Song Premiere: Bourbon Express "Pick Me Up"

Brooklyn based honky-tonk band, Bourbon Express - Katie Curley (vocals, rhythm guitar), Brendan Curley (guitar) and Sarah Kinsey (vocals) - will release their latest studio-album, Cry About It Later, on April 20, 2018. Recorded at Cowboy Technical Services Recording Rig and produced by Eric “Roscoe” Ambel (Steve Earle, Joan Jett), Cry About It Later is an original twelve track collection permeated by the classic country sounds of pedal steel, fiddle, and mandolin resulting in a project that is both contemporary yet timeless.
 
Today, TDC is excited to premiere the album’s opener, “Pick Me Up.” Led by a lighthearted shuffling melody, Katie’s distinctively delicate vocals, and Brendan's subtle guitar work, “Pick Me Up” conveys that all too familiar feeling of living paycheck to paycheck and needing something to raise the spirits and ease the worry, if only for a little while.
 
Katie Curley relays the story behind the true to life song, “Pick Me Up” was the first song deliberately written for 'Cry About It Later,' so it was a happy surprise when we listened back to the rough cuts and our ears perked up on that song. It has a loose honky-tonk feel about it, which is just how we wanted to introduce the record. “Pick Me Up” is written from the point of view of a newly wedded woman who’s so depressed about being broke in the wake of her honeymoon that she wishes there was some kind of buzz she could get that would last until payday. “It better be something slow and strong/It’s gotta last nearly all month long.” It is 100% autobiographical!

Photo Credit: Alexis Holloway

In 2011 Katie and Brendan (who are married) met at A Bar where they discovered that they were not only from the same part of the country–Washington State, the town of Home and city of Tacoma, to be exact, but that they shared an uncannily similar taste in music. “I didn’t believe him when he told me that he liked all the country musicians I liked. We were in Brooklyn in the twenty-first century comparing notes on Kitty Wells and Ernest Tubb, and I thought he was just trying to pick me up, so I didn’t return his call,” says Ms. Curley. A few weeks later, however, she found herself in a pickle when she was invited to perform at the now defunct Rodeo Bar and she didn’t have a band. She remembered her fleeting companion’s words at the bar, “I could add any number of instruments to your sound,” and sent him a message asking if he would be interested in the gig. After a few years of playing in various band configurations, the couple formed Bourbon Express with vocalist Sarah Kinsey and bassist/harmony singer Andrew Dykeman.

During the summer of 2017, with tracking on Cry About It Later nearly completed, Bourbon Express received the surprising news that Dykeman was leaving the band to pursue other opportunities. Everyone wished him well, and it was at that point that the title of the record became clear to Curley. “I was thinking about how after nearly three years of playing together and making this record, we would have to shoot the cover without him and it might be kind of sad. Cry About It Later seemed apt.” The cover photography by friends of the band, Alexis Holloway assisted by Grega Rupret, took place at a steam train museum in the Catskills.

With a new record on tap, the horizon for Bourbon Express looks anything but sad. After a recent mixing session at Cowboy Technical, Ms. and Mr. Curley revisited A Bar, located near the studio, for the first time since their initial encounter there. They recalled the night they met and swapped versions of events. Two whiskies appeared at their fingertips, and they commenced a toast: To Bourbon Express!

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