Brian Cadd has journeyed far and wide across 50 years of the music scene, a true Statesman of songwriting and recording. Now he delivers his long awaited dream of releasing his first Americana inspired album. 

 

In 1966 Brian Cadd set out on a career that has made him an international songwriting legend. Silver City takes his musical history and consolidates it into a remarkable journey.  

 

The title track is a rollicking country rock revisit of ‘Silver City Birthday Celebration Day’, a song from Brian’s 1972 self-titled album that was never released as a single but still found its way to high-rotation radio airplay. The new ‘Silver City’ works as a bookend to where Cadd began his solo career but the origins and inspiration for Silver City, the album go even further back than that.

 

With Silver City Brian is continuing a songwriting path that began when he first heard The Band’s ‘Music from Big Pink’ in 1968 in the Easybeats’ London flat. That record recalibrated his destination as a songwriter. At the time his pop band The Groop was disbanding and his new songwriting trajectory was about to take form through Axiom. Axiom became Australia’s first country-rock group and Glenn Shorrock, who would later go on to form Little River Band, was also a founding member. Silver City has another bookend moment with the Cadd/Shorrock song ‘When It All Comes Down’. 

 

Silver City is full of these historical links as Brian returns to the fertile soil of his Nashville past. In the early 90s Brian spent five years as a member of the legendary Flying Burrito Brothers, the band founded by Gram Parsons in the 60s. His time in that band is represented with a remake of ‘Eye Of A Hurricane’, co-written by Flying Burrito members John Beland and Gib Gilbeau. John Beland also co-wrote ‘Slow Walk’.

 

Brian’s other album co-writers are Doug Gill (Everybody’s Leaving), Tony Colton (Answer to a Prayer) and Austin Roberts (In A Little While). These collaborations add a deep creative layer to Silver City but the solo songs he wrote (Slice of the Knife, Cottonwood, Just Because She Can and Rainy Days) drill to the very core of Brian’s Americana heart.

 

Over the course of this remarkable career there were also some nice things we missed. ‘Quietly Rusting’ quietly fell through the cracks in 2006. It deserves another listen and fits perfectly into Silver City. 

 

The album Silver City was produced in Nashville by legendary Australian, now US based, Mark Moffatt with a group of the finest session musicians led by Dan Dugmore (Linda Ronstadt, James Taylor, Stevie Nicks), James Mitchell (Willie Nelson), Steve Mackey (Pulp, Dolly Parton, Colin Hay), Dave LaBrutere (John Mayer), Tommy Harden (Blake Shelton), Smith Curry (Taylor Swift, Big & Rich), Wayne Killius (Keith Urban, Luke Bryan), Pat McGrath (Brandy Clarke, The Music of “Nashville”), Luke Moller (Kasey Chambers, Lana Del Ray) and gospel singer Lisa Bevill.

 

The music of Brian Cadd has endured since the 1960s. Silver City is testament to his relevance today. Brian Cadd remains one of Australia’s greatest musical treasures.

 

 

Brian explains in his own words the recording of Silver City...

 

A couple of years ago, I was in Nashville and spent time with Mark Moffatt. We decided that he should produce an Americana album with me. As he introduced me to this exciting “new” genre, I realized that, actually, it was an emulation of the OLD genre that I always had in my head…but never really achieved as an artist.

 

When we eventually made the album, Mark assembled a wonderful team of musicians, all of whom were on the Americana side of ‘country’, led by the legendary Dan Dugmore on steel and guitar. Dan has forever been revered for his work in country rock, as far back as seminal recordings and touring with Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor. 

 

Furthermore, I was treated as just “the singer” in the sessions and the musicians and Mark took the songs of mine that Mark had chosen from the hundreds that I sent him, and played them just like the band in my head. I let them record them as they wanted them to be played. We recorded the whole album in 3 days of sessions, apart from vocals and mixing. 

 

This album is the result of finally arriving where I had always wanted to be musically. From that night in the Easybeats’ flat, through Axiom, my solo years, Los Angeles and Nashville with the Flying Burrito Brothers, I realize now that this has indeed been an actual journey. So many things have happened to me that could not have been accidental. Events and people and songs that led me ultimately to those days in that studio with that band of musicians.

 

So, fifty years on, I’ve gotten there!    Brian Cadd, Woodstock NY Jan 2019