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The Ojai, California-based songwriter/producer/multi-instrumentalist and Mapache band member, Sam Blasucci, announces sophomore album Real Life Thing out November 1 via Calico Discos/Innovative Leisure.
The occult-dancer lead single "Witching Hour" pulses with feeling through a high energy chorus built around a beautiful and bold middle section of just percussion and vocals.
On Real Life Thing, shades of Leonard Cohen, Prince, and Bjork peak out behind Sam's new songs as well as the writings of Ariana Reines, John O’Donohue, and Edgar Allen Poe.
Having spent the last 10 years tinkering with his songwriting through his extensive catalog with folk/rock group Mapache, as well as his debut solo album Off My Stars, Sam works alongside co-producer Johnny Payne for his follow up sophomore solo album Real Life Thing. Sam and Johnny take a leap from everything they have done in the past into brand new territory for this collection of songs. Sam connects new dots and bends genres with unheard style and instrumentation on songs like "Death," with words adding to the conversation of gender and sexuality. In addition to new pathways, homage is also paid to Sam’s first loves of music through the notable Motown feel of the existential soul tune "Flower," as well as the vintage pop gleam of "No Magic."
These songs are two examples of the recurring lyrical themes of life and death on this record. “Something clicked before I wrote these songs that put me in a place of wonder and confusion and bliss that I had never experienced before.” Some of the lyrics found on this record have been previously released in Sam’s debut book of poetry "Guidelines For Dying," which quickly sold out of its first print.
While remaining quite elusive to genre or category, a few of Blasucci’s deepest influences can still be spotted throughout the musical and lyrical shape of his new album. New literary and musical discoveries seem to be constant for Sam, but shades of Leonard Cohen, Prince, and Bjork peak out behind this batch of songs as well as the writings of Ariana Reines, John O’Donohue, and Edgar Allen Poe. Sam notes that the many influences around him became heavier and more vibrant after falling extremely ill for two years between 2020 and 2022. “Gaining back my ability to be active, to travel, to live - it was all very much a rebirth in so many ways. Things emerged sharper and clearer from that period of my life”. Sam is healthy and moving forward at a seemingly fast pace with this new album and the accompanying conceptual concert film of the same name.
The film - directed by Sam and produced/shot by Bryce Makela - brings these influences and songs into a literal Real Life Thing through their collaborative visions and physical representations of the album. Filmed at the same studio where the album was recorded - Carbonite Sound in Ojai, CA - the film runs like a type of musical play. The album is performed live with stage hands and different set changes to accentuate each mood throughout the record - certainly Sam’s most ambitious project to date.
Sam was born in Los Angeles in November 1994 and currently lives in Ojai, CA. Having had residence in Los Angeles, CA / Coahuila, MX / Orem, UT & New Orleans, LA - it’s safe to assume Sam will be on the move again soon and with more fresh energy to give of himself through his art. Determined to live by creation, Sam is the type of artist that is always creating something, maintaining a sort of inexhaustible hunger to make his music. Expressing himself through sound has now gone beyond joy and into being second nature and Sam’s real first language.
Evelyn Champagne King’s classic “Love Come Down” gets the AOR Indie-Soul treatment courtesy of Mapache's Sam Blasucci. Inspired by the original version & Barry Biggs classic reggae version, this modern day cover is a culmination of genres.
As Blasucci writes: “This is really more of a Duvet than a cover because of how many beautiful versions there are of this song. Written by Kashif and made famous by Evelyn “Champagne” King, ‘Love Come Down’ was also recorded by many artists whose versions also influenced mine making it a bit of a hodgepodge of genres all together. I went down to Kyle Mullarky’s and recorded it all in a day along with a little help from Derek Dosz on backing vocals.”
Sam Blasucci's debut solo album Off My Stars is out now with the focus single "Around the Corner," which he explains, "Life passes by your window so quickly and with luck you can catch a glimpse of its fragility in different ways. Joy and loss break it all down and bring everything back into perspective. They are panoramic and infantile states that breed creation and put you around the corner from everything."
With a video for the lead single "People Please," Mapache announce Swinging Stars out August 18, a new LP of cosmic folk filled with distinct styles from a slow-burner that sounds something like Bob Weir fronting Crazy Horse to Toussaint swing and Parsons shine, a cowboy-chord ballad and more.
