Track Premiere: Bill Scorzari “I-70 East (Acoustic)”

Bill Scorzari released his 4th studio album, the co-produced with Neilson Hubbard ‘The Crosswinds of Kansas‘, last year.   It took its title from a line in the song ‘I-70 East‘: “Then, came the crosswinds of Kansas unleashed, and it pushed me hard, north and south, all down I-70 east… As I tore home to my mother, before her health, it would fail, at 94, I felt another love leaving me lost, like a nail in a cross.”   Like much of the album it is a song that references Scorzari’s life directly, dealing with the emotions of loss as well as this period of his mother’s illness coinciding with the disorientating first year of the pandemic.  ‘The Crosswinds of Kansas‘ is an album that has attracted much attention, and perhaps most notable of a mention is that it was listed in the Top Albums of 2022 by a certain Mark Whitfield (AMAUK Grassroots Award Winner) who wrote “The simple use of imagery and clever phraseology make it a very poignant record at times… The pain on some tracks is visceral in its honesty—and Scorzari’s voice is the perfect match for these substantial songs.”  And he’s right.  It’s all that.

Bill Scorzari has decided to release three acoustic versions of songs from ‘The Crosswinds of Kansas‘ saying that “Now that we’ve started a new year (Happy New Year!), it’s great to be able to look back at the good things that have come out of all of the effort we put into ‘The Crosswinds of Kansas’… It’s been a long road and I’m so grateful to everyone who has made it all possible.  As a thank you to everyone who has listened to and enjoyed the songs, I decided to release new versions of three tracks from the album, which I’ve re-recorded in a singer-songwriter style, with just acoustic guitar and vocals.”

This is the second of the singles – “The Broken Heart Side of the Road (Acoustic)” was released in January and “Multnomah Falls (Acoustic)” is out on March 10th.  Americana UK is beyond proud to premiere ‘I-70 East (Acoustic)‘ which will be released on February 17th.  Bill Scorzari told us a little something about this recording, saying : “From the moment the makings of ‘I-70 East’ first came to my mind, they came with an electric-guitar-driven energy that I was really glad to be able to capture when we recorded it for The Crosswinds of Kansas. In late 2022, when I was asked to re-interpret some of the songs from the album, as alternate performances for radio, I wanted to create a listening experience that was very different from the fully arranged album versions. The three songs that I chose became: ‘The Broken Heart Side of the Road (Acoustic),’ ‘Multnomah Falls (Acoustic),’ and ‘I-70 East (Acoustic),’ and each one is an intimate, stripped-down, ‘solo-acoustic’ performance of what’s on the album.  I’m so happy with the result that I decided to release them as singles to share with you. For the acoustic re-make of ‘I-70 East,’ the challenge was to combine the strummed acoustic and soloing electric guitar elements from the album version, into a new part played only on acoustic guitar. I hope you enjoy the contrast and perspective that these new recordings bring to these songs.”