Atlanta, Georgia IMMEDIATE RELEASE September 30, 2022
Wild Orchard Records announces the release of Outer Park’s third album, Blood From An Orange.
A collaboration linking New Orleans, Atlanta and the French countryside, the new set includes original compositions and inventive covers that mash-up Americana, jazz, blues, folk, psychedelic rock, and more.
Blood from an Orange furthers the band’s ongoing mission to re-imagine and remix that freewheeling swirl of styles that was the signature of the early days of underground FM radio. We find a Muddy Waters track borrowing a recording trick from Americana-founder Gram Parsons. Joni Mitchell is served over a Bo Diddley beat… with a New Orleans / Little Feat groove… topped with an instrumental nod to Quicksilver Messenger Service live at the Fillmore. Jimmy Webb has a surprise run-in with The Doors. A classic early-60s surf-guitar instrumental muscles its way between gentle, acoustic treatments of ballads by Buffy Sainte-Marie and The Band. A Steppenwolf deep cut adds a gospel choir and some grunge, and serene solo piano concludes each of the two “sides” of the record.
Outer Park is:
- Chelsea Austin, vocals [Atlanta]
- Patrick S. Noonan, guitars and vocals [Atlanta]
- James Singleton, bass [New Orleans]
- Charles Tobermann, keyboards and guitar [Orléans, France]
With special guests:
- Jason Marsalis & Justin Peake, drums [New Orleans]
- Chinua Hawk, vocals [Atlanta & New Jersey]
- Paul Lieberman, flute [Boston]
- Jake Martin, sax [Nashville]
The eclecticism is built into Outer Park’s DNA: Keyboardist Tobermann has advanced degrees in classical conducting and composing, but also worked in the computer- and recorded music industries when digital technology was in its infancy. Guitarist Noonan, whose four Ivy-League degrees include a Harvard PhD in a branch of economics, spent a long career as a professor and dean at some of the world’s top business schools, after having spent his twenties evolving from full-time musician to Greenpeace director to McKinsey consultant. Vocalist Austin’s musical career has been interleaved with day jobs as a scientific research associate, tackling climate change and health policy at the CDC and other institutions.
Bassist Singleton has been the most focused over his long musical career, making him one of New Orleans’ best-known players. A regular in NOLA clubs, festivals and recording studios, James’s credits include a broad range of work with Astral Project, Ricki Lee Jones, Chet Baker, Professor Longhair, Aaron Neville, Joe Henderson, Milt Jackson, Eddie Harris, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Gatemouth Brown, Harry Connick Jr., John Scofield, Dave Liebman, Natalie Cole, Charlie Rich, and each member of the Marsalis clan (Ellis, Branford, Wynton and Jason).
To complete the rhythm section, Outer Park again turned to the NOLA drummers who grounded their first two albums. Jason Marsalis, the youngest of that renowned jazz family (also known for his stellar work on the vibraphone), alternates kit duties with composer and technologist Justin Peake.
Special guest Chinua Hawk is a singer/songwriter who touts a “slow cooker approach that explores the intricacies of love through acoustic driven soul.” Over a span of more than twenty-five years, Hawk has produced 5 albums, inspired by music that shaped his southern New Jersey upbringing, including Stevie Wonder, Donny Hathaway, Aretha Franklin and Whitney Houston. His other achievements include recording with Talib Kweli and Kanye West on Just To Get By, as well as writing songs with Wyclef Jean and performing with Celine Dion.
Paul Lieberman, who appears on flute, has settled in Boston after a long musical career that has included years in Brazil performing and recording with Flora Purim and Airto Moreira, and regular tours in the US in the horn section for former Allman Brothers Band drummer Jaimoe (as well as some on-stage time with the late Greg Allman himself). Up and coming Nashville-based sax player Jake Martin debuted in 2019 in multiple tracks on Outer Park’s first album.
The first single from Blood from an Orange was released in May, bringing together two beautiful, emotion-filled ballads, both of which speak to a present-day world in turmoil, much as the band’s musical influences addressed the tumult of the late 1960s.
Galveston
Charles Tobermann recalls: “This one is a heartbreaker. Surprising, yes? We ourselves were stunned when we learned that this Jimmy Webb classic was about a young couple riven by the Vietnam War. We grew up hearing the Glen Campbell version, a big radio hit, but one that didn’t really tell the story that the song intends. Outer Park’s arrangement, and especially the beautiful singing by Chelsea Austin and featured guest China Hawk, bring Webb’s story to life, and it really strikes a chord with today’s conflicts around the world. Our surprise musical coda, which also harks back to that war, resolves the ambiguity of Webb’s original narrative: Do the lovers ever reunite on those beaches of Galveston?”
Whispering Pines
Patrick S. Noonan recalls: “One of the most beautiful songs ever recorded by The Band, and they recorded a lot of gorgeous tunes. The Band was a major influence on Charles, James and me when we were very young musicians, starting out together. The Outer Park version pays tribute – and especially to the late Richard Manuel, who delivered one of his most moving performances on that song. We wanted to capture the dreamy, deeply melancholy spirit of the song, but also the hope that is interwoven in it.”
Outer Park formed in 2018. Three members – Singleton, Tobermann and Noonan – had played their first gig together fifty years earlier, in 1968, as pre-teens. Their musical adventures since leaving hometown Springfield Illinois had taken them in different directions – jazz, classical, folk and new age, as well as New Orleans, Texas, NYC, LA, Boston, Atlanta and Europe. However, at a chance reunion in 2013, they discovered they still had much common ground – as well as a burning curiosity about how their musical and life experiences would have reshaped their take on the eclectic sounds that molded them.
Singer Chelsea Austin, a full generation younger, brings a new set of influences and points-of-view. Reared in Georgia by former flower children, she grew up immersed in the styles and songs of the underground-radio era. But her natural feel for that material isn’t burdened with reverence, creating an opening for the infusion of modern sounds – and for Outer Park’s signature mash-ups and juxtapositions. She relates this to the single: “When I listened to Webb’s original telling of Galveston, I felt an instant explosion of a million hearts breaking. Not the shrapnel or bombs or political unrest — but the last hugs, the letters that stopped coming, the not-knowing. This song goes out to those on the other end of that silence.”
Outer Park is already working on their next releases, which include a live album and video from their August 2022 concert in Atlanta.
