“Shasta is the product of an experiment in limitations and creative self-control. Recorded with solar power on a Tascam 388 and remaining true to only the 8 available tracks, these sessions were often late nights around the wood stove in a small hillside studio in Big Sur.”
If he lives in LA but still hosts his album release party in Oakland, which is the artist’s spiritual home? Singer-songwriter Levi Thomas, who grew up in the Ozarks and moved through the South and Midwest before his time in the Bay, just released his latest album Shasta via Oakland’s The Long Road Society. It’s moody country rock through and through, but you know it’s much more than that from the 45-second-long trembling keyboard drone that opens the album. For the next half hour plus, Thomas and his collaborators ride through warm analog jams guided by drawling poetry broken like daily bread. Epic highway drives and coastal views, thick mountain wood and creaking studio, melting sun and starry skies: Central coast devotees will have no trouble imagining the magic that brought this music to tape.
