Guy Clark said that money won’t buy you love or homegrown tomatoes. He could have added seeing Tuba Skinny live to that list. In case you’ve missed it, Tuba Skinny is a musician collective known for their live performances busking in the streets of New Orleans. Drummer and vocalist Erika Lewis is part of the group and had been building up a catalog of her own compositions for an undetermined album. Then she found out she had to have thyroid surgery, and she might not sing again. She accelerated her timetable and got everything recorded prior to the surgery (everything turned out fine), and that album, A Walk Around the Sun, is due out in a few weeks.
Unlike the New Orleans jazz stylings of Tuba Skinny, Erika’s record primarily takes its queues from the country music genre. Although there’s a lot of fiddle and steel guitar on the album, one of my favorite songs veers into a roots rock vein with a driving beat from bass and drums. It’s a tale of trying to manage a relationship when there’s a 24/7/365 party atmosphere all around you and Lewis manages to capture that ambiguity in her vocal delivery. We’re pleased to be abe to premiere that song, Unsatisfied, here as a taste of good music to come, in this case on April 29th.
About the author: I've actually driven from Tehatchapee to Tonopah. And I've seen Dallas from a DC-9 at night.