Steve Wynn Crosses "Bridge" in Sept.

Well-received European album to get U.S. release.

By Blurt Staff

After several years of recording and extensive touring with his band the Miracle 3, Steve Wynn will be releasing a new album on September 9 in the U.S. on Rock Ridge Music.  Entitled Crossing Dragon Bridge it is his first solo album since 2001’s Here Come the Miracles.

Said Wynn in a statement,  "I associate this record so much with the time I spent writing and recording in Slovenia last fall.  Hearing it again as a U.S. release feels almost like a suitcase that I forgot to unpack.  I'm really glad that Rock Ridge is allowing me the chance to share this music with people on this side of the Atlantic and give me the chance to turn off the lights and give my own version of an aural slide show from my musical holiday."

The record was recorded in Ljubljana with Chris Eckman of the Walkabouts who also plays and sings on the record.  “It felt like a good time to get up under the hood and strip everything back down to the song,” Wynn says about the project.  “Most of the tracks began with the song and my acoustic guitar and then we just built it back up from there.”  But the record is anything but a solo folk record—additional elements include a Slovenian choir as well as a Czech orchestra overdubbed in Prague.

“I would say that this record sounds like nothing I’ve done before but it also sounds more like me than anything I’ve done before,” Wynn says.  “I was able to follow the same reckless and spontaneous flights of fancy that I would normally only feel safe enough to indulge myself at home.  But Chris was a great co-conspirator and helped me to empty out the insides of my skull onto the tracks.

“We had a ball.  I would wake up each morning in my apartment on some old, narrow street in Slovenia, grab a coffee, shake off the cobwebs and then make my way to the studio with a song, some ideas and pretty much limitless possibility.  The life there is easy, the food is heavy and the beer is good.  It all made for the right combination.”

The record was mixed in January by Tucker Martine (Decemberists, Laura Veirs, Sufjan Stevens) and was released in earlier this year in Europe to much press acclaim. No less than BLURT, in fact, in a review of the European release, called it “a diary of Wynn’s observations, written with a folk poet's heart and a rock ‘n’ roll soul.”

Watch this space for news of a fall tour from Wynn.