Lake Street Dive – Side Pony LP Nonesuch

Vinyl LP pressing. 2016 release from Lake Street Dive. The four band members-drummer Michael Calabrese, bassist Bridget Kearney, singer Rachael Price, and guitarist/trumpeter Michael “McDuck” Olson-worked with Nashville-based producer Dave Cobb (Sturgill Simpson, Chris Stapleton, Secret Sisters) on the record. Side Pony takes it’s name from a song on the record that refers to a whimsical hairstyle, but it also serves as a metaphor for Lake Street Dive’s philosophy and personality as a band. As Kearney puts it, “When we were settling on the album title, that one just stuck out to us as embodying the band’s spirit. We’ve always been this somewhat impossible to categorize, weird, outlying, genre-less band. That’s the statement we wanted to make with this record: be yourself.” Cobb’s working method was to keep the recording fast and loose, as live-in-the-studio as possible, and to embrace the unorthodox. This provided Lake Street Dive with a welcome challenge: an opportunity to experiment with sound and arrangements and to collaborate on songwriting in a way the band had never attempted before. Calabrese says of the recording process, “Dave’s process was mercurial, changing direction quickly, going from ‘we don’t have anything’ to ‘we’ve got it!'” He continues, “We weren’t always so sure. But then we’d listen to a comp and we’d agree that he’d heard something we hadn’t.” Price adds, “It was great to see, through this particular recording process, how beautifully our individual strengths complement each other.”