THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Pouring a heavy dose of funk grooves and rock riffs over hardcore country lyrics, The Cadillac Three’s Tabasco & Sweet Tea is a modern-meets-nostalgia collection. The surprise album marks TC3’s second full-length in 2020 and mixes one hell of a concoction, with sonic swirls that pick up where February’s Country Fuzz left off.
Spending their formative years playing music together in basements and garages laid the foundation for The Cadillac Three to put their own spin on each new record. Tabasco & Sweet Tea will open a time capsule of their musical history together and expand on some of the grooves from Country Fuzz.
“As we finished the last record, we knew we were only tapping the surface with songs like The Jam for where we could go next musically and found ourselves inspired to dive into these sounds that we had never explored before as a band,” explains drummer Neil Mason. “We’ve always had a lot of influences, but ultimately found ourselves thinking about what we were listening to in high school — The Meters, Stevie Wonder, Medeski Martin & Wood and John Scofield.”
Lead singer and guitarist Jaren Johnston continues, “this album is a science project … constantly moving in different directions but keeping one cohesive feel throughout. We kind of have this innate thing going after all these years so it’s was cool to kind of stretch into some new musical spaces with elements of a DJ set that flows from track to track, but mixed with ’80s funk vibes and jam-band flow over hardcore country lyrics.”
Johnston’s gritty vocals explode over unexpected guitar riffs as Ray pounds out taut yet voluptuous bass lines over Mason’s gnarly, syncopated rhythms. Their boisterous, yet good-natured freewheeling vibe erupts with the title track whilst Sabbath On Cornbread closes the album as a calling-card fused with the electricity of their live shows.
Maybe it’s a sign of the times that this project is released now, as playlists reflect listeners finding comfort in old favourites when times are tough. TC3 finds the common ground interweaving traditions of American popular music and proving that new can still feel classic without being derivative yet simultaneously casting a vision for good times ahead.”
