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Orchestral-pop crooner L.C. Franke announces the release of Southern Bloom, a new series of collaborative singles with the neo-traditional Texas country band Silverada that take Franke’s urbane jazz stylings on a dusty road trip through the heartland of rural Americana. Single number three gives a new spin to Silverada’s reflective torch song “Young In Love,” featuring the iconic Mickey Raphael (Willie Nelson, Christ Stapleton, Ray Charles) on harmonica.
LISTEN TO "YOUNG IN LOVE"
"'Southern Bloom' was born when I found myself sitting next to Silverada’s Mike Harmeir on a flight to Nashville from our mutual home of Austin, Texas," says L.C. Franke. "I was headed to play Jack White’s Blue Room at Third Man Records, and Harmeir was bound for the Grand Ole Opry with his cultishly adored outlaw country group. Over several mini-bottles of tequila, we bonded over our mutual love of 1960s country-pop, an era when even the Red Dirt cowboys unabashedly embraced the kind of billowy arrangements and smooth, buttery vocals. What if we got together sometime, we joked, and tried on each other’s songs? Well, a few months later, that’s what happened. And I roped in my friends Rami Jaffee from Foo Fighters, Mickey Raphael from Willie Nelson's band, and Mike Lewis from Bon Iver to round things out.”
Earlier in the month, Franke and Silverada released their cover of Lana Del Rey's "Say Yes To Heaven," a song in which the yearning pedal steel, keys from Rami Jaffee, and intoxicating saxophone from Mike Lewis all conspire to give a heady new spin on Del Rey’s dreamy, ethereal ballad that drifts between romance, surrender, and escapism.
LISTEN TO COVER OF LANA DEL REY'S "SAY YES TO HEAVEN"
In August, the collection kicked off in August with a reimagining of “Prisoner,” from Franke’s acclaimed debut album Still in Bloom, where pedal steel, soft-focus keys from Jaffee, and soulful harmonica from Mickey Raphael reconceived Franke’s wryly observed tale of amour fou amid the “late nights and bar fights” with a newly stirring, Glen Campbell-esque sweep.
LISTEN TO “PRISONER”
Arguably, the biggest contributor to the heartworn sound of Southern Bloom comes from Mickey Raphael, a country veteran who’s played with everyone from Emmylou Harris to Ray Charles to U2. “Like Coltrane or Miles, I know within the first three notes when it’s Mickey,” Franke says, and bringing in Raphael’s harmonica — ”the most singular sound in Americana and country music,” Franke says — gives Southern Bloom its distinctive, nightclub-in-the-desert vibe. Bringing Raphael into the L.C. Franke fold also completes a circle that began during the COVID-19 lockdown, when one of Raphael’s recommendations of an old Jimmy Durante album first set Franke on the sentimental journey that led to his eventual vision for Still in Bloom.
Together on Southern Bloom, they obliterate those outmoded divisions separating jazz, pop, country, and soul, distilling them into a timeless sound whose roots run equally wild beneath cracked city sidewalks and the parched Texas plains, growing majestically into branches that touch every corner of great American music.
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