As one half of the indie-folk duo Radnor & Lee, with Australian artist Ben Lee, actor and director Josh Radnor (How I Met Your Mother, Hunters) was always writing songs on the side that had a deeper connection to him. By the fall of 2018, Radnor started recording this collection of stories, resulting in his debut EP One More Then I’ll Let You Go (Flower Moon Records), out April 16.
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Working with former Radnor & Lee producer, Ryan Dilmore, who also worked with Radnor on his 2012 comedy-drama Liberal Arts and also appears on several tracks, the duo initially recorded more than a dozen songs, and filtered One More Then I’ll Let You Go down to five soulful Americana stories, including “You Feel New.”
Tired of his face, thoughts and other idiosyncrasies, singing I’ve been with myself so long / I need better company / Most of my daydreams are being / Somebody other than me / I would like just one day a week / To walk in other shoes / Day after day it’s always this way / Got me feelin’ and singin’ the blues, Radnor ruminates on self-doubts and the invigoration of love.
“When I started playing guitar four years ago, songs exploded out of me,” says Radnor. “In addition to the ones I was writing with Ben [Lee], I was writing a few songs a week on my own. I asked Ryan to produce a record for me and he came over one afternoon to hear what I had written. It was an unreasonably long list of songs. At some point I sensed him needing to leave and I said ‘One more then I’ll let you go.’ He immediately said ‘There’s your album title!'”
On “You Feel New,” and follow up to first single “The High Road,” Radnor checks all the stringed boxes with more layered instrumentation throughout One More Then I’ll Let You Go, including featured violinist Kerenza Peacock (Adele, Kanye West, Madonna, London Symphony and Royal Philharmonic).
Still working with Lee—the duo recently released their second album, Golden State, produced by Justin Stanley (Leonard Cohen, Paul McCartney, Sheryl Crow) in 2020—Radnor still finds himself maneuvering around his many “roles” and exploring new musical territory on One More Then I’ll Let You Go.
“We recorded between 15 and 17 songs over about a year a half since I was navigating my other careers through all this as well as writing and recording with Radnor & Lee,” says Radnor. “These were the five songs we both felt really great about.”
