“Carefully crafted with dovetailed joints and beveled edges” – Saving Country Music
Noel McKay creates cinematic songs filled with complex characters, exotic places, and sage advice on his new album
You Only Live Always – OUT ON 5/3
“These are the stage backdrops I’m building for the stories I’m wanting to tell myself as a means of self-comfort.” – Noel McKay
Noel McKay’s ten original songs on You Only Live Always are eloquently paired with the troubadour’s well-worn voice and the backing instruments of fiddle, strings, pedal steel, drums, and harmonies, creating musical film-like vignettes. Some were easy to write, one came from a dream, others were pieces of life glued together, and one came from his mother’s death.
“This record is me reckoning with mortality and infinity, not so much as it applies to popular spirituality but instead, the infinite nature of the cosmos and the indestructible nature of matter itself. These are the very building blocks of life and death. I hope you find some comfort or at least amusement from it,” smiles Noel.
Recorded at Sound Emporium in Nashville, TN, with Jay Weaver (Jim Lauderdale) as producer, Noel assembled a group of musicians called The Galician Cowboys (a salute to the small Spanish region) with top-notch artists like Kelly Willis, Jim Lauderdale, Billy Contreras, and other musician friends to help him out. The album is set for release on May 3rd, with a show at The Bluebird Café in Nashville, TN, on 4/28.
“My methods of turning those experiences into song evolve as well, but sometimes they evolve backward to incorporate song styles from the past instead of those that are current.” – Noel McKay (Americana Highways, 2021)
The album opens with an age-defying “53,” and like a modern-day Ponce de Leon, Noel searches for the magical elixir that would work best to retain our youth. A Floyd Kramer-style piano kicks off the reflection and tenderness of “The Impermanence Of Things,” he wrote while walking on the beach in Spain after his mother died. “I walked around Valencia in shock and bought myself a train ticket to Santiago, where I had a show a couple of days later. The next morning, before my taxi ride to the station, I walked on the beach and looked at the beautiful Mediterranean, still in complete disbelief. I saw a mother walking in the surf with her young son. I felt connected to everything,” recalls McKay.
And you’ve got your cotton candy on the carousel of time.
Take the pony, and the tiger, and the seahorse for a ride.
At break of day, the stars will fade to deep resplendent color,
But as the years go by I feel my senses growing duller. – “The Impermanence Of Things”
The title song, “You Only Live Always,” has a Hemmingway feel, recalling the classic novel Farewell To Arms, set to a Tango, you almost see the dancing pair glide across the floor. “I wanted to illustrate the concept that if time and space are truly infinite, all of the atoms that make up our molecules and our organs, therefore, us, eventually interact with every other atom that exists,” McKay explains. One of the album’s more light-hearted tunes is “The Motel King,” which has Noel dreaming about a vintage-looking place with panel walls and still giving out room keys. And there’s a diner next door for coffee and small talk.
I come rolling in off the highway at a quarter to nine.
At the office, I get my key. The room is just fine.
I can tell that it hasn’t changed since 1973.
So I take off my shoes, I lock the door and watch black and white movies on the color TV. – “The Motel King”
The only cover on the album is Billy Joel’s classic, “She’s Always A Woman To Me,” and it blends in well with Noel’s singing voice and live performances: “Musically, it’s a nod to Mozart’s unwavering arpeggiation; melodically, it’s complex and moody. Lyrically, it’s so vivid, he makes you love the woman he’s singing about, and that’s a damn good song.” The album’s closer, “An Old Cowboy In Spain,” is a self-portrait, as Noel writes about falling in love with Galician culture, which led him to buy some land there.
Some years from now, when I’m working the circuit,
I’ll be an old cowboy in Spain,
ordering drinks with my Mexican accent
and falling asleep on the train – “An Old Cowboy In Spain”
The Galician Cowboys are a who’s who of Nashville’s best studio and touring musicians, starting with producer Jay Weaver (Jim Lauderdale) on bass, Matty Myer on drums (Pokey LaFarge), Billy Contreras (Bela Fleck) on fiddle and Brett Resnick (Kacey Musgraves) on pedal steel, Dan Walton (Asleep At The Wheel) on keys and, of course, Noel on guitars. Additional guests include Kelly Willis, Jim Lauderdale, and McKay’s songwriting partner, Becky Warren.
“I chose Jay based on three different things. First, the records he produces for Jim Lauderdale are always spot on; second, I knew I wanted him to play bass. He plays right in the pocket. Neither ahead nor behind the beat unless it’s done deliberately. He ended up composing a bunch of really great parts on bass for arrangements. Thirdly, he’s my really good friend, and I knew we’d get along well through the process of making this record. I can’t imagine it any other way than how he shaped it. He’s alright, that Jay Weaver,” explains McKay.
Short Bio: Noel McKay was born and raised in Lubbock and the Hill Country of Texas and has traveled the world, singing his songs and playing a self-built acoustic guitar on world stages from Nashville, TN, Austin, TX, California, Ireland, Spain, and the U.K. Noel has co-written songs with David Olney, Guy Clark, Richard Dobson, Becky Warren, John Scott Sherrill, and Shawn Camp, and his songs are being recorded by Sarah Borges, Sunny Sweeney, and Guy. He has released three albums over the years, starting with Is That So Much To Ask (2015), Sketches of South Central Texas (2015), Blue, Blue, Blue (2021), and now the fourth, You Only Live Always, out in 2024.
Noel picked up the guitar around age nine and, by fifteen, was playing the beer joints and honky tonks in Bandera and the surrounding Hill Country. By the time he was in his early twenties while playing at a festival in Kerrville, TX, he met Guy Clark and formed a mentorship and friendship that still resonates with Noel to this day, long after Clark’s death.
Creating a band with his younger brother, Hollin, was a no-brainer, and the two enjoyed a long run of albums, shows, and press. The duo released four full albums (one produced by Gurf Morlix and the other by Lloyd Maines) and one EP between 1994 and 2003. Their songs garnered a lot of attention from Texas radio and press, but it was the legendary Ray Wylie Hubbard who called them “absolutely phenomenal!”
Noel has shared the stage with the best of the best: David Olney, Sunny Sweeney, Guy Clark, and Whitney Rose. Some of the stages and venues over the years have been the 30A Songwriters Festival (Destin, FL), Westport Bluegrass Festival (Ireland), Riquela Club (Spain), Hill Country BBQ (Washington, DC), Levon Helm Studios (Woodstock, NY), Gruene Hall (Austin, TX), and The Bluebird Café (Nashville, TN) and many more. He toured Florida with the late great David Olney a month before he died in January 2020.
Two cool facts about Noel: his grandfather started a radio station in Frío County, TX. KVWG (Pearsall, TX), “The Kind Voice of the Winter Garden,” a station that played everything from easy listening to country and western and Mexican music. Two songs he co-wrote with Guy Clark are now in the archives at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, TN.
Noel spends time on the road crisscrossing the world playing shows, and when he’s not, he hangs his hat in Nashville, Austin, and or Spain.
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