photo credit: Jeffery Bowling

 “We love the studio, and we wish we had more time in the studio. But, the reality of the music business is that you have to keep moving, especially if this is your full-time job. You have to get out there, earn money and keep building your audience,” explains Elliott Peck, as she traces the development of Midnight North’s new record, There’s Always a Story. “Everybody’s always writing, but we didn’t have a block of time where we could just go in the studio and explore the new ideas we’d collected.”

That moment finally arrived in January 2020, as the band entered San Anselmo, Calif.’s Allegiant Studios to record the follow-up to 2017’s Under the Lights. The quartet—which features Peck and vocalist/guitarist Grahame Lesh, along with bassist Connor O’Sullivan and Nathan Graham on drums and occasional banjo—opted to share production duties with David Simon-Baker, who had engineered Under the Lights.

“This is our first recording with Nathan as our full-time drummer and it’s kind of amazing what he’s brought to the band,” Lesh observes. “I also think there’s something about working with David Simon-Baker for a second project, coming off that prior experience.”

Midnight North completed all the basic tracks on There’s Always a Story before the pandemic shut down the studio in March. That process enabled Simon-Baker to complete the record remotely, with input from the four musicians. The ensemble also enlisted a few guests to contribute to the project, including Jason Crosby (who often performs with the group when available), Scott Law, Dave Eggar, Marcus Machado and the Trey Anastasio Band brass section: Jennifer Hartswick, Natalie Cressman and James Casey.

There’s Always a Story represents one of the flagship releases from the new Americana Vibes label.

“In the past, Elliott and I usually would come up with a song on the acoustic guitar. It would be mostly done and then we’d bring it to the band to flesh it out,” Lesh notes. “But this time, we were bringing in smaller pieces and having everyone participate. It was a lot more collaborative and that made it feel like a step up to us.”

Wild Card

GRAHAME LESH: In the spring of 2019, we did a bunch of sessions at a house. At one of them, I was up late with Nathan. We were just picking tunes and sharing ideas when he showed me the first verse and chorus of this song he had. He played it on the banjo but, when we tuned an acoustic guitar like a banjo, it started to have this really cool, vibey feel. Then after we said “goodnight,” I went back and wrote a second verse to that song. I showed it to him the next day, he dug it and we finished it with our friend and sound guy, Andrew Erickson, who helped us write the third verse.

We made a demo that day at this makeshift studio we had. Nathan played the acoustic guitar like he plays the banjo and I sang the song and played slide guitar. It was just a little sparse thing.

We laid it down that way, then we went back and added the drums and bass that come in right at the end of the song, which is the arrangement that stayed through the actual recording session.

I was happy I was able to convince everyone to put it as the first track because we don’t usually have a mellow or slow build of a song in that spot. I think that works well as a statement that this isn’t necessarily going to be exactly like our prior albums.

ELLIOTT PECK: Nathan has been in our band for a couple of years now. But, on this record, he has started to emerge as a songwriter, too. It’s cool to have a third writer in the band and a third voice. He brings a whole different sound and lyrical style.

We had this idea of holding everyone back and not having the full band come in until very late in the tune. At first, I was uncomfortable with it because I wanted to hear the band sooner. But there’s this one line in the lyrics that says, “It’s like in a movie as the credits roll.” I love that line, and that’s when the band comes in. To me, it kind of symbolized going from 2-D to 3-D; it was like when it went from black and white to color in the Wizard of Oz. It’s like this explosion of color and sound.

The Sailor & The Sea

GL: I’d read a Ta-Nehisi Coates article about something completely random, in which he paraphrased a Derek Walcott poem. The line that jumped out at me was: “Even the drowning sailor loves the sea.” And this song sort of came from that. It began as an acoustic, strummy thing, and then our bass player Connor added all the funky grooves.

Dave, our producer, said that he used a Roots song as the sonic template for it. So we go from the acoustic “Wild Card” to this Prince and The Roots-inspired funk-rock song. My nerdy favorite part of the song is the key change in the middle of Elliot’s verse. The whole song just shifts up from A minor to D minor. We made it seamless; the melody fits perfectly in her range and, since those are related keys, it doesn’t really feel like a key change even though it is.

