Bruce Sudano & Jesse Terry

Bruce Sudano

Musician’s Third EP Since Pandemic’s Onset Muses Melodically on Matters Political, Spiritual, and Romantic

Bruce Sudano returns on October 1st, 2021 with a fresh offering of dispatches from the heart on his latest EP of new original songs, Ode to a Nightingale, to be released on his own Purple Heart Recording Co.

The new record succeeds a pair of equally immediate, thoughtful, and urgent mini-albums issued in 2020. Released last April, Spirals Vol. 1: Not a Straight Line to Be Found was praised by Americana Highways for its “five moving songs about life, love and death that captivate and hold the listener’s attention.” Sudano’s October 2020 release Spirals Vol. 2: Time and the Space In Between garnered a four-star review from American Songwriter, with freelance writer/author Lee Zimmerman noting, “Sudano’s found himself on a steady roll.”

Noted for his songwriting for Dolly Parton, Michael Jackson, and Donna Summer and his own hits with the band Brooklyn Dreams, Sudano has established a burgeoning reputation in his own right. Fittingly, his latest release began with solo sessions at his home studio in Milan, Italy.

“I live half my life there,” says Sudano, who also maintains a home in Los Angeles. “I basically walked in my studio, did all the vocals and acoustic guitar, and then e-mailed it all over to my producer Randy Ray Mitchell in L.A., and he put guitars and bass on. Depending on the song, we employed who we thought would be the appropriate drummer.”

He says that for the new record, “I delved more and more into my harmony thing – I came out of a tradition of harmonies in Brooklyn Dreams, and growing up in Brooklyn at the end of the doo-wop era. The ability to do harmonies, to create harmonies, is a gift that I’ve kind of ignored in this evolution of myself as a solo singer-songwriter.”

The song “Ode to a Nightingale” – derived not from John Keats’ 1819 romantic poem, but from imagery in the work of Italian poet and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini – was written in the aftermath of the 2020 election, and draws on the same political charge that powered “The Mountain” on Spirals Vol. 1 and “American Sunset” and “For the Sake of Humanity” on Spirals Vol. 2. He says, “I see the nightingale as a voice in the darkness, hopefully singing beautiful melodies that are leading us out of the darkness and into the dawn and the light of a new day.”

Likewise, in the set-closing “All Hands” he cautions against complacency: “We can’t let our guard down. We have to be vigilant, because we’re certainly treading a very fine line in our country.”

The dream-like song “In Shadowland” – which is being launched by a vision-infused video directed by Furio Ganz, with striking visual effects by Claudio Bellini – shouldn’t be pinned down by any definitive interpretation, the writer says.

“I decided that I’m not going to describe that song, because it’s an illusion – it’s an illusion lyrically, it’s an illusion sonically, and it’s an illusion visually when you see the video. Everybody who has heard the song or seen the video so far has had their own interpretations of what is being said. If you’re sensitive enough to listen to your inner spirit, your inner voice, it’s this whole world of shadows.”

While there is no shortage of serious and introspective material on Ode to a Nightingale, Sudano adds, “I didn’t want this record to be as heavy and dark as some of the things I’d been writing in the past. I’ve transitioned through a lot of loss, and I wrote a lot about that. I wanted this record to be a little light, and I wanted to revisit the vocal side of things. I wanted it to have more of a pop element to it.”

The bouncing, blissful “Do Be Do (Daytrippin’)” was inspired by the time he spent with his wife Francesca, whom he married in February 2020, in the months after the pandemic hit. “There’s a bit of escapism going on in that lyric,” he says. “There’s the reality of what’s going on in the world, the fears and the doubts that we all have -- but right now we’re just tripping and enjoying each other’s company, and not taking it all too seriously. For right now, we’re having a good time.”

The vicissitudes of romance are also considered in “Fatal Love” (Sudano notes, “When love is real and right, it just stops you in your tracks, and there’s really no escape. And at the same time, it brings you into a new life.”) and “Not Your Hero” (he says, “I was confident when I was writing this song that there would be a lot of people who would relate to the situation – we all have those exes that hang on, and there comes a time when you have to make that break.”)

The album lifts off with the jubilant, soaring “Cosmic Ride,” which Sudano admits will immediately strike a familiar chord with fans of a certain fabled rock act: “Randy and I both have an affection for the Traveling Wilburys and the production style of Jeff Lynne. With ‘Cosmic Ride,’ we both thought this song would work well in that vein – let’s see what would happen if we tried it that way. It was not by mistake, it was by intention. It came out of complete love and appreciation for that style and sound.

In all, Bruce Sudano views Ode to a Nightingale as an excellent summation of his musical capabilities’ breadth: “I tend to write five kinds of songs – a philosophical song, a spiritual song, a love song, a social consciousness song, or a story song. As I look back on this record, I think, OK, you hit all the points, all the kinds of songs that you would write.”

Jesse Terry

Jesse Terry's seventh album, When We Wander, is the first he wrote since becoming a parent. So it's no surprise the family theme courses through many of its 12 songs. His music career has been a family project ever since he became a full-time touring artist a decade ago.

That was right around the time when Jesse met his wife Jess working on a cruise ship in the South Pacific. "As soon as we got back to the states, I proposed to her at Nashville's Bluebird Cafe in July 2010 and we packed up the car for the first tour right after that. We've been touring together full-time ever since." Now with two-year-old Lily added to the clan, family is more important than ever to him, including the parental urge to love and protect. "If I were the moon, I’d light all of your back roads," he sings in "If I Were The Moon": "You wouldn’t need no headlights / I’d always be full."

The life of a touring family inspired the album's title track. "When we wander, when we wander / Don’t it feel like we’re finally found." But in the face of the pandemic, he has found that "wandering is not just a literal thing. We've followed our hearts with so many decisions in 2020-2021, and have found that there are many ways to wander and be free and brave."

One of those ways has been going virtual. He says that his livestream concerts have "become the highlight of my week and the thing that sustains us emotionally and financially. And an amazing community has sprung up from these concerts."

The stage had been Jesse's home for a decade. He plays around 150 shows a year, from Bonnaroo to the Philadelphia Folk Festival, the 30A Songwriters Festival to AmericanaFest. When the pandemic canceled concerts and delayed the album's release, he pivoted to performing online and found a strong new connection to his fans, who had helped fund his albums all along. "My musical tribe has always been there for me," he says with gratitude.

Though recorded in 2019, the songs off the new album click with fans online too. He and his band recorded When We Wander live in the studio, a first for his career. "I wanted to try that Jason Isbell, Chris Stapleton, Neil Young approach to live recording, prioritizing emotion and raw performances over perfection. I loved that experience." Recorded live, the album resonates especially with the intimacy and community spirit of the online shows.

He also wrote all the music and lyrics this time, instead of working with collaborators, and took a very personal approach, including a look back. "In Spite of You" recalls his stay in a residential facility for behavior modification that traumatized him as a young teenager: "The sermons that you sold me all were fakes."

Yet he emerged to earn a degree from Berklee College of Music, net a five-year staff writer gig on Nashville's Music Row penning material for major TV networks, and win prestigious songwriting awards. And then to become the singer-songwriter his countless fans know today, who (in the words of Music News Nashville) "bring[s] to mind iconic artist/poets like Paul Simon and Jackson Browne... [with] a performance that touches the heart like only a whisper can."

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Eddie's Attic, 515 B North Mcdonough Street , Decatur, United States