David Newbould ? “Sensitive Heart”
Video release ? August 1, 2020
Eight albums in and last fall’s Sin & Redemption was my first experience with David Newbould. It’s really one of my favorites in recent years and I was thrilled to go back and discover so much more from this Toronto born, Nashville based artist, who shares my love of Neil Young and Dave Alvin. David came to Nashville by way of Austin and New York, where he’d been playing guitar in different bands for several years. His 2013 release, Tennessee and this one in particular have that drive-across-America, heartland rock feel. Sin & Redemption was produced by Chris Tench and Tres Sasser and recorded over three weeks at Sound Shelter Studios in Franklin, Tennessee. Tres Sasser also contributed some footage to the video for “Sensitive Heart”, the album’s lead off track, which Scot Sax shot and edited. I caught up with David recently about the new video and how he’s staying creative and engaged with fans.
AnaLee: It seems like you’ve been staying relatively busy lately; you made a video, you’ve been hosting weekly live streams on Tuesdays with “David’s Lunch” and you are participating in an online music festival next week, your second one that I know of this year! Has it been difficult for you to stay creative during the pandemic or are you finding inspiration from any of it?
David: Well…it’s been difficult to stay creative because I have a very active 5-year-old with me at all times in our (fairly modest) house. That said, when the moments of inspiration hit, they all do seem to have a cohesion that couldn’t really come out of any other time, and late at night when the house is quiet, I’ve been able to flesh them out into things. It hasn’t been pretty, but when it works, it works. As far as the actual inspiration itself…. ugh, there are dark clouds swirling around up there that are making us stare life directly in the face and ask sets of questions we never thought we’d have to ask. How do you try to further your vision, your work, your life, when you can’t really work? How will this all affect my wife and boy in the long run? When will it end…and how? It’s a facebender.
AnaLee: Next Sunday you’ll be participating in a virtual music festival hosted by Magnolia Roads and Head Count. “Notes For Votes” starts at 3pm CDT, August 23rd. Magnolia Roads is an independent artist and live music advocate. They throw the American Hoedown every year, which you were also part of, usually at the 5 Spot, virtually this year. Tell us a little about how this one’s going to work and how we can we see it.
David: Magnolia Roads is the supernova of an incredibly passionate soul, Emily Hansen. Not only is she an artist advocate and manger to some, she is also a one person booking agency. I feel very fortunate to have been welcomed into her family. The Notes For Votes streaming event will be streaming via MagnoliaRoads.com, as well as on the Magnolia Roads Facebook page, and all pages of the artists and fans who share.
AnaLee: Sin & Redemption is such a deep album, all ten songs worthy of individual attention. It’s full of very descriptive, almost cinematic songs. One of the album’s producers, Tres Sasser, along with Nashville songwriter/videographer Scot Sax helped you make the video for “Sensitive Heart”. Tell us about the concept and how it all came together
David: Thanks so much for that, and thanks for the support for the record on your show. We’d been talking about making a video for Sensitive Heart for a while. Tres got hold of a cool video camera via his wife Sarah, so we decided to just go shoot some footage in the new tornado/COVID-racked Nashville and see how it came out. Scot and I are friends and he’s been helming a rapidly growing video business over the last year or so. I just hit him up to help with editing, but ended up going over to his place and we shot the performance footage in his new “distance friendly” outdoor studio, then he did the stellar edit. The song is all about the strength and beauty omnipresent within vulnerability, something I’ve appreciated more and more with age. I never felt it was necessarily tied to any one person, or even a person at all, it could apply to a person, community, a city…anything you hold dear. We all talked and decided we wanted to show a small cross section of our current world, our Nashville, make it more about that than anything else. Just kind of a moment in time, with a guitar solo at the end.
AnaLee: Thanks for catching up with me today, David! Just one last question, any new music on the horizon?
David: I’m actually just finishing up home demos of all the songs I’m looking to put together for my next record. They are mostly new with a couple of older ones that feel in tune with this time. It’s without question the most focused and cohesive set of songs I’ve ever had ready to go, and I want to start making it right now! The issues of where/how/with whom I’m going to do it, how/when it will come out, and how to plan for what to do with it in this current time - this current swirling and undefined sea of variables - are all things that need to be figured out. To me the purest way of building and maintaining an audience is putting out music and touring, bringing it to people live, and that’s obviously out indefinitely. If and when we can (hopefully) tame this virus, the clawing back to that way of life is something that can’t come soon enough.
Thanks for this feature, Ana, and for these thoughtful questions.
"Sensitive Heart”