We also have a few wonderful guests on this song. My dear friend Allison Russell from Birds of Chicago sings harmony on the bridge and one of the choruses—she and I also play in a band together called the Capitol Sun Rays. Then, our friend Marcus Machado plays all the lead guitar on this song, contributing a Stratocaster funk vibe. Of course, Jason Crosby plays keyboards on it as well. We try to have him play with us as much as we can, but he’s one of the most in-demand musicians in the scene. Thankfully, he’s on almost all of the record.

Good Days

EP: “Good Days” is one that I kicked off. I wrote the chorus and I had the melodies, then Grahame helped me with the lyrics. He also wrote this great guitar line. But, though I liked the song, there was something I was looking for that just wasn’t there. Then, he added the guitar riff that you hear at the beginning and that is what really did it for me. I said, “OK, now I’m in. Now I love it.” [Laughs.]

There’s a little bit of nostalgia in the song. I also think the upbeatness and the positivity of the music is a nice juxtaposition with some of our more melancholy lyrics. It was actually the first single we released. I was listening through all the tracks while we were trying to decide what single to get out during the middle of the pandemic. Then, when I put this one on, it felt like the sun came out. So I was like, “I think people need this one right now.”

Earthquakes

GL: This might be the oldest song of the batch. We’ve been playing it live for a few years now. After we finished recording Under the Lights, I had this idea that our next album would be this funky, horn-driven, Tedeschi Trucks type record, and I wrote “Earthquakes” with that in mind. However, we’d never really played it with a horn section before.

Over the last few years, we’ve gotten to know Jen [Hartswick], Natalie [Cressman] and James [Casey] from Trey’s band. So I hit up Jen during the pandemic and asked her if she had the time and recording ability to throw some horns on this funk track. She agreed, and the part she came up with was amazing. Then, she got Natalie and James to send over their parts.

We’ve probably played this song a couple hundred times. It’s got the loosest, most natural groove of any song on the record. I love Connor’s bass part and the drums were captured in such a cool way. I really like how it came together. The horns brought a cool energy to it.

Give Away the Ghost

EP: We go down to Jazz Fest most years and try to get some gigs and do some hanging out. We have a friend who has an old haunted-ish place in the middle of New Orleans and we stay there every year. This one is inspired by a story I heard while we were down there.

The woman who lives there and her husband both saw the same ghost or image in the hallway and didn’t tell each other for a while because they were both a little freaked. Later, they realized that they’d actually had the same experience. I just thought it was absolutely fascinating and, after I heard that, I was like, “Somebody has to put this into song.”

I love New Orleans. It’s just so rich and full of great stories like that. So this was a fun one to write while we were down there.

Production-wise, I was looking to Brandi Carlile, who is one of my influences. I love the three-part harmonies that she does with her bandmates, the Twins as they’re called. They do a lot of beautiful oohing and ahhing, almost using that as an organ part or even a horn part sometimes. I love that effect.

Coyote

EP: This is a special song for me. I did some teaching before I went into music full-time and I used to work with immigrant families in the Mission District of San Francisco. A few years back, we were having a lot of 13 to 16-year-old kids coming unaccompanied into the U.S. and showing up in San Francisco at our school with nothing but the clothes on their backs. They likely have no immediate family with them and they might be staying in the area with some extended family members. That always just gnawed at me and it seeped into these lyrics.

I wrote it almost a year ago, and it’s become even more of an issue today. I think it’s a great thing to write about current events because those songs bring all of this important stuff to the forefront. When a lot of my friends and family members first heard this song, they actually did not know what coyote I was referring to—they had never even heard that term before, which just shocked me. It allowed me to have some important conversations, recount my experiences and talk about these amazing organizations that support all these kids who are coming through.

I also should mention the strings. I threw that to our dear friend Jason Crosby, and he really spearheaded the whole string section. He also tapped Dave Eggar, an amazing cellist who has worked with Coldplay and has quite a résumé. The two of them crafted this movement that really exemplified the lyric—it complemented the sensitivity of the song and the content. What they did pulls at me every time I hear it. It’s absolutely beautiful.

