Paraply 034
addictive desire.
You can hardly speak of a career in the case of the now 74-year-old singer-songwriter Greg Copeland: his debut ‘Revenge will come’ received very good reviews in 1982, but despite the role of school friend Jackson Browne, it got no support from his label, after which Copeland, who also worked as a lawyer, disappeared into anonymity for 26 years.
In 2008 the good, country-influenced album ‘Diana and James’ was released with guitar player Greg Leisz as producer and Browne as executive producer, and recently Copeland’s third album was released.
Leisz and Val McCallum are the distinctive guitarists and multi-instrumentalist Tyler Chester serves as producer,but Copeland holds the reins tightly. Otherwise, it is incomprehensible that he can only be heard in five of the nine songs: the opening song is sung by Inara George, still first and foremost the daughter of Little Feat’s frontman Lowell George, who died in 1979. Singer-songwriter Caitlin Candy sings three others. Copeland effaces himself in those songs: he does not play any instrument in three of them and in the other one he only sings background vocals with Leisz.
He did write all the songs, two with the help of McCallum and Chester respectively, thus determining the melancholic atmosphere, which is further enhanced by the spacious, rootsy sound, in which silence is also an instrument.
In songs that belong to singer-songwriter or roots rock, Copeland and his musicians thus evoke a world full of elapsed time in which Diana and James also reappear.
These intriguing songs would form a diptych together with a follow-up planned for next year. Hopefully Copeland will hurry…
***1/2
https://gregcopeland1.bandcamp.com/releases