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(Nashville) Brad Tursi wasn’t sure where he was going when he began writing the songs that became Parallel Love, the ten track song cycle that explores restlessness, rambling and romanticism. Bound together by three variations on the opening and closing “Oh, Darlin’,” the acoustic-grounded project delivers on the promise of how life is rarely linear, but has a way of always returning to center.
To celebrate the guitarist/songwriter’s debut and expand the premise of how life takes you where you need to be, “Church Bells and Train Whistles” became the project's initial focus track. With its ambling shuffle, wistful vocal and fistful of images, the confession “guitar heart with strings attached that takes me away, that takes me back…” speaks to Tursi’s state of life, but also “just because I love to run, I’ll be running back to you…”
“That’s the thing about who I am,” Tursi says, “I am at my core pretty simple, but very much wanting to see the world. I wrote the song trying to explain myself to myself and the people who love me. It’s a lot. It’s pretty basic. Because it all adds up.”
To embody the feelings, there was no need to be literal when it came time to create a video for the track that climaxes in an iconic electric guitar figure. Shot in grainy black and white, there’s the blur of travel, the isolation of a hotel and the snap shots that suggest the roots that always ground Tursi.
"When it was time to make a video, I wanted something the gave people room to see their own story, too,” Tursi says of the creative process. “I wanted it to be something evocative, something even with the sound down, you’d be drawn to watch it. I love the juxtaposition, the use of motion and the idea we are all so many things."
With a show at Carol’s Pub in Chicago this Thursday (Oct. 17), Tursi’s reflective take on finding one’s place in a world rushing by continues establishing its grass roots foundation. Also slated to perform on NPR’s storied Mountain Stage in a season that includes Dave Alvin and Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Mindy Smith, Jill Sobule, JD Simo & Luther Dickinson and Low Cut Connie, seeing where these songs lead is as much the adventure as creating the music.
“A winding road can wind me up
But this gravel drive's where I wind up
It winds me down like a pocket watch
When I hold you, girl, time just stops
somewhere out in the middle of small town settlin down…”
Brad explores all of it in roots music publication HOLLER today.
Watch the official music video HERE.
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Press Contact:
Emily Ginsberg
ginsberg@bighassle.com
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