Everett Wren Releasing New Album 'Cascades' Next Month
(PR) Everett Wren does not make small music. His songs have a sweeping grandness, like a big sky, even when they're about, or inspired by, small moments. On his latest album, Cascades, releasing Jan. 17, 2025, the Austin-based songwriter, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist taps a deep well of American musical idioms and influences, from Western music and bluegrass to Broadway and traditional folk balladry, to craft songs of startling complexity and precision. He'll perform them at an album release show on Jan. 18 at 8 p.m. at Radio Coffee & Beer (South), 4204 Menchaca Road, Austin. Admission is free.
The self-produced album follows 2022's Porchlight, Wren's solo debut after making a name for himself (as Chris Everett Peterson) in Chalkboard Poets and Lost & Nameless. On Cascades, Wren, who won an Arkansas state fiddling championship as a teen and played first violin in the Arkansas Symphony Youth Orchestra, accompanies his tenor vocals on fiddle, mandolin, percussion and acoustic, electric, resophonic slide and lap steel guitars. He also sings harmony vocals, and on "Angie & Tim Reel" and "Ungrounded," throws in a little clogging - while evoking memories of composer Aaron Copland's timeless "Hoedown."
"The Day Before," another instrumental (inspired by a friend's impending wisdom teeth extraction), offers an equally engaging display of his mandolin virtuosity. Wren's lively rendition of the Irish jig "Banish Misfortune" harks back to summers his family band spent playing a Branson amusement park; during breaks, he would listen to another band that loved playing the tune so much, they named themselves after it.
Cascades also features bassist Taylor Turner, who co-wrote two of its songs, and drummer Sasha K.A., plus several other contributors - including, on "Some Kind of Truth," Kenny Chesney bassist Harmoni Kelley, an alum of Wren-cofounded Lost & Nameless. Another L&N alum, Nathan Quiring, plays keyboards on three tracks, and also co-wrote the winsome love song "Tug at Stars."
Wren loosely characterizes these 11 sometimes playful, sometimes contemplative tracks as folk rock/Americana, but those labels just skim the surface. More than any particular style, these songs express a creative energy unbound by convention. As for their origins, he explains, "This album continues the celebration of the incredible humans who perpetually inspire and encourage me and who channel something from the universe most often decoded through music. These are songs about human journeys through the space-time continuum: the ghosts of who we may have been or may become and who extend beyond cascades of light."
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