Blue Cactus (Steph Stewart and Mario Arnez) stopped by Live & Local last week, following the release of their third studio album, “Believer.”
Visit BlueCactusMusic.com.
With a dream-and-twang sound that links retro country with modern indie and lyrics that are both fresh and timeless, Blue Cactus has been steadily on the rise for nearly a decade. The new album, their first in four years, is a triumph, anchored by the epic title track alongside lead single “This Kind of Rain,” a spectacular Dolly-meets-Reba ode to resilience in the face of .
“It feels like the meanings constantly change, (but) their relevance is still there,” Stewart says of the songs, which were mostly written at the height of the COVID pandemic and released amidst entirely different crises. “The (overarching) theme is this thread of hope and silver linings and overcoming difficult times…(and) I’m just really glad that these songs are coming out now, because I’ve sort of selfishly had them, and they’ve gotten me through my personal struggles, and I’m glad that they can be there for other people who need them.”
While the songs on the album have a connecting theme, Stewart and Arnez says they didn’t start out as a collective entity – it just happened to work out that way.
“We normally have gone into a (recording) session with the expectation that we were making an album,” Stewart says, “but with this record, we just had a lot of songs and a couple of really talented friends we wanted to work with, so we just reached out to them and (said), ‘Hey, you want to book a session and just record some songs?’ And I think that helped me not get in my head as much – and just have fun and see these songs as individual works of art… (but) they did fit together in the end.”
Now that the album is out, Stewart and Arnez are celebrating by getting on stage for live shows. Their official album-release show is Saturday, May 3, at Cat’s Cradle Back Room (with Alexa Rose opening). After that, they’re hitting the road for a tour that will take them around the Southeast and over to Texas and New Mexico by the end of May, and up to New England in June.
Visit CatsCradle.com for tickets to Saturday’s show.
“That’s really why we do it,” Stewart says. “We just love playing shows. Playing live is really what it’s all about. And I’ve been promoting the record so much right now and I’m just really excited to get out from behind my computer and just be on stage and connect with people in real life.”
Mario Arnez and Steph Stewart stopped by Live & Local last week to discuss the album, a trio of music videos, their recent appearance on PBS’ “Shaped By Sound” series, Saturday’s show at Cat’s Cradle, and their upcoming tour. They also played three songs live in the studio: “Bite My Tongue,” “This Kind of Rain,” and “Believer.” Listen:
The Making of a ‘Believer’: Live and Local with Blue Cactus Chapelboro.com.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( The Making of a ‘Believer’: Live and Local with Blue Cactus )
Also on site :