THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “By the time we got to the desert, we established two rules: Don’t get bit by a rattlesnake, and don’t use a computer until you have to,” says Eric Silverman about recording his sophomore LP. Not surprisingly in light of the second policy, Stay In It is an album in the classic sense: A cohesive song cycle purpose-built for pit stops at points along — and beyond — the California country corridor.
Sonically, Stay In It feels equally at home in 2022 as it might in 1972, evidenced by nods to After The Gold Rush-era Neil Young, Jonathan Wilson and The War on Drugs. The singer-songwriter trucked Jerry Garcia’s old console to the desert to embrace the analog. It was going to be the kind of session where if you want to rip a guitar solo at 3 a.m. with the windows open, you go for it, cowboy.
A flurry of calls reverberated back and forth until Eric and his producer Damien Lewis (Kevin Parker, James Bay), crashlanded in the tiny high desert outpost of Landers, Calif. … in August. Stay In It is a way of saying be present — it’s his version of Be Here Now, says Silverman, who is an accomplished veteran of the Bay Area scene (with appearances at Outside Lands and Noise Pop under his belt).
“The record is really about just finding that moment where it all locks in and flows,” he says. “Get there and stay there.” This is music that picks up influences and imagery and shapes and colors as it encounters them on Interstate 62, before dropping them off as they turn into specks of dust on the horizon. There’s the two-step lilt of Better Days, where we start awash in melancholy synths but end up hopeful for possibility. There’s the synthesizer summoning courtesy of first-call session keyboardist Adam MacDougall (Black Crowes, Circles Around The Sun) on All In My Head where things get fully cosmic. But no matter the track, there’s something bigger happening here.”
