American Songwriter is proud to premiere a new song by legendary songwriter-producer Nick Lowe. It’s the title track of his new EP Lay It On Me, his third record with the Nashville band Los Straitjackets.
“Songwriting,” Lowe told us a few years back, “is an arcane craft. I think it’s similar to having the talent to make thatched roofs. That’s really beautiful, but I’m not sure anyone needs it anymore.”
This song came, as Lowe explained, when writing real songs for an imaginary sampler album of imaginary artists.
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“In the late 1960’s,” he said, “CBS had an inspired idea; they invented the ‘sampler’ LP. It was called The Rock Machine Turns You On and consisted of a dozen tracks, each one lifted from the current album releases of twelve of the label’s ‘second tier’ of talent. It was an unashamed promotional device and sold by the truck load.
I had a copy, as did everyone I knew.
One night in London a few years back, I had Neil Brockbank and Bobby Irwin (my late friends and collaborators), round for dinner at my house. During what might be described as the ‘port and cigars’ part of the evening, we found ourselves riffing on the idea of producing a sampler for an imaginary record label of its imaginary artists.We started by fancying what the names of those artists might be and what kind of music they’d do, and from there began to create likely song titles to suit them.
Even though the whole idea started as a joke, we got into it pretty seriously and made copious notes as the plan unfolded. Song titles became songs. The next day when the enormous cost and limited commercial appeal of such a project became clearer, our enthusiasm quickly waned, and most of the fruits of the evening are now lost.
Two examples however remain. They are ‘Restless Feeling’ originally written for Coastline [and released on Nick’s The Old Magic LP] and ‘Lay It On Me Baby’ for Turk Collins.”
It’s his third EP in two years with backing from Los Straitjackets. The limited-edition EP, recorded at Sawhorse Studios in St. Louis at the conclusion of Lowe’s Fall 2019 U.S. tour, features three recently road-tested gems on its A-side: “Lay It On Me Baby” and “Don’t Be Nice To Me,” both which are Lowe originals, plus a cover of the Dorsey Burnette-penned Brenda Lee hit “Here Comes That Feeling.”
The flip finds Nick behind the boards, producing his first session for another artist in twenty-five years, on the Straitjackets’ stinging version of the Shocking Blue classic “Venus.”
Lay It On Me, the EP, will be released on June 5 from Yep Roc Records.
