John Calvin Abney
John Calvin Abney rises again from the Oklahoman prairies with his latest album Transparent Towns, available September 19 on his own Tin Canyon Records, via Well Kept Secret / Secretly Distribution. The songs focus on how we remember, and ultimately accept, though he is not always certain the memories we carry adequately mark the moments that make us.
“This record is wrapped around the passage of time, whether or not we can trust the memories that we swear on, how we forgive ourselves and others as seasons turn, and how we define what is important as we roll the boulder back up the hill,” Abney says of Transparent Towns. “We build these routines and live our stories, we rely on our histories and our memories - spoken and recorded. Now, we’re relying on copies of copies, memories of memories, all packed like sardines into our phones, and we’re losing the ability to tell our own stories. I have to constantly remind myself, as well as redefine what matters at the end of a day.”
Transparent Towns is the seventh studio album for Abney, and his first since 2022’s Tourist, which he crafted after spending the pandemic as an itinerant writer. In contrast Abney penned most of the album’s 10 tracks during a period of introspection and convalescence while recovering from vocal cord surgery in 2023. The time to himself - “I didn’t sing for nearly a year, and after surgery, I couldn’t talk for a month, and couldn’t sing for over three months,” he says, left him contemplating how to trace his experiences in the silence.
The album’s title track is Abney’s take on the inaccessible past, witnessing loss and grief through the years, damning the “days we let go left unsaid”, and accepting the uncontrollable circumstances we are sometimes placed in. “The troubles and the joys exist vibrantly in your memory, but you’re wondering if you remember correctly,” Abney remarks. “I’ve sometimes had this sort of confusion between memory and dreams - you crafted this ideal in your head of how things were or might be, in order to soften the blow of a harsher reality.”
The places we inhabit dictate how our memories form, and for Abney, there is one place to which he is constantly drawn: Oklahoma. Although he was born in the biggest little city in America, Reno, Nevada, he grew up learning guitar and piano in Tulsa, playing bars and DIY spaces from Norman to Stillwater. His affinity for the land that raised him is evident in the production of Transparent Towns.
Abney self-produced the record, tracking most of it at Cardinal Song outside of Oklahoma City, with Michael Trepagnier handling mixing and engineering. The band was comprised mostly of Sooner State musicians too, along with Lydia Loveless and John Moreland contributing harmony vocals. His signature vulnerable voice and lyrical handiwork comes through in each of the songs, along with his penchant for alternative pop melodies set against colorful chords and subtle soundscapes.
Having toured for years backing up artists like Moreland, Wild Child, Ben Kweller, and S.G. Goodman, Abney embraces a lead role again, as he presses forward with the loving lament and defiant joy throughout Transparent Towns, calling us to leave behind the pressures we place on our ourselves and recognize that just because there is an ending, it doesn’t mean it’s the end.
Kevin Carducci
By March 2020, Kevin Carducci had spent the better part of a decade leading California honky-tonk band The Easy Leaves from behind his upright bass. Over that time, the group had grown from a buzzy West Coast phenomenon to an international touring and festival act, billed alongside the likes of Billy Joe Shaver, Dwight Yoakam, and Willie Nelson. However, that project had begun to slow down and Carducci was beginning to develop his voice as a solo songwriter and collaborate with new musicians, such as Americana luminary Pokey LaFarge. He had just moved to East Nashville with a big record release and tour planned for the year ahead and was working on a collection of his own songs. The future looked bright.
You can probably guess what happened next. Before the ink could dry on Carducci’s East Nashville lease, a historically destructive tornado ripped through his new neighborhood, rendering his home uninhabitable. Then, a novel pandemic hit US shores, the music business ground to a halt, and his band broke up. So with no house, no band, and no touring to be had, Carducci had no choice but to go back out west. He took a job on a farm and rode out the end of the world between rows of vegetables in Northern California. It was the end of the road for The Easy Leaves, but a new beginning for Kevin Carducci.
Kevin Carducci's long-simmering debut solo album Easy Does It describes his ensuing years-long project of piecing a dream back together. On Easy Does It - out March 20th, 2026 on Fossil Records, the label recently founded by Carducci’s longtime friend and fellow Americana singer-songwriter Margo Cilker - Carducci settles into a new version of his voice, one a little more world-weary and a little more enlightened than the one familiar to Easy Leaves fans.
Drawing on the hard work and growth undertaken during and since those lost pandemic years, Easy Does It chronicles Carducci’s process of starting over on songs like “Open Up The Honky Tonks”, “Easy Does It”, and “Learning To Crawl”. Carducci also celebrates small victories with a Zen-like optimism on songs like “The Money” and “In My Dreams”. A quintessential California Country record, Easy Does It manages to feel like a breath of fresh air while unapologetically paying homage to the classic Bakersfield Sound. This is because, with his unique talent and perspective as both a 21st century California farmer and seasoned honky-tonk road dog, Carducci sounds completely and utterly comfortable in his own skin.
DOORS at 7:00PM | MUSIC at 8:00 PM