Thoughtful songs performed with an emotional intensity which leaves you contemplating your place in the world.
Michigan-based artist Ed Dupas says of his new album, his first in 6 years: “I’ve been working on writing around a theme, more or less, since 2019 and recording along the way. The recording process began to accelerate towards the end of 2023, working both in my Lava Lounge home studio and at Mackinaw Harvest with Michael Crittenden in Grand Rapids. In addition to my solo writing and recording, I’ve been making music with a group of talented Michigan musicians, including Caroline Barlow of The North Carolines, and Tony Pace and Daniel Andrews, formerly of Cold Tone Harvest.”
What this effort has produced is an album of songs sat mostly in the country area of americana. The opening title song builds from an acoustic guitar to a biting slide guitar solo, over an impassioned vocal looking for home. “I’m here to tell you, here to warn you. About a feeling codenamed California. It starts at your feet, and it shines you through and through. Oh, California, I’m coming home to you.”
Having set the tone with that song, ‘Barbed Wire Cross’ is an equally savage guitar-driven piece. John Connors’ bass pulses beneath the Dobro of Tony Pace. The call and response vocal gives a bluesy feel, and more stinging electric guitar highlights the words, which take a swipe at consumerism. ‘Box Of Lonely Men’ is a country ballad set in a bar full of people with no other place to be. It’s an interesting way of looking at bar culture and highlights Dupas’ skill as an observational songwriter.
All the songs feature his band in one configuration or another, but taking the basic guitar, bass, B3 drums pattern and making it fit a varied selection of songs makes for an album that is more varied in feel than a lesser musician would have made. ‘Queen of Hearts’ introduces Caroline Barlow’s voice to add a new texture. ‘My Only One’ adds strings to the sound of a slower, more atmospheric song. The album’s final song, ‘Angel’, is a homecoming song, which sees Dupas finding peace after his concerns about the world. It once again finds him baring his soul both in writing and singing.
As we have mentioned in earlier coverage of Dupas, his music is in the mould of the likes of Steve Earle and Sturgill Simpson. Other press describes ‘Codename California’ as “a quiet reckoning – an album about voice, place, and coming home to yourself.” And it does indeed feel as if Ed Dupas has used his time away from the spotlight to craft a set of songs which consider themes he feels deeply about, and the quality of his thought is reflected in the quality of the songs.
Codename California by Ed Dupas
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