New York, NY (Top40 Charts) For the third single/video from her debut solo album THE NORTH FORK which came out this past Friday,
September 9, Americana/alt-country singer-songwriter, bassist and Blackbird Record Label artist DEB MORRISON today (September 14) takes listeners and viewers to the "Salton Sea." The haunting and mysterious video was shot at the deserted ghost town of the Salton Sea in California which was once was a popular 1950s vacation spot for celebrities.
DEB will perform two shows this weekend in Nashville: The Buzz show on
September 15 at Acme Feed & Seed and American
Roots Saturday on 9/17 at Dee's Lounge before returning to California for a record release show in Los Angeles at Hotel Café on October 22.
The "Salton Sea" video was premiered yesterday by Glide Magazine which wrote: "If there was ever a video that so rightfully placed the aura, meaning, and soul of a composition into video form, it has to be that of Deb Morrison's solicitous and majestic new tune 'Salton Sea.' Morrison's vibrant Americana rustic-tinged vocals carry the tune with a valiant cinematographic flair reminiscent of Lydia Loveless and Lilly Hiatt."
"Salton Sea" stars MORRISON's daughter, Cameron Littell, and was co-directed by MORRISON and cinematographer Nic Capelle of Rockton Road studios who also produced THE NORTH FORK.
"I've always been fascinated by the surreal, cinematic pull of the Salton Sea and had to shoot there," reveals the Los Angeles-based MORRISON. "It was a three-hour drive to get to what looks like an ocean in the middle of the desert. The visuals were stunning, and eerily apocalyptic in a beautiful way. It's a real-life Twilight Zone."
"We had beer for lunch at the once infamous, (now very empty) Ski Inn. I still have the ripped guest check the bartender 'Scheherazade Jones' gave me with her phone number on it. The only other person in the bar was a weathered looking gentleman seated on a corner barstool. He reluctantly let me snap a few portraits of him. I can still picture his face perfectly. We didn't see many people there, but the few we did had faces like his. Faces you can't forget. We left wanting more time to peer into the mystery of the whole place, but something was telling us to move along before dark."
Discussing the song's meaning, MORRISON shares, "The song is about having a broken heart. The Salton Sea visually looks like a broken heart to me. You can actually feel it when you're there. The former magical, vibrant lake resort in the middle of the desert is now a ghost town sprinkled with haunting remnants of what used to be. What appears to be inviting sandy white beaches are actually shorelines made up of crushed fish bones. It has all the physical elements of shattered hopes and dreams."
The first two singles/videos from THE NORTH FORK were the title track "The North Fork," premiered in July at Americana UK, and the subsequent "
Blackbird" which starred actor Todd Lowe ("True Blood," "Gilmore Girls"), premiered in August via The Bluegrass Situation.
THE NORTH FORK contains the same mix of cinematic storytelling and smoky, sultry delivery and is a melting-pot of American roots music that blurs the boundaries between alt-country, Americana, and roadhouse rock & roll. The album highlights MORRISON's time spent traveling during childhood as the daughter of an Air Force Colonel emphasizing her fondness for California's vivid scenery and ghost-town landscapes. Its title is a nod to the nostalgic town located at the convergence of the North and South Forks of the American River which she considers her home base and was the setting for the music video for its first single "The North Fork."
A longtime bass player and singer/songwriter, MORRISON cut her teeth in alt-rock bands like Daisychain and Swing before forming her own Americana band, Morrison & Company, in 2015. She also plays in The Wild West, an all-female supergroup featuring modern-day icons of Southern California's roots community. THE NORTH FORK makes room for all of those influences, while also highlighting the evocative lyrics of a visually-minded songwriter. Read a Q&A with MORRISON at Vents Magazine which hailed THE NORTH FORK as "Lovely and spellbinding album…an incredible cocktail of different music genres-Americana, rock and roll and alt-country."
