gems. Raining In Glasgow has to be the most beautiful song ever written about that city, haunting and evocative. You can shut your eyes and see yourself coming into Queen Street Station, the rain battering off the big Scotrail train windows. My personal favourite though, is The Man From Leith, a touching son-to-father tribute. A very personal song from Dean, but he could have been writing about my dad or thousands of other Leith men. My eyes mist up every time I play it. And I have a lot of fun with Beth On A Trampoline, as that's my wife's name. The album in general exudes a warmth and humanity that seems at a premium in these often cold, insecure and paranoid times. I put it on whenever I feel blue, and soon I'm back into song-and-dance mode.
Whisky Hearts is a testament both to Dean's artistic diversity, and his own distinctive voice and sound. You could spend all day picking through the folk, rock n roll, blues, country and punk influences, but I think of him as a white soul boy, because every time he sings a song, he's not messing around or showboating, he means it and feels it with every fibre of his being. Now that is something special.
Cheers, Dean, you've brought along the heart, so the whiskies are on me.
Irvine Welsh
New album 'Whisky Hearts' on September 15th by Navigator Records.
"dean owens is scotland's most engaging and haunting singer-songwriter" – irvine welsh
"scotlands answer to josh rouse" – americana uk.com
"dean has soul" – eddi reader
“"Dean Owens..is a brilliant Edinburgh singer/songwriter. He gigs constantly, so try and catch him before he gets too huge.” - Irvine Welsh
“One of Scotland's very best singer-songwriters” - Al Perkins
“Songs that stand proud next to anything Steve Earle has written” - Uncut
“A brilliant singer/songwriter and one of the most compelling live performers I've ever seen” -Karen Matheson, Capercaillie
After winning widespread acclaim for his first two solo albums, The Droma Tapes (2001) and My Town (2004), Edinburgh singer-songwriter Dean Owens delivers his finest work to date with Whisky Hearts. Recorded in Nashville with a stellar cast of Stateside guests, it sees Owens buoyantly expanding his creative and expressive horizons, drawing on inspirations as diverse as family relationships, growing older, and the wide open spaces of the California desert. The eloquently emotive singing, incisively pared-down lyrics and rootsy Americana stylings that have long been his trademarks feature here alongside a range of influences stretching from classic country-rock to cool contemporary pop, summery 60s vibes to Celtic-tinged folk.
“I do think this record has elements on it of everything I've done and what I'm about: it's all in there this time, which is partly why I'm so happy with it,” Owens agrees. “I'd wanted to record in America for a long time, and getting all these amazing musicians to come and play on the album – well, that was just a dream come true.”
Several of the artists featured on Whisky Hearts have worked with Owens on previous projects, including pedal steel legend and former Gram Parsons cohort Al Perkins, guitar ace Will Kimbrough (Americana Music Association Instrumentalist of the Year 2004), Mavericks drummer Paul Deakin and his bassist bandmate Robert Reynolds, as well as Owens's longtime sidekick from home, Kevin McGuire, also on bass. It was through this network of connections that the remaining guests came on board, among them Flecktones saxophonist Jeff Coffin, ex-Jayhawk Jen Gunderman ..boards, and singer-songwriter Thad Cockrell, plus producer Elijah (“Lij”) Shaw.
“That was partly why I wanted to do the album in Nashville – I'd always met really interesting people when I'd been there, and it seems to be somewhere that a lot of good opportunities happen,” Owens explains. “And that's very much what the recording was like – all these people just kept turning up at the studio and doing something really magical. The other main reason for recording in the States was that on the last two albums I'd worked with a lot of great Scottish musicians, so I wanted to give these songs a different twist.”
While many of the tracks on My Town - as the title suggests – related to aspects of life in his geographical birthplace, its successor represents a kind of artistic homecoming for Owens, formerly the frontman with much-loved Scottish country-rockers the Felsons, and a lifelong devotee of American music. Nowadays, he's also the proud owner of a vintage Airstream trailer, which he keeps in California's Joshua Tree country, and where several of the new songs were written, during sojourns there in 2005 and 2006.
At the same time, paradoxically, Whisky Hearts is the least country-sounding of all Owens' records, roaming instead from the gutsy, Springsteen-esque opener, “Years Ago” to the smooth, slinky soul-pop of “Beth on the Trampoline”; from echoes of U2 on the dark, edgy “Leaving to Remain”, to the Beatles-style poignancy of “May”. Towards the end of the set, Owens' thoughts turn once more towards Scotland, with the gorgeous, achingly wistful “Raining in Glasgow”, the bittersweet waltz-time balladry of the title track, and the closing “Man From Leith”, a movingly understated tribute to his father.
“I think another difference, in terms of the writing, is that the songs on the two previous records were all more or less about me, whereas with this one it's less personal, more character-based,” Owens says. “I've drawn more on observations of other people's lives – “May”, for instance, is about an old lady who lives up the road from me: I see her TV glowing through her curtains at night, and that started me imagining what her life might be like. It comes back to me again with “Man From Leith”, thinking about the whole father-son thing, and my sense of where I'm from – but even there, I'm writing about my Dad.”
Despite the depth and weight of its subject matter, though, Whisky Hearts is a winningly upfront and approachable album, replete with hummable hooks and deftly layered arrangements, centred around the burnished colours, masterly phrasing and vibrant timbres of Owens' singing. “I was definitely trying to put it out there more,” he says. “I see The Droma Tapes and My Town as being quite reserved albums, music you'd listen to in the house, whereas this time I wanted something you'd put on in the car. That became the acid test when we were recording – we'd drive around listening to the rough mixes, and if a track didn't sound right in the car, it got binned.”
Owens' chosen studio for Whisky Hearts was a converted ranch house in Murfreesboro, just outside Nashville, owned by engineer Brian Carter, who shares the singer's passion for vintage recording equipment. “It was by far the best experience I've ever had in the studio,” Owens enthuses. “I'd always dreamed of recording the way they did back in the 70s, and that's basically what happened – we just took over the whole place, set up different people in different rooms, and did the whole thing pretty much live, with just a few overdubs. It's also a totally analogue record, all recorded onto tape – I just love the warm, organic sound you get from all those valves and tubes.”
The resulting thirteen tracks were originally written and honed in the course of Owens' wide-ranging travels since the release of My Town, including his first tour of Australia in late 2004, and support slots with Scottish supergroup Capercaillie earlier that year. Other recent career highlights include a string of UK dates in 2005 with the Felsons – still ongoing as an occasional project – while February 2006 saw Owens returning to the renowned South by Southwest festival in Texas, after his debut there in 2002.
Website: www.deanowens.com
Dean, June 2008