(New York, NY) “I didn’t plan to put out a solo EP,” states Lily Vakili, the poetic and bluesy powerhouse best known for fronting the eponymous Vakili Band. But when the opportunity arose for a string of solo dates supporting John Douglas (of Trashcan Sinatras) this coming October, it “felt both completely new and like a return home.” As preparations for the tour began, new songs started to emerge, and Vakili, who started her musical career as a solo artist, decided to take some of her favorite advice: “Just keep on, keep improving your art, keep performing. Don’t isolate yourself, stay open and say YES.”
A savvy street poet who finds the sweet spot in the nexus formed by Patti Smith’s loose-limbed punk swagger, Grace Slick’s inviting psychedelia, and the throaty blues-belting of a Janis Joplin, Vakili has released two solo records and three with the five-piece Vakili Band. The most recent LP, 2023’s Honey, “an electric blend of rock, soul, and psychedelia” (Under the Radar), also marked her debut as producer.
Recorded in collaboration with Reed Turchi at NYC’s Second Take Sound, the acoustic EP, Tannersville, is out everywhere September 13, 2024. The first offering, “Photograph,” was released on August 23.
“For all the talk of authenticity, carefully curated appearances are what mostly crowd our social media feeds; FOMO and a sense of not measuring up to bizarre standards is part of our lives,” Vakili explains, elaborating that the single’s narrator is “an observer, a cataloger of celebrity lives who riffs on the lure of California sunshine and the sharp blade separating the superficial from the real.” She continues, “That’s basically most of us - outside looking in at an imaginary somewhere we’ll never be.”
The EP gets its title from a town in New York’s Catskill Mountains. “The town of Tannersville itself was not a mystical place; it seemed to be a hard-working, hardscrabble place,” says Vakili. “Over the next few days, though - hiking around Kaaterskill Falls, driving winding, vertiginous roads up and down the mountain, pulling over and watching groups of friends party on the edges of the waters below - I became kind of mesmerized. Seeing them, I wanted to memorialize the feeling I once felt - doing risky, kind of stupid, but very fun things with my friends, far away from the crushing conformity and dull expectations of the waiting adult world.”
Nostalgia continues to glisten on “Rocket,” which recalls young love and how the search for oneself can sometimes pull people apart, and “April Fools.”
Vakili’s songwriting “ups the emotional and political ante [with] punchy tunes, delivered from a strong female perspective,” (Relix Magazine) and she looks forward to exploring fresh, intimate arrangements of her songs, old and new, during the tour with John Douglas.
“When Lily first approached me about working on this EP, I was excited about the challenge of presenting her story-telling singing & idiosyncratic guitar playing in a stripped-down, but fully immersive way,” Reed Turchi, who engineered, co-produced and contributed slide guitar to Tannersville says. “Capturing compelling performances was our priority, and the end result is, I believe, an extremely evocative and compelling EP that showcases Lily's range of talents as a solo performer: her songs, her voice, her guitar, and her ways of inhabiting the worlds she creates.”
“In the quiet of a studio in the heart of Manhattan, we worked out a way to capture the storytelling of the songs as simply as possible,” explains Vakili. “Reed made it feel natural to record the songs 'live,' without a click track, just me and my Gibson. The sound and feel he brought to the final mixes is magical - like I’m on the porch with my friends, late at night, telling the stories that keep us going.”
For Lily Vakili, returning to the stage and the studio as a solo artist feels both like coming full circle and like an artistic metamorphosis.
