Americana Highways brings you this song release: Danny Schmidt’s “Last Man Standing.” This is a teaser from Schmidt’s forthcoming album Standard Deviation which was produced, recorded and mixed by Will Robertson at Gallop Studios in Atlanta, mastered by Nick Landis at Terra Nova Digital Audio in Austin. Standard Deviation will be released on March 9th.
“Last Man Standing” features Danny Schmidt on acoustic guitar & vocals, Carrie Elkin, Mira Stanley Costa, and Cara May Gorman singing harmony vocals, Fats Kaplin on fiddle and mandolin with Will Robertson on bass and Colin Agnew on drums and percussion. Schmidt, who is a winner of the Kerrville New Folk award, taunts us with a delightful hint of the album to come. The bright guitar tones, mingling with the fiddle and mandolin, are buoyant with the song’s lighthearted, rich vocal harmonies. The tongue-in-cheek tale is festive in spite of its underlying message of struggle, in this fresh offering in Schmidt’s beloved signature style.
I like to describe this song as a character sketch about a poor guy who’s managed to crawl about halfway up the first step of the twelve step program. On the one hand, that’s not very far. But on the other hand, it’s really really far. It means he’s at least started to look inward at himself, and started to claim some responsibility for his life’s condition. I would argue that the twelve steps are logarithmic and not linear . . . and that it takes as much climbing to get up the first step as it does to get up the next eleven. — Danny Schmidt
Order your copy here: https://dannyschmidt.bandcamp.