Red Rooster’s new album, WALK, is off the burner and in the chute! Recorded in Brooklyn and upstate New York, its production is warm thanks to the mixing skills of Grammy winner Peter Moshay. The songs feature Jay Erickson’s Gordon Lightfoot-like style vocals coupled on a few numbers with Susannah Hornsby’s crystal clear songbird voice. Susannah comes from the musically gifted clan of Hornsbys that includes Uncle Bruce and brother R.S. Hornsby, to whom the album is dedicated. The album also features trumpeteer Simon Wettenhall who spends most of his time with Woody Allen’s New Orleans Jazz Band.
New York-based Red Rooster is the folk collective led by Jay Erickson (lead vocals) and Nat Zilkha (lead guitar) – lifelong friends who fashion plainly honest and self-reflective songs from fragments of their diverse musical influences and sensibilities. On their third release, WALK, Jay and Nat pull together a seamless album fashioned from country, bluegrass, folk, gospel, blues and hip-hop.
A lot has happened in the years since their critically acclaimed second album, DOSE, was released and it shows in their new tunes. After a successful tour in 2008 (including a breakout appearance at the Newport Folk Festival), the band went to work on WALK. Musically and lyrically their most mature work yet, the album is infused with Red Rooster’s signature musical tension between the traditional and the modern. On WALK, Nat and Jay expose deeply personal meditations on a few of life’s big defining and transitional events like the birth of a child (Five Tiny Fingers), following and losing the one great love (Time to Go) and failed relationships (Raining in Los Angeles).
Jay and Nat pulled Red Rooster together in New York city 10 years ago and have brought a wide array of musicians in to help create their urban country orchestra including electric guitars, drums, horns, fiddle, mandolin, banjo and DJs.
