Release Date: 18 May 2015
Label: Live Once Records
Packaging Type: Digipak
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 888295234382
Genres: Folk  Singer Songwriter  
Release Date: 18 May 2015
Label: Live Once Records
Packaging Type: Digipak
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 888295234382
Genres: Folk  Singer Songwriter  
Description
Owls is a vibey dark record, produced by David Goodrich (Chris Smither, Peter Mulvey, Jeffrey Foucault, Red Bird) and tracked live at Fire Station Studios in San Marcos,TX with a stark, sparse core of a band, creating the sort of live energy exchange that can only be generated when great musicians are in the room together, playing off one another in real time. The result is a record that feels timeless, gritty and real.
The tone of the production melds perfectly with the tenor of the songs, themselves. These are moody, metaphoric, almost esoteric songs of symbolic depth and discovery, revolving around themes of Identity and Transformation, and the ever-shifting sense of ourselves in the mirror of ever-changing circumstances. But they're stories told from above, an almost omniscient perspective, as if perched curiously from a branch overhead. It's a smart edgy song-driven album that straddles the Americana/Roots world and the Indie Rock world, in the mold of Joe Pug, Josh Ritter, and Damien Rice.
Lending their considerable musical talents to Owls were Mike Meadows on drums, Andrew Pressman on bass, David Goodrich on electric guitars, Lloyd Maines on lap steel, and Carrie Elkin & Daniel Thomas Phipps adding an emotional and expressionistic backdrop of lush harmony vocals. It was a small, but staunch cast.
Owls is Schmidt's seventh studio album. His 2007 release Little Grey Sheep began an unbroken streak of albums that have charted in the Top 10 on the Folk Radio Charts internationally. And on the heels of being crowned one of the prestigeous Kerrville New Folk award winners in 2007, Schmidt signed with venerable Americana roots label, Red House Records, who released his next three albums: the critically acclaimed debut Instead The Forest Rose To Sing in 2009, the spare and intimate Man Of Many Moons in 2011, and culminating with the amorous duo album For Keeps with his partner, Carrie Elkin, in 2014. Now Schmidt returns to his own roots, releasing Owls on independent label, Live Once Records.
Tracklisting
Danny Schmidt
Danny Schmidt