Geronimo Getty - Greyhound Blues (2015)

Geronimo Getty started, like so many things do, on the side. Initially, the project served as songwriter Aaron Kyle’s outlet for songs that didn’t fit the sound of his rock band, Le Switch. When that outfit disbanded in 2012, Kyle turned his focus to Geronimo Getty, penning songs inspired by the directness he heard on records by Lucinda Williams, Steve Earle, Guy Clark, and John Prine.
“They’re song people,” Kyle says. “They write stories about people’s lives, their own lives. Those are the people that I tend to gravitate towards.”
As for the people Kyle sings about on Geronimo Getty’s full-length debut, Greyhound Blues, they’re troubled, lost, and possibly murderous. Fittingly, Kyle and his compatriots -- Christopher Harrison, Seb Bailey, Brian Soika, and Valerie McCann– soundtrack their stories with reckless force. The finished touches are melodic and twangy, but there’s always an underlying urgency, captured mostly live by producer Jeff Halbert (Nick Cave, St. Vincent, Rickie Lee Jones).
It’s the sound of “four or five guys in one room, hashing it out, making it happen,” Kyle says explaining the rangy, roughly polished sound of terse rockers like “Mr. Jones,” the pedal steel and Telecaster-driven shuffle of “Dancing in the Moonlight,” creeping, distorted pickers like “Devil’s Theft” and Kyle’s unabashedly romantic cover of Guy Clark’s “Anyhow I Love You.” Closing the record felt like “a classic country move,” Kyle bemuses.
A loose concept album telling the story of a man easily given to violence, Greyhound Blues also finds slight glimmers of hope. The album will be accompanied by videos for each song, directed/produced by a slate of emerging independent filmmakers like Ruben Anders (Strutter), Dominic Ciccodicola (Top Chef, Project Runway), Bryan Kamer & Craig Bauer (Presence), Ashley Kramer (Drifter Pictures), Diane Zilliox and Jay Bennett (Whisker Wars), Dave Merson-Hess (stop motion animaton), and veterans like Allison Anders (Grace of My Heart, Gas, Food, Lodging), Tom Provost (The Presence), Travis Flornoy (Thank You for Judging), Ryan Jackson-Healy (Random Acts of Violence), Aris Blevins (Suspension), all evoking Kyle’s cinematic inspirations: the contrasting placid and foreboding vibes of David Lynch, the voodoo noir of True Detective, and existential travelogs like Two-Lane Blacktop and Paris, Texas.
Kyle says: "I wanted to create a visual experience that would encourage the listener to sit down and hear the whole album as one piece."