L.C. Franke is styled as an orchestral-pop crooner, which might cause a slight raise of the eyebrow – but his latest recording “Southern Bloom” features a series of his songs taken “on a dusty road trip through the heartland of rural Americana” by his backing band for this project Texas country band Silverada. And, not just them, the kick-off song for the album is a re-recording of ‘Prisoner’ which also features yearning pedal steel, soft-focus keys from Foo Fighters’ Rami Jaffee, and soulful harmonica from Mickey Raphael (Willie Nelson Family Band). The overall effect is to veer towards a Glen Campbell “big picture” emotional sweep of a song.
The new album seemed fated to be, with its origin starting from the time when 21st-century torch singer L.C. Franke found himself sitting next to Silverada’s Mike Harmeier on a flight to Nashville from their mutual home of Austin, Texas. Franke was headed to play Jack White’s Blue Room at Third Man Records, one of the many high-profile shows booked behind his suave and sophisticated 2024 debut, “Still in Bloom“. Harmeier was bound for the Grand Ole Opry. Over several mini-bottles of tequila, the pair bonded over their mutual love of 1960s country-pop, an era when even the Red Dirt cowboys unabashedly embraced the kind of billowy arrangements and smooth, buttery vocals that colour Franke’s own music. What if they got together sometime, they joked, and tried on each other’s songs? And so it came to pass…