Stars Falling

GL: I wrote “Stars Falling” a few years ago. Elliot and I have sung it once or twice during these acoustic shows that we do, and Midnight North has played it a few times. But this version came together in late 2019 or early 2020 with some subtle rhythm-section work. That specific bass[1]and-drum groove distinguishes it from other ballads we’ve written, like “Wind and Roses” [from 2015’s Scarlet Skies]. I think we pulled it off.

I also played banjo on this one, which was fun. I don’t know why I did instead of Nathan, but I went in and plucked it with a guitar fingerpicking style. It’s not in there too much but it adds a nice texture. It’s the kind of thing you might hear on a big pop[1]country record, where the banjo appears during the chorus for emphasis.

This was also one of the songs that we sort of recorded backward. I would play rhythm acoustic guitar in the studio and then go back and add the lead—“Mississippi River” was done that way, too. We tracked it in the room on our acoustic guitars, then recorded the electric bass and drums and then added the electric guitar. That added a really interesting flavor; it was sort of a last push to give it some energy.

Mississippi River

EP: I started this one and then Grahame added some lyrics. We’ve had this one in the bank for some time, but we didn’t really play it live. We didn’t know what to do with it until we got in a studio with our producer, and we said, “Let’s just rock out and see what happens.” Sometimes you can overthink everything, especially when you’re sitting there with your own material, and you get stuck inside of it. So it was fun to take a break and try something completely different. At first, I wasn’t sure about it; I thought it was too hard rock for this record. But, listening back to the tapes, we all agreed, “Yeah, thats the vibe,” even if it’s a little harder than how we were originally playing it.

This song was inspired by some of the imagery from the first season of True Detective with Woody Harrelson, where they were down in the South. That whole show had a really eerie feeling that just kind of seeped its way into the lyrics of this song, which talk about a person who leaves a place because it doesn’t really speak to them. Then, they come back and feel like an outsider in their home. That’s the gist of the song.

Silent Lonely Drifter

 GL: Nathan wrote “Silent Lonely Drifter.” I think he played it for us on tour—just him and Connor on banjo and upright bass backstage one time. We had it on the list as a song that we should try, and I was going to sing lead. But, if we did that, we would have had to change the key and I don’t think it would have been quite as good. It’s got such a great melody that lends itself to these three-part harmonies all the way through.

In addition to having Jason on the violin, we got Scott Law to play the mandolin. He’s a dear friend and it was great to have him lay his magic on the tune.

One little thing that changed from when Nathan originally brought it to us is that every verse used to end with “bright September moon.” But, at some point, the two of us looked through all the different full moons that take place throughout the year—I think hunter’s moon is in October and strawberry moon is in June. We looked them all up and thought about which ones sounded best and which ones fit the theme of each verse. It was a cool idea that brought the song together.

EP: This song is really playful. Nathan wrote a lot of the lyrics while we were driving around the country sitting in the van. It is really fun when your bandmates come up with stuff like that because it exemplifies our shared experiences. We are moving around the country together in a little home—these silent, lonely drifters.

We joke in our band that a lot of us don’t like to talk before noon. So, when people see us after we have just gotten up, they might say, “What’s wrong with you guys? Why don’t you talk to each other?” Then we get going around noon and we open up, and it’s cool after that. But everybody knows that the mornings are quiet time. It’s part of that silent, lonely drifting in the morning experience. [Laughs.]

We’re Not Alone

GL: This was one of Connor’s ideas. It began with a few chord progressions that he sent around as part of our songwriting process, when we were emailing tracks and ideas around back in late 2019. I sort of put the melody and the lyrics on top of that and then I had the idea to speed it up and make it a rocker; we had this idea to make this song as punky as possible while still being rootsy.

While I was writing it, I was thinking about The Devil Makes Three. They are partially a bluegrass band, but they also use these distorted guitars. I think we all saw it as just a fun way to end the record.

It was really late in the recording process that we added my voice back at the end to sing those first lines again. It all kind of fit together.

EP: This one has that Gogol Bordello sound to it, a little bit of gypsy jazz. It’s a little darker, a little more angsty and very dynamic, which I love. I also think it’s going to suit us well live. I feel like we’re going have some fun because it can go in a lot of different directions.

I really like that we leave the record on this minor-key note. I also think that this will be a fun one to end a set or show with. We can kind of leave that E minor ringing while we walk offstage. That would be a cool, dramatic way to say goodbye.