Years on the road can put a lot of wear on you. Can affect you personally and as an artist. Having brothers along for the ride as musicians and collaborators make that road quite a bit easier.
On Micky & the Motorcars seventh release Hearts From Above, may be their best yet. Solid songwriting, amazing compositions and tight playing makes this record one of the best of 2014.
Micky and Gary Braun do all the heavy lifting with the band, but when it came to putting this album together he called upon brothers Willy & Cody (Reckless Kelly) to help out.
“I really wanted Willy to help write on this record, took about two weeks to get our schedules together. Went up to our house in Idaho, well after we drove around, shot off guns and fished, we got to the nuts of making this album.”
Crowdfunding also became a big part of this record.
“Well we figured we need to maximize our finances. Really looked into Kickstarter, thought why not and within 4 days we hit our goal, not bad.”
Hearts From Above is chock full of amazing songwriting and hooky guitar and accordion licks. The title track had to be cut Micky said, “If there was one song with everything we’d done that was going on this album it was going to be ‘Hearts.’ We had this song for a couple years, love this song.” “Hearts From Above,” is more high and mid tempo and brings a new angle to Texas Rock Music.
“Hurt Again,” brings on the accordion, they enlisted Bukka Allen to draw such greasy warmth from that instrument, that you wonder why accordion isn’t on more albums. “Led Me The Wrong Way,” written by Gary, is a powerful reminder on how you can be guided in a direction that usually ends up with bad intentions. A personal highlight is “Tonight We Ride,” a great song of friends, soldiers, anyone that has to rely on one another to get through anything.
Micky & the Motorcars and keeping the flame of Texas Music burning for the foreseeable future.
