Atlanta, Georgia            IMMEDIATE RELEASE  May 2, 2022

Wild Orchard Records announces the release of the first single from Outer Park’s forthcoming third album, Blood From An Orange. The group follows the May 2021 release of their second album, Whole Lotta Orange, with this two-song preview: 

  • Galveston, by Jimmy Webb
  • Whispering Pines, from The Band’s 1969 eponymous album

Outer Park is:

  • Chelsea Austin, vocals     [Atlanta]
  • Patrick S. Noonan, guitars and vocals    [Atlanta]
  • James Singleton, bass     [New Orleans]
  • Charles Tobermann, keyboards, guitar, and vocals     [Orléans, France]

With: Jason Marsalis & Justin Peake, drums     [New Orleans]

Featured guest artist on Galveston: Chinua Hawk, vocals     [Atlanta]

Blood From An Orange, set for release later in 2022, continues Outer Park’s quest to recapture and modernize the freewheeling stylistic mix of the early days of underground FM radio. This first single brings 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 in the intervening decades 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 new 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.”
Special guest Chinua Hawk is an Atlanta-based 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. In addition to Galveston, Chinua has tracked several other tunes that will appear on Outer Park’s “Blood from an Orange,” as well as the upcoming release by guitarist Patrick S.Noonan, “Beat Nouveau.”