California country singer-songwriter Rick Shea’s new Smoke Tree Road is an exceptional set that highlights his signature mix of communicative artistry, contemporary vision and traditional form. Perfected over the course of an influential five-decade life in music, Shea’s gently implacable dynamic—a stoic Western reserve capable of transmitting an abundance of nuanced emotional content - makes for a smoldering, soul deep approach that’s profoundly effective and deeply evocative.
A prolific craftsman, Shea has long since distinguished himself as a standard bearer who bridges the 20th and 21st centuries with elegant aplomb. He made his musical bones in the very rough honky-tonks and truck stops of early ‘70s San Bernardino, where not-long-for-this-world giants Lefty Frizzell and Wynn Stewart still worked and the alcohol and amphetamine fueled truck drivers and biker gangs would brawl at the drop of a crosstop - his was a classical country music education.
Shea is nothing if not a keen observer and he’s squandered none of the foundational precepts learnt there; rather, he has furthered that education over the course of a dozen uniformly superb, critically praised solo discs, as stellar a sideman with such notable colleagues as Dave Alvin, the late Costa Mesa laureate Chris Gaffney, legendary rockabilly empress Wanda Jackson, an important duet partnership with acclaimed folk singer Mary McCaslin and, of course, a ceaseless tide of his own live performances alongside the top musicians in Los Angeles’ country community, along with multiple national and European-UK tours.
Sincerity has always been Shea’s calling card and Smoke Tree Road is loaded with an elegant veracity that draws a listener into the heart of every track. Joined by his crew of frequent, first-rate accompanists-renowned guitarist Tony Gilkyson, bassist-saxist Jeff Turmes, drummer Dale Daniel, pianists Skip Edwards and Danny McGough, among others—the set is very much an organic, tribal exercise.
With songs inspired by Shea’s own road experiences (“A Week in Winnemucca”), one (“Maria,” featuring esteemed vocalist Celia Chavez) written by his late mother-in-law (Shea has previously recorded several of her compositions), a potent re-visiting of “One More Night” from his very first, cassette-only album and the penetrating state of our nation meditation “El Diablo Manda” (“The Devil Commands”), Shea ably travels through an impeccably sequenced, sonically rich spectrum of his narrative songwriting, meticulously atmospheric guitar style and tightly focused, expressive vocal delivery.
Apart from his impressive recorded output, Shea’s touring has taken him everywhere from Belfast to the Southwest (teamed with estimable compadre Mike ‘Jack of All Heartaches’ Stinson in Dallas and Houston), ongoing participation in Dave Alvin’s long-running Roots on the Rails series, performing aboard Amtrak trains and at stops along the way with the likes of Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Butch Hancock from Los Angeles to Oregon, Alaska and east to Chicago and New Orleans. With brilliant longtime partner Gilkyson, Shea’s rambled across New Mexico, Utah and Nevada and maintains two ongoing successful honky-tonk residencies in Los Angeles, with frequent additional appearances at folk music centers and boutique listening rooms across the region.
Shea has always operated at a remarkable aesthetic altitude, where his consistent authenticity, fastidious sense of craft and innate, boundless creativity enable him to conceive and execute singular, irresistible works of elegant simplicity, and Smoke Tree Road elevates him to a breathtaking celestial height.