Pete Droge Fade Away Blue
In his first solo LP since 2006’s Under the Waves, Pete Droge simmers on Fade Away Blue. This album is sixteen years in the making, if not a lifetime. It holds the stories and the dreams and the feelings that unraveled when Droge set out to find his birth mother. He found her then-recent obituary instead. With Elaine Summers as executive producer and Paul Bryan as co-producer, Pete Droge fills Fade Away Blue with the best kind of songs navigating ambiguous loss
These are songs that open a person up. They open up eyes to gratitude and a heart to feeling again. For Fade Away Blue, Paul Bryan pulled together a band that opened these songs up even further. It’s on display from the first notes of “You Called Me Kid.” Jay Bellerose’s drumming folds easily into the gentle guitar Droge plays when he sings of his adoptive parents. And when Droge recalls, “this picture of us on the beach holding my hand and up I reach. We’re running fast away from a wave. It may be trying to chase us, but we got smiles on our faces,” Lee Pardini is there playing clavinet in the troughs and lending movement to the still photograph. This shimmer doesn’t stop until the final track fades out.
Across Fade Away Blue, Droge investigates relationships, with himself, with Summers, with the parents who raised him, with the mother who didn’t, and with her family still in Ohio. What does it mean to know a person, we are asked, and also, somehow, not know them?
It’s a question that can be asked of all people, but this story makes it particularly potent. On “Song for Barbara Ann” and “Gypsy Rose,” Droge weaves together photographs and family stories, his body and his feelings and his dreams, to unknot this connection. And on “Lonely Mama,” what emerges is an astonishingly vulnerable picture of a parent and a child now-grown meeting. There is longing. And there is understanding. And there are all the ambiguous ties that bind as Droge sings “the verse where I believe in heaven above and you and I will be reunited.”
These are good verses, so make sure you hear them all when Fade Away Blue comes out August 22 from Puzzle Tree Records. You can find your copy here!
All songs on Fade Away Blue were written by Pete Droge and Elaine Summers, except “You Called Me Kid,” “Sundown at Francis Nash,” and “Taking Leave of my Senses,” which were written by Pete Droge. The album was produced by Pete Droge and Paul Bryan, and executive produced by Elaine Summers. It was recorded at Puzzle Tree Studio, Western Electric & Nest Recorders and engineered by Paul Bryan, Pete Droge, Russ Fowler, and Chris Sorem.
Accompanying Pete Droge and Elaine Summers who sang and contributed acoustic guitar from their home studio in Vashon Island, Washington, is a dang-good band from Los Angeles comprised of Paul Bryan (Bass Guitar and Chamberlin), Jay Bellerose (Drums and Percussion), Rusty Anderson (Electric Guitars), Lee Pardini (Wurlitzer, Clavinet, Piano, Hammond C-3) Greg Leisz (Pedal Steel), Gabe Wichter (Fiddle), and Nova Karina Devonie (Accordian).
Check out his website here: https://www.petedroge.com
Enjoy our previous coverage here: Song Premiere: Pete Droge “Song For Barbara Ann”