Sol Y Sombra, the latest studio album from Ripley Johnson’s Rose City Band, is a salve for tired minds boxed in by the desk and the clock. It’s a road trip for the soul, whether your body follows or not.
There are no unkind frequencies. Electric guitar tones are pristine, clean and warm. Barry Walker’s Sho-Bud pedal steel threads its way around Johnson’s guitar, its gossamer treble thread tying the songs together. The sounds are ostensibly familiar – country bluegrass, folk, rock ’n’ roll – but the presentation is fresh.
“I’m familiar with a lot of these licks and I don’t want to copy people,” Walker explains. “It’s almost couched in a tradition, but I don’t think it’s throwback music. I’m a death-to-genres guy. I’m not trying to be like, ‘Let’s do country music now. Let’s do rock ’n’ roll.’ It’s like, ‘Let’s do music.’”
There’s a ’70s feel and swing to Sol Y Sombra, and yet the soft-focus emotional arc feels more of a piece with the bittersweet observations of late ‘90s and early ‘00s indie. Whether you dig its soundtrack quality or his spiritual uplift from the melodies, Johnson has got no message for you – no story either. Choose your own adventure.
“A lot of the music I like is either instrumental, or I can’t understand what they’re singing about because it’s too obscured or in a different language,” Johnson says. “I know people love story songs but I’d much rather get lost in a song and be able to project my feelings and my experience on it. I appreciate things that are a little more abstract.”
There’s a lot of forward motion in how you write no matter how relaxed the tempo is.
Johnson: “I always write with a rhythm in mind and with a groove in mind. I’ll feel a groove and I’ll want to play that groove, so then I write a song so that I can.”
Any time you have glissando guitar it can occupy this secondary vocal, but it also can help you cheat the beat.
Walker: “I’m definitely thinking like a vocalist. The first thing I do when Ripley sends a song to us is learn the melody. You don’t want me to play the melody because he’s singing it, so I have to find all these spaces in between.”
There’s maybe a bit more freedom rhythmically. You don’t have to be as on the grid.
Walker: “You gotta know where the road is in order to jump off it. With the slower songs it can be a lot more interesting, because you can weave in and out of the meter. The faster songs, if you do that, and you’re not really nailing the timing, it can get a little messy.”
What were some of the most important tone choices?
Johnson: “This project has been more about playing clean tones, which is much harder. The basis is clean electric guitar and acoustic, and there’s some mandolin. Currently I’m playing a Gibson J-45 that I got a couple of years ago, a mandolin I bought this year – it wasn’t a very expensive one – a Strat, and an Eastwood Airline guitar.”
I always think of Exile on Main Street when I’m recording… the Stones recorded in a dingy basement
Ripley Johnson
It sounds like a Fender amp record.
Johnson: “I used a Deluxe Reverb a lot. I also had a Showman head that I put through a custom cabinet. That was probably most of it. I have a Milkman, the Amp 100, too.”
It sounds like it was tracked somewhere nice, out in the boonies.
Johnson: “I love that. I don’t want to reveal the wizard behind the curtain but to me, what’s beautiful is that you can do it anywhere. We did most of it in my basement, which is not a beautiful space, although it’s a fine space.”
Walker: “It was a lot of fun down in the basement! The vibes were very good.”
Johnson: “Some of my favorite records were recorded in basements. I always think of Exile on Main Street when I’m recording, because I grew up a big Stones fan and they recorded in a dingy basement. I imagine Barry recorded some of the steel in the room he’s in right there.”
Walker: “Yeah, I did. Half of mine is directly into the machine and the other half I recorded over at Ripley’s house.”
A lot of these songs, they’re delicate; when you add something you can just weigh it down
Barry Walker
Your steel parts on Evergreen have this wonderful rolling quality, like the oncoming headlights on the highway, getting brighter then fading out.
Walker: “That’s one of my favorite songs on the record. It almost sounded like a Mazzy Star song. I heard these almost melancholy but still forward-moving and not sluggish sounds, and I like the headlights on the blacktop thing.”
Was it a lot of work to make the sound so relaxed?
Johnson: “That’s the irony – to make it sound relaxed when you’re so tense about it! A lot of these songs, they’re delicate; and when you add something you can just weigh it down. An it has to be just right with the leads.”
You’re not strictly country.
Walker: “It’s in there. I can’t help it because I love it, and Ripley does, too.”
Johnson: “Yeah, but we’re not playing within a genre. We might play with genre. I like being part of that tradition and part of the conversation, and too often in modern times people want something new, or they want something super-retro so that they can put you in a box. If you’re neither of those things it’s complicated – people can’t wrap their heads around it.”
It feels like a road trip put to music. What’s the best environment to appreciate it?
Johnson: “I hear it as a ‘getting out into the world’ record – going down to the river and having a swim, or going to the coast, going for a hike, going for a drive, engaging from the world and not hiding out. But you could put on headphones and chill out to it as well.”
- Sol Y Sombra is out now via Thrill Jockey.
