Blake Mills preps 'Jelly Road' & tour with Chris Weisman (hear "Skeleton Is Walking")
Producer, composer, and songwriter Blake Mills has announced new album Jelly Road, co-written with Chris Weisman, which will be out July 14 via New Deal/Verve (pre-order). Blake is fresh off the release of Aurora, the soundtrack of Daisy Jones & The Six, for which he served as executive music director and chief songwriter. Blake initially enlisted Chris for Aurora in 2019, and they got back together in 2022, as they wrote in a statement:
It is the spring of 2022, and Weisman is at the Steinway. He and Blake are composing his overlay voicings together, a layer of icing, for the bridge to “THERE IS NO NOW” that they just wrote from scratch–lyrics, melody, chords, Blake at his Goya, Chris pacing the perimeter of this illustrious room, Studio A of SOUND CITY STUDIOS in Van Nuys, California, veritably vibrating with history you could cut with a knife. Chris plays a big, sweet Ab Major 9 on the downbeat, and the whole room sings. Where an F minor turns Major, Blake suggests the 3rd should resolve an octave lower instead of traveling up a half-step, eschewing the obvious voice leading for an octave displacement. These are the leaps. It is heavenly-voiced down, the A natural seems to glow gently orange.
Blake is in his customary crouch over pedals, at the foot of the console with his baritone fretless sustainer guitar. Infinitely tall Joseph Lorge, with his signature blue work shirt and big, green eyes, is in the chair beside him, turned toward the screen. They work telepathically, quickly, seemingly flawlessly. It doesn’t matter how important the moment is–to a song, a record, a career–there is no pressure of import, no ritual. This is the guitar solo on “SKELETON IS WALKING.” All the tension built up in Blake’s one-note, incantatory vocal is finally breaking, exploding from his guitar like enormous, time-lapse flowers unfolding themselves.
The album opens under pointillistic stars, cosmic wheeling forms, an abyss of perplexity. On the title track, Chris’s horn calls out over a pleasure of drums and slashing classical guitars. There are no constellations, no narratives to navigate on “JELLY ROAD.” We let ourselves dream, and we let ourselves beam. We open outside of time, we end by refusing to.
The lead single of Jelly Road is, in fact, “Skeleton Is Walking,” a stoic indie-country mix with standout guitars and distortion. Listen to “Skeleton Is Walking” and check out the album tracklist below.
Blake Mills and Chris Weisman are touring the West Coast through the month of June. Tickets are on sale now. All dates below.
JELLY ROAD TRACKLIST
1. Suchlike Horses
2. Highway Bright
3. Jelly Road
4. Skeleton Is Walking
5. Unsingable
6. Wendy Melvoin
7. The Light Is Long
8. Breakthrough Moon
9. There Is No Now
10. Press My Luck
11. A Fez
12. Without An Ending
BLAKE MILLS FEATURING CHRIS WEISMAN — 2023 TOUR
June 13—Tractor Tavern—Seattle, WA
June 14—The Old Church—Portland, OR
June 16—August Hall—San Francisco, CA
June 17—Little Saint—Healdsburg, CA
June 20—Pappy and Harriet’s—Pioneertown, CA
June 22—The Pico Union Project—Los Angeles, CA
