With his new debut, Collecting Trip (due out on January 19, 2018), R. Finn has created a heartfelt album rooted in timeless Americana and colored by subtly lush, alternately haunting and hopeful arrangements. The Southern California songwriter took the long way around on this journey, some of his songs on the record tracing back nearly a decade.
The LP’s title not only references the “collecting trips” taken by folk musicologists John and Alan Lomax, but also what the album represents to Finn: All the years of accumulating songs, players, styles and gear that have resulted in his affecting, long-evolving sound. And then there’s his deep devotion as a student of songwriting and music history. “I’m just trying to do what I love and what I listen to,” Finn says. “I’m always trying to evoke Ray Charles or Woody Guthrie.”
While the story of Collecting Trip begins and ends in Los Angeles, it’s also anchored by a pivotal journey to rock & roll landmark Woodstock, N.Y., where Bob Dylan and The Band holed up at a house called Big Pink in the late ‘60s, cranking out some of the era’s most iconic songs from a dusty basement studio. Finn found a connection to this bygone era in his early 20s when he crossed paths with The Band’s Levon Helm. He’d heard Helm was living on a farm in Woodstock with a studio out back and no gear, and Finn just so happened to have a bunch of gear and no studio. Finn gathered up the nerve to cold call the legendary drummer/vocalist, the two hit it off immediately, and Helm invited him out to the farm. After Finn spent a night recording Helm, Levon was so impressed he asked him to stick around a while longer. Finn wound up staying for two years.
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