An elegiac meditation on the death of a friend and bandmate. Martin Ruby’s new video for ‘Rusty Trucks and Daisies’ is a tribute to his late friend Molly. As he laments in the back seat of a New York taxi, he visits faded scenes of the American plains. His voice rasps the lyrics in a subdued but heartfelt performance that echoes Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen. As well as singing, Ruby performed all of the instruments that set the melancholy scene for his vocal.
“There were these phone calls in the middle of the night. Molly was dead. We had just gotten back to talking again, putting the past in place, cracking jokes about the old days when we played at CBGBs,” Marco North, the voice behind Martin Ruby explains. The track was mastered by none other than Oz Fritz, a celebrated engineer who has recorded and mixed for Tom Waits (Mule Variations), Iggy Pop, Bill Laswell, and the Ramones. Check it out.
Ed Donnelly is a multi-instrumentalist, recording engineer and record producer from Los Angeles. He has worked with Willie Nelson, Crowded House, Marc Cohn, Jools Holland, Matchbox Twenty, The Cult, BoyHaunt, Gladys Knight, Trent Summar and The West Coast Mob, Smashing Pumpkins, Del McCoury, OK Go, Exodus, Molly Leach, Tom Morello, O.A.R., Madness, The Crystal Method, DrunkHungry, Deadmau5, Zac Brown, CrysP Tyger, Bighead Todd and the Monsters, Jake Shimabukuro, Barenaked Ladies, Tsar, Killola and more. Donnelly regularly performs with Nathan Jacques as well as Little Silver Hearts and records with GhostsDream. Little known fact: He previously held Top Secret Security Clearance with the U.S. Department of State and Q Clearance from the Department of Energy.
He currently runs The Barber’s Basement Recording Studio in Highland Park and is a partner in The Atmos at Lemontree Studio.