After a successful UK tour in late 2014, the newest Bob Cheevers record, On Earth As It Is In Austin is getting its first US promotional push beginning in Spring 2015 from Cheevers’ label Private Angel Records. Lance Cowan of LC Media will be overseeing the initial media promotion.
Touring in Europe a few years ago, singer-songwriter Bob Cheevers noticed a sticker on a friend’s guitar case that spoke volumes to him: “On Earth As It Is In Austin!” Recalling the moment, Cheevers says, “As trivial as it might sound, seeing that sticker was affirmation that my relocating to Austin was exactly the right move.”
Inspired by the sticker slogan, Cheevers soon after had a creative burst writing almost 30 songs in about 6 weeks, many of which comprise the bulk of the songs that made their way onto On Earth As It Is In Austin, his 10th full length album release. The set is a generous 15-song helping full of his trademark tales of rebels and outlaws and dreamers and lovers, recorded as musical duets with 15 different celebrated musicians performing on one song each. Among the 14 Austin-based musicians contributing their talents are stalwarts Will Sexton, Walt Wilkins, Stephen Doster, Warren Hood, Dustin Welch and Van Wilks as well as longtime Nashville collaborator Charlie White.
On Earth As It Is In Austin’s songs are full of adventure and misadventure, comedy and tragedy, history and fantasy. The characters populating these story songs have lived, loved and lost. They know the meaning of down and out yet persevere through life’s heartbreaks, vagaries and travails with indomitable spirits committed to living as fully as they can for as long as they can.
Long recognized by peers as being blessed with the acute vision of a master painter coupled with the precision attention to detail of a great novelist, Cheevers has written over 3,000 songs in his almost five decade career. Along the way he has rightfully earned the mantle of master songwriter as well as the respect of his many songwriting pals, including Texas icon Ray Wiley Hubbard, who recently said, “Bob is one cool scarecrow gypsy poet who writes and sings the romantic beautiful truth. When he releases a record, I listen.”
Also a cult favorite in the UK and Europe where he has toured for more than a decade, Cheevers continues to find inspiration in the life he’s chosen in Texas as well as the rich Southern heritage that came from his growing up in Memphis. His rootsy, blues-flavored songs spin tales of life in a conversational language of the heart that rock the soul. They are intimate and expansive, poignant and bracing, tender and raucous, unflinchingly honest and redemptively healing. As he laughingly is known to say, “I don’t know if these stories are true, but they happened to me.”
As the media promotion develops, Private Angel will be doing some select radio promotion, developing music videos for some of the album’s songs and helping to stage some regional tours as 2015 progresses. The label is also planning a Cheevers anthology for 2016.