Stay Around, a posthumous album from JJ Cale will be issued on April 29 via Because Music.
Stay Around marks the first JJ Cale album since his final studio offering, 2009’s Roll On. The record was compiled by Cale’s widow, the musician Christine Lakeland Cale, and his longtime friend and manager, Mike Kappus.
Stay Around is comprised entirely of previously unreleased Cale tunes, and the musician wrote every song on the album except “My Baby Blues.” That track was penned by Lakeland Cale, and it was the first song she and her late husband recorded as part of a four-piece combo in 1977.
Cale spent his career as an “under-the-radar-giant” and influenced musicians as wide ranging as Neil Young (who wrote in his autobiography, “J. J.’s guitar playing is a huge influence on me. His touch is unspeakable. I am stunned by it.”); Beck (who, speaking to the L.A. Times, referred to his “effortlessness…restraint and underplaying” as “very powerful”); Eric Clapton (who, in his autobiography, called Cale “one of the most important artists in the history of rock, quietly representing the greatest asset his country has ever had”); and so many more.
All of the tracks on Stay Around are previously unreleased, a fact that’s not unusual considering Cale’s modus operandi: often Cale would reserve outtakes from one album for later release on another. Mike Kappus, who represented Cale for 30 years and has worked with his estate since his passing, explains, “‘Roll On’, the title track of Cale’s last studio album, was 34-years-old. He would burn me CDs of demos, and one time I said, ‘You’ve got two good albums on here.’ Some of the tracks had detailed information, some of them had nothing. Some songs might be a full band of his buddies, others were him playing everything. These were songs he really did intend to do something with because they were carried to his typical level of production for release.”
On Stay Around, the only song not written by JJ Cale is Christine Lakeland Cale’s “My Baby Blues”, the first song she and JJ cut as a four-piece combo in Bradley’s Barn studio in 1977, the year they met. A long-time member of his band, she expresses that the song “brings everything full-circle” for her. In compiling Stay Around, Christine Lakeland Cale pored over songs, both studio and home recordings that the public had never heard. She adds, “I wanted to find stuff that was completely unheard to max-out the ‘Cale factor’… using as much that came from John’s ears and fingers and his choices as I could, so I stuck to John’s mixes…You can make things so sterile that you take the human feel out. But John left a lot of that human feel in. He left so much room for interpretation.”
Cale himself said, “I like a funkier sound. I really admire the people who get really good sound. That takes expensive studios, expensive musicians. I delved into that a couple of times, but it’s more fun when I create something to do it myself; it always has a unique sound. If I start doing it standard-wise, it becomes more polished and it doesn’t sound quite as unique; it sounds like everybody else.”
JJ Cale cut his teeth during the ‘50s, playing guitar in bars in Oklahoma alongside fellow natives David Gates of Bread and Leon Russell, and is credited as one of the key figures in creating the laid-back “Tulsa sound.” He managed to gather a loyal fan following and the admiration of some of the most revered rock musicians while—in the unwavering desire to lead a normal life—eluding fame, and it was via other artists recording and performing his songs that he became best known. Eric Clapton recorded “After Midnight”, “Cocaine”, and several other Cale originals, his admiration culminating with the pair’s Road To Escondido collaboration in 2006, which earned Cale his first GRAMMY, for Best Contemporary Blues Album, and his first RIAA Certified Gold Award.
Among the many others who covered Cale’s songs are Jerry Garcia, Captain Beefheart, Spiritualized, Beck, Lynyrd Skynyrd, John Mayer, Bryan Ferry, Santana, Chet Atkins, Johnny Cash, Lucinda Williams, The Band, Widespread Panic, Freddie King, Phish, Waylon Jennings, Maria Muldaur, Bobby “Blue” Bland, Hiss The Golden Messenger, Dan Auerbach, and Lee Fields, to name just a few.
www.jjcale.com
Tracklist
1. Lights Down Low
2. Chasing You
3. Winter Snow
4. Stay Around
5. Tell You ‘Bout Her
6. Oh My My
7. My Baby Blues
8. Girl Of Mine
9. Go Downtown
10. If We Try
11. Tell Daddy
12. Wish You Were Here
13. Long About Sundown
14. Maria
15. Don’t Call Me Joe
