Dean Owens Downloads

It was as frontman with much-loved country-rockers The Felsons (also featuring McGuire, and still an ongoing occasional project) that Dean Owens initially made his name, as both a vocalist and a songwriter. In a solo capacity, he has worked extensively on either side of the Pond with the Mavericks,... Learn More »

It was as frontman with much-loved country-rockers The Felsons (also featuring McGuire, and still an ongoing occasional project) that Dean Owens initially made his name, as both a vocalist and a songwriter. In a solo capacity, he has worked extensively on either side of the Pond with the Mavericks, and performed several high-profile US showcases. Recent live highlights, in amongst the year-long planning and recording of My Town, his first album on the Vertical Record Label, include touring with fellow singer-songwriter Kevin Montgomery and the aforementioned Al Perkins, opening for Steve Earle, Emmylou Harris, Chip Taylor and supporting top Scottish band Capercaillie on their 2003 UK tour - this last gig underscoring the shift, or broadening, of Dean’s musical vistas on My Town.

“I came back one time from this really pretty horrendous trip to Nashville, starting to think that the whole set-up over there just wasn’t for me, even though I’d been pursuing this total love affair with America and American music for so many years,” he recalls. “I was waiting for a bus home, and, standing there, it was just suddenly one of those times where I really, really liked where I was from – that’s how I came to write the title song. And so partly that’s come out through me getting more into the Scottish or Celtic side of things, but also, in terms of how I put the album together, it’s making the most of living in a place that loads of musicians come to from elsewhere, be it to stay or just for a gig.”

With his second solo album, acclaimed Scottish singer/songwriter Dean Owens takes a further leap beyond any such pitfalls or pigeonholes with a record firmly rooted in his home turf of Edinburgh. Aptly named My Town, it finds Dean reflecting on his life as a born-and-bred native of Scotland’s capital, now raising a young daughter there himself. It also sees him flanked by a stellar guest-list of Scottish and American musicians – including ex-Burrito Brother and lap-steel legend Al Perkins, acclaimed young Scottish singer Karine Polwart, and Nashville singer/songwriter and guitarist Will Kimborough - meanwhile aligning his lifelong love of US roots idioms to some subtly-deployed folk stylings. The album as a whole incorporates a brilliantly expansive palette of instrumentation, arrangements, influences and mood-colours, taking in everything from gritty blues to sleek acoustic pop, chamber-classical to cha-cha, all sewn together by Dean’s searingly expressive, richly textured vocals.

A striking departure, it might seem, from Dean’s debut release, 2001’s The Droma Tapes, essentially a two-hander project with his longtime closest collaborator, bassist and guitarist Kevin McGuire. Largely recorded on a portable DAT in an isolated cottage in the Scottish Highlands, it won widespread critical praise for its spartan eloquence and intensity. “If the songs are good then they will stand up when stripped to the bone,” wrote Michael Weston King in Country Music International, “often all the better for it - and The Droma Tapes proves just that.”

Despite the apparent contrast, though, Dean sees the two records more as companion pieces, united by a common pursuit of timelessness. “The Droma Tapes was a bit of an accidental album – we’d only planned to go up north to try out some new material,” he says. “With the way it came out, very sparse, very stark, I think of it as an album in black and white, whereas with this one it’s as if I’m colouring the whole thing in. It reminds me of that scene in The Wizard of Oz, where Dorothy steps through from the monochrome part into a world of colour: this is like me walking through into the Land of Oz.”
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