PRESS RELEASES
June 23, 2023 / VIEW
June 1, 2023 / VIEW
album artwork / click for hi-res version
photo credit: Kyle Thomas / click for hi-res version
MULTIDISCIPLINARY ARTIST
BLAKE MILLS UNVEILS NEW
SONG + VIDEO “THERE IS NO NOW”
NEW SOLO ALBUM WITH
CHRIS WEISMAN JELLY ROAD DUE JULY 14 ON
NEW DEAL / VERVE
It is the spring of 2022, and Weisman is at the Steinway. He and Blake are composing his overlay voicings together, a layer of icing, for the bridge to “THERE IS NO NOW” that they just wrote from scratch--lyrics, melody, chords, Blake at his Goya, Chris pacing the perimeter of this illustrious room, Studio A of SOUND CITY STUDIOS in Van Nuys, California, veritably vibrating with history you could cut with a knife. Chris plays a big, sweet Ab Major 9 on the downbeat, and the whole room sings. Where an F minor turns Major, Blake suggests the 3rd should resolve an octave lower instead of traveling up a half-step, eschewing the obvious voice leading for an octave displacement. These are the leaps. It is heavenly-voiced down, the A natural seems to glow gently orange.
June 23, 2023—Today, Grammy-winning producer, composer, guitarist and songwriter Blake Mills shares, “There Is No Now,” with an accompanying video directed by Justin Daashuur Hopkins —listen/watch here. The track is taken from the artist’s new solo album, co-written and co-produced by Chris Weisman, Jelly Road, set for release July 14 on New Deal / Verve—pre-save/pre-order here.
“There Is No Now” follows Mills’ first single, “Skeleton Is Walking,” named “graceful and ornate” by Stereogum, while Pitchfork hails that Mills’ voice “offers dreamy musings that float like torn journal scraps…” The Toronto Star praises, “You’ve gotta have real gall — and serious chops — to record a four-minute guitar solo in the year of our lord 2023. But songwriter and guitarist Blake Mills pulls it off with apparent ease on ‘Skeleton Is Walking,’…the fireworks start just after the 2:20 mark, as Mills assumes the role of prog-rock guitar god, laying down a fuzzed-out and highly expressive solo on a fretless sustainer baritone guitar. It’s an exquisite and rare display of musicianship, and proof that the guitar solo is not dead yet.” Furthermore, The FADER asserts that the song “charts an imitable path for itself” growing “from meditation to invocation with an extended, mesmerizing guitar solo.”
Mills learned of Weisman through a friend while making the critically acclaimed album Notes With Attachments with bassist Pino Palladino. Mills reached out and the two quickly began collaborating on material via email, starting with songs for Amazon Prime’s lauded limited series Daisy Jones and the Six, for which Mills worked as the Executive Music Producer and chief songwriter, writing and producing all the original songs from the show and its accompanying record Aurora, while working closely with the singer and guitarist Weisman, among others.
Together, the pair wrote the entirety of Jelly Road which was recorded and co-mixed by engineer and frequent Mills collaborator Joseph Lorge (Bob Dylan, Phoebe Bridgers, Feist).
The duo is coming off a run of sold-out dates around Mills’ performance with Joni Mitchell at Washington’s The Gorge Amphitheater. The Blake Mills Featuring Chris Weisman Tour took them to select cities on the West Coast, where they played music from Jelly Road as well as select songs from throughout their varied careers.
Grammy Award winner and two-time Grammy Award Producer of the Year nominee, Blake Mills has released four acclaimed solo albums and produced, played and recorded with artists such as Fiona Apple, Alabama Shakes, Phoebe Bridgers, Perfume Genius, Moses Sumney, Bob Dylan, Laura Marling, Cass McCombs, Jay-Z, Weyes Blood and Randy Newman, among others. His album Mutable Set, released in in 2020, was praised by Pitchfork as “a hushed collection that floats through the subconscious like a tender dream” and earned their Best New Music title.
Chris Weisman (b. 1975) is a songwriter living in Brattleboro, Vermont. His dozens of homespun, self-released solo albums are a kaleidoscope of vaulting melodies, wild poetry, overload harmony, melting bridges and jazz solos. He is the author of Nonmusical Patterns and their Musical Uses (for Guitar in Standard Tuning), the inventor of Inverted Tuning, and an active member of Intangible Shirt Company: an extemporizing crush of New England Transcendentalist hippie types.
For more information, please contact
Krista Williams or Carla Sacks at Sacks & Co., 212.741.1000.
BLAKE MILLS—JELLY ROAD
1. Suchlike Horses
2. Highway Bright
3. Jelly Road
4. Skeleton Is Walking
5. Unsingable
6. Wendy Melvoin
7. The Light Is Long
8. Breakthrough Moon
9. There Is No Now
10. Press My Luck
11. A Fez
12. Without An Ending
BLAKE MILLS FEATURING CHRIS WEISMAN
June 14 /// The Old Church /// Portland, OR
June 16 /// August Hall /// San Francisco, CA
June 17 /// Little Saint /// Healdsburg, CA
June 20 /// Pappy and Harriet’s /// Pioneertown, CA
June 22 /// The Pico Union Project /// Los Angeles, CA
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