Rick Shea's new album, Love & Desperation, arrives on 23 October via Tres Pescadores Records. The album finds the studio and stage veteran in fine form. He draws from influences as wide-ranging as his past credits, including tenures with Chris Gaffney's Cold Hard Facts, Dave Alvin's Guilty Men, singer-songwriter Katy Moffatt, and with the legendary Wanda Jackson.
Joining him on "The World's Gone Crazy", the record's latest single, are Phil Parlapiano (accordion), Steve Nelson (bass), and Shawn Nourse (drums, tambourine). The video that accompanies the track provides us with a jaunt through the California landscape and the perilous landscape of this moment in time. Musically, the song feels perfectly in tune with Shea's countrified past, with dashes of Bakersfield rubbing elbows with cowpunk sensibilities. Though he draws on storied musical idioms (country, blues, and gospel), the track retains a thoroughly contemporary sensibility.