Recorded and mixed by Johnny Goss at Dandelion Gold in Tucson, AZ, March 2024.

Lonesome Shack is a trip. Psychedelic Blues? Avant-garde Folk? Haunting and weird. Laid back and cool. Yes, all 6 descriptors accurate for Song of the Horse, a desert album whose sound was born, raised, reared in New Mexico, recorded in Tucson, this is music representative of, while also scoring, the American desert landscape from the Southwest, stretching north through California and dipping down through Mexico. It’s a lovely dose of a desert-noir score.

-The Alternate Root

A short while after this was recorded in a three-day stretch in southeast Tucson (in a quiet corner of the original 'Rocking K' neighborhood), a family of Western screech owls took up residence at the house. The first one we saw was nestled inside a Saguaro cactus, taking an afternoon nap.  The next day it moved to a perch under the edge of the roof.  We then discovered it wasn't just one owl, but a pair of them, when they both appeared at the same time.  Soon after, we were introduced to a newer member of the family when a baby screech owl woke us up by flapping against the window.

As the closing track on this album reminds us,

"If you see the owl

That’s only because

The owl wants you to"

and if you look within the liner notes of "Song of the Horse" you'll see the first photo that we took of our new neighbors, before they disappeared as suddenly as they had revealed themselves, into the mysterious depths of the Sonoran desert.

-Ola