The Long Road to Nashville

This is the third record I have made in Nashville, but I wanted to lean more toward our rock side since that’s where my solo band is headed. For the last few years we have been going out with drums and electric guitars. The great thing is that we really captured a lot of these songs live, except for the singers who came in later. I feel like overworking things is detrimental, so we recorded this in a week and then spent the following week doing overdubs and touch-ups. It was kind of like playing a gig.

“I am 62 years of age but I’m at my peak,” says Dave Mason on the eve of his new release, 26 Letters 12 Notes. While veteran artists often go the way of nostalgia, Mason is in fine form, playing and singing as well as he ever has. While the founding Traffic member has recorded with everyone from Hendrix, the Stones and Clapton to Fleetwood Mac, Cass Elliot and George Harrison, he still yearns for the stage as he clocks in well over a hundred shows a year.

Photo Alexei Afonin

WINSTON RODNEY HASN’T moved a muscle in over an hour. Seated with his eyes closed, muscles knit into an expression of intense concentration, the man whom the world has known for the last 39 years as Burning Spear is oblivious to the buzz of activity all around him. On the last day of a recording odyssey that began in October, Rodney and Chris Daley, a veteran engineer flown in from Kingston, are hunkered down in New York’s Magic Shop studio locking in the final mix for Burning Spear’s 22nd studio album, Jah is Real.

Cold War Kids emerged from the blogosphere’s ether in 2006 to become one of the most successful bands on the indie-rock circuit. Offering a mixture of dark themes and infectious hooks, the group jumped from club dates to arena support spots in a matter of months. The musicians—Nathan Willett, Jonnie Russell, Matt Maust and Matt Aveiro—also made waves in the jamband and art-rock circuits, thanks to marquee slots at festivals like Bonnaroo and the occasional nod to jazz vets like Billie Holiday. But all that didn’t stop the quartet from making its sophomore album, Loyalty to Loyalty, not only darker, but more experimental than 2006’s Robbers & Cowards.

Bassist and group visionary Matt Maust gives Relix.com the scoop on Loyalty to Loyalty, Cold War Kids’ first arena dates and why this is really the band’s first album.