Today, Neal Casal’s final two solo recordings, ‘Everything Is Moving’ and ‘Green Moon’ have been released across all digital music platforms. We’ll be running ‘Green Moon‘ tomorrow but today have a gander below at the accompanying video for the gorgeous ‘Everything Is Moving’ which is directed by Ray Foley and features footage of Casal from throughout his career.
Initial work on these two songs began as early as 2013, but Casal—who started his career as a prolific singer/songwriter with 14 albums to his name before becoming the lead guitarist in Ryan Adams & The Cardinals and later the Chris Robinson Brotherhood, as well as his own instrumental band, Circles Around the Sun—was never able to complete the recordings prior to his passing in August 2019. Over the course of 2020, Casal’s close friends and longtime musical collaborators Jeff Hill, Jon Graboff, John Ginty, George Sluppick, Jena Kraus, JP Hesser and Jim Scott came together to add additional parts and complete mixing on the tracks.
“Working on these songs has been truly cathartic for me as I continue to process the loss of my dear friend,” explains Jeff Hill. “Neal writes in ‘Everything Is Moving,’ ‘I am just a shadow on the wall, you won’t even think of me at all.’ As much as Neal’s lyrics can be eerily prophetic of the tragedy to come, he was wrong. So many of us will be thinking of Neal for decades to come.”
Casal began recording ‘Everything Is Moving’—a song that in hindsight perhaps hints at some of the struggles he was facing—at The Stable at Studio G in Williamsburg, Brooklyn circa February 2013. The band on these initial sessions featured Casal on acoustic guitar and vocals, Jon Graboff on acoustic guitar, Jeff Hill on bass and Joe Russo on drums. Additional parts were cut in July 2020 w/ Graboff returning to play pedal steel and electric guitar, John Ginty adding piano and Hammond B-3 organ and harmony vocals contributed by Hill and Jena Kraus.
