Bask With Luke Under the Cerulean on Debut EP ‘Blue Sky’
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY NICO CHODOR ☆
LUKE TYLER SHELTON SWEET-TALKS THE SUN ON HIS DEBUT EP BLUE SKY—a love letter to home as a place, person, and star. He grew up in the San Fernando Valley, right outside of LA, where he found his way back to the early 1970s somewhere between Mulholland and Highway 1. Blue Sky bespeaks the folk rock magic of the Santa Monica Mountains, once home to musical titans like Neil Young and Joni.
After signing with Concord Records, Shelton found kinship with producers Shooter Jennings (Brandi Carlile, Tanya Tucker) and Jonathan Wilson (Father John Misty, Angel Olsen) in the creative seedbed of Wilson’s Topanga Canyon studio. Their sessions together were special, recalls Luke, “because it was their first time getting to work together on a project and we were all just happy to be there hanging out. The sessions were always laid back and fun, and they allowed me to visualize the ideas I was having in real time. It was a great first experience recording in real studios.” Mixed by four-time Grammy winner Trina Shoemaker—and featuring Wilson on drums, guitar, and Moog synth with Ted Russell Kamp on bass—Blue Sky captures times gone by in a bottle.
Shelton moves gracefully on this EP between love and longing, across time and place. “Love songs always come easiest,” he tells me. “Whether they’re about a girlfriend, a place I’ve been to, friends, etc. I’d say love is the common denominator for most of the songs on Blue Sky, just in different contexts.” He wrote track two, “Feeling Always Down,” purely for the sake of writing a sad song, and “Where the West Begins” is a poem by Arthur Chapman that he rewrote as an homage to growing up on the West Coast. Originally published in 1917, Chapman’s description and appreciation for the place Shelton calls home still rings true. “When I re-worked his poem into a song, I was thinking of every time I’d return home from travelling and be welcomed by LA’s blue skies, warm weather, beaches, mountains, and all my friends and family,” says Luke.
He wrote “Blue Sky,” track seven, in the springtime after going through a breakup, though he’s been told it’s an “all-seasons” kind of song. Under the melancholic rainfall of his acoustic guitar, “it’s bittersweet like a rainy day in spring, an overcast summer morning, or a chilly fall day,” during which leaves embody life transition. Luke wills the fog to clear on this one. His lyrics convey feeling lost, craving warmth, and perhaps solace, too.
This debut EP rolls the windows down on the cusp of summer going into fall. It’s Carol King-inspired by way of simple, smooth production. Shelton’s vocals put your mind at ease. He pulls from Harrison on All Things Must Pass, and the Yusuf/Cat Stevens discography, to let the light in on this seven-track debut. Blue Sky asks you to lie back in the grass, watch the trees sway, and bask with them under the cerulean.
In between touring his music and playing guitar for his friend Malcolm Todd, Luke Tyler Shelton is now trying to spend as much time writing and making demos as he can. “I’ve been writing a lot of stuff that I really like and am starting to put together all the pieces in my head of what I want my next body of work to sound like, and how I’m going to make that happen,” he tells me. “So, stay tuned.”
Shelton is opening for Chaparelle at The Troubadour on December 5th and can be found playing some other LA shows this fall. Blue Sky is out now.