In the past, Mapache recording sessions have been pretty laid-back affairs, with friends coming and going, the sessions starting and stopping at the band’s discretion—as relaxed a process as the immaculately sunny vibes that their four albums would suggest. But on their dynamic and ambitious fifth album of cosmic-folk, Swinging Stars, Sam Blasucci and Clay Finch decided to take a trip and hunker down somewhere particularly special.
“It’s a pretty impactful place,” Finch says of the Panoramic House, the artist retreat where Swinging Stars was recorded. “It’s kind of dramatic. It’s a castle-y building on a hill, way up overlooking the Bay.”
Located in Stinson Beach in Marin County, California, the Panoramic House has recently hosted acts like My Morning Jacket, the War on Drugs, and Cate Le Bon, and was the ideal combination of scenic beauty and self-imposed confinement to allow Mapache to settle in for their most cohesive album yet. “That environment yields itself to a higher level of focus because everybody’s together for a week,” says Finch, explaining that the band stayed there during the process, sharing every bit of their time and energy on a shared vision. “We were all captive. No one could escape,” he laughs.
The band share a new video for first album singe "People Please," which they explain, "Some people talk your life into a corner in the name of god or religion, but you can talk your life back with whatever vocabulary you feel inside. It’s just about playing how you feel."
Swinging Stars, an album of calm, second-nature swagger, is the natural result of a band that’s existed in one form or another for its founders’ entire adult lives. Finch and Blasucci first met as students at La Cañada High School, just north of Los Angeles, where they both had a guitar class: “There wasn’t much supervision or anything,” remembers Blasucci. “It was really nice. And we got to just play guitars together.”
The two stayed friends through their college years—Finch went to Chico State and Blasucci spent two years as a missionary in Mexico—and eventually they ended up back in L.A., spending their days playing guitar together once again, just like old times. Working with producer/engineer Dan Horne (Cass McCombs, Allah-Las), they recorded four albums —2017’s Mapache, 2020’s From Liberty Street, 2021’s 3, and 2022’s Roscoe’s Dream. Often trading solos, and occasionally switching from English to Spanish, Finch and Blasucci are perfectly in sync together.
But the duo have also been developing their own personal voices in recent years as well—partially the result of the two of them living in separate cities for the first time in years. (Blasucci now lives in Ojai, and Finch in Malibu.) As Finch explains, that means the “meat and potatoes” of the songs were cooked up more on their own than they had been in the past. “What a Summer,” a slow-burn that sounds something like Bob Weir fronting Crazy Horse, is unmistakably Finch, for instance; “French Kiss,” with its Toussaint swing and Parsons shine, is Blasucci all the way. “Swinging Stars was probably the first Mapache record where each of us really leaned into our personal, distinct styles,” Blasucci explains.
Still, many of the songs on Swinging Stars are the result of a significant amount of group work on the road, sharpening and refining them, getting them just so before hitting the studio with their trusted collaborator Horne, who produced the set. Swinging Stars is also notable for its introduction of drummer Steve Didelot as a formal member of the band, with him playing on every track, and contributing an original song as well—“Reflecting Everything,” a cowboy-chord ballad sparkling with Finch and Blasucci’s guitars, and with Horne’s impeccable slide guitar.
There are also two special features: one from the Allah-Lahs’ Spencer Dunham, who plays bass on “French Kiss,” and another from David Rawlings, who graciously took the call to play acoustic guitar on the album’s finale, “Where’d You Go,” recording his part remotely. “He’s someone who Sam and I look up to in a pretty serious way,” Finch says. “So it was cool to have him.”
Mapache is so easygoing that their vibe belies their prolificness at times. Swinging Stars is their fourth album in as many years, and they show no signs of slowing down anytime soon. Blasucci chalks it up partly to the fact that, when you have two principal songwriters in a band, “the songs come in quickly and they stack up quickly.” It helps, too, that they’re just in the right place to be making music. “We’re just trying to make hay while the sun shines,” as Finch puts it. “None of us have any babies or anything and we’re all pretty committed to playing as much music as we can. And really focused on making something beautiful.”
Ahead of Sam Blasucci's forthcoming debut solo album, Off My Stars, the artist releases a video for the final album single "Every Night On the Farm." Blasucci says, "some words that come to mind are outdoors, tear, persona, queen, veins, and crescent. This song feels important to where I feel we are going."
Off My Stars arrives June 2, the LP is infused with an honest, personal perspective about settling into adult life—about developing as a person and a partner and a family member—it's a record with classic songbook sparkle inspired just as much by the music of Ronnie Wood and Sade as the films of Ingmar Bergman and writing of Brian Doyle.