RF Shannon, the desert blues band fronted by Shane Renfro, announced the release of their second album Trickster Blues, due out May 4 on Cosmic Dreamer Music. The record is their first since relocating from Austin to Los Angeles; its eight expansive tracks unfurl the band’s unique blend of dusky Western and spectral psychedelia. RF Shannon released the album’s first single “Cold Spell” via Brooklyn Vegan today, and Renfro shared the story behind the track:
It was cold outside, that wet-to-the bones Austin, TX cold. I was huddled around a space heater just playing that walk-up riff over and over. I was feeling elated and terrified. I had just told someone I loved them that had been my friend for many years, and she said she loved me back. Without saying too much, the situation was complicated. We both knew we were on the cusp of something life-changing, but we both felt a lot of guilt and grief over it and wanted to handle the situation properly by letting it unfold naturally. So we just stepped out of each other’s lives briefly to figure our own hearts out. When it comes down to it, the song is about feeling like a cold person for interjecting into someone else’s fate, but also feeling like, maybe I am part of this person’s fate and this is how it’s supposed to be.
Trickster Blues is out May 4 on Cosmic Dreamer and is available for pre-order now.
RF Shannon – Trickster Blues
May 4 – Cosmic Dreamer
1. Tooth Ache
2. I’m Only Dying
3. Cold Spell
4. Gates of Paradise
5. Badlands
6. Black Madonna, So Divine
7. Trickster Blues
8. Silver Woman
MORE ON RF SHANNON:
On Trickster Blues, their new full length album for Cosmic Dreamer, RF Shannon take a drastic shift from the long form, pensive desert meditations of their previous record. “The process was a drastic shift from the one we took with Jaguar Palace and I was hooked. It was a blast all of the time. We kept a quick pace due to external circumstances via random or otherwise inevitable interruptions, so we learned to take what we could get. If a take was good, it was a keeper, we didn’t second guess it. In just four days we had demoed the majority of my new material and it just felt so right,” explains Shane Renfro, the mind behind RF Shannon.
Born out of natural and self-imposed boundaries, the final product is an album that lives in the sonic space between desert blues and old school R&B. At times heavy like a jackhammer while maintaining the velvety vocal deliveries of Renfro, Trickster Blues is an album that embraces the natural indecision surrounding the songwriting process and goes with its gut decision every step of the way. By working on the principal that if the first impression of a song is good enough at the moment then it is good enough to be the final product, Trickster Blues paints a portrait of Renfro’s truth and his truth alone. “Maybe it’s a terrible mistake, maybe its’ better this way,” comments Renfro on the writing process. “I think that’s what this record will always mean to me. That’s kind of the Trickster in a way. Many different facets, but the name conjures a sort of pure whimsical mischief, a dose of raw wild impulse that reminds you to laugh at whatever it is thats happening.”
Demoed in four days in Marfa and recorded in two in Lockhart, Texas with the help of Jesse Woods and Will Patterson, the album is demanding in its immediacy while providing a raw and profound insight to the raw sonic & lyrical landscape Renfro & Co have crafted.
