Bill Scorzari’s New Album
Bill Scorzari
The Crosswinds of Kansas
Out August 19, 2022
By Rob Dickens
New York-based singer-songwriter Bill Scorzari independently releases his fourth Album The Crosswinds of Kansas, co-produced by Scorzari and Neilson Hubbard and due out August 19, 2022.
Thirteen tracks at well over an hour provides plenty of evidence that Scorzari’s message is powerful and profound. The raspy, emotive voice and the chanting ruminations throughout are a joy, no more so than on three tracks that this listener cannot get enough of “All Behind Me Now”, “Try, Try Again” and the eleven-minute glorious, meditative opus “Tryin’, Tryin’, Tryin’, Tryin'”. Oh, and “Patience and Time” might well be the most tender and loving song I’ve heard this year.
The band excels: Scorzari, Brent Burke, Cindy Richardson Walker and Marie Lewey a/k/a “The Shoals Sisters,” Chelsea McGough, Danny Mitchell, Eamon McLoughlin, Fats Kaplan, Juan Solorzano, Kyle Tuttle, Matt Menefee, Mia Rose Lynne, Michael Rinne, Hubbard, Ty Allison and Will Kimbrough.
Much of The Crosswinds of Kansas was inspired by his three-month-long Now I’m Free Tour in 2019, until the tour came to an unexpected early end when Bill learned of the sudden decline in the health of his then 94 year old mother back home in New York. Bill started his four-day drive home back east from California. When he got to Kansas on the second day, the winds were blowing so hard across I-70 East that he had to fight the steering wheel for hours just to keep his car going straight down the highway. He stopped in Hays, Kansas for the night and woke up the next morning with a sore neck and arms from wrestling those tenacious crosswinds the day before. The following lines came to him while he was driving:
“Then, came the crosswinds of Kansas unleashed, and it pushed me hard, north and south, all down I-70 east… As I tore home to my mother, before her health, it would fail, at 94, I felt another love leaving me lost, like a nail in a cross.”
After arriving back home and securing 24-hour care for his mom in late 2019, Scorzari began to write. He spent the early days of the COVID lockdown finishing the songs, gathering the right instruments to fit the music, and building out his studio where he recorded much of the album. All the while, he continued to share time with his mom daily, until she passed at home on Christmas Day 2020 with Bill and family at her bedside, less than seven weeks before her 96th Birthday.
The Crosswinds of Kansas therefore has many vivid and sometimes dark stories to tell.
The album was recorded in two locations, in 2020 at First Thunder Recording Studios in Huntington, New York, by Scorzari during the COVID outbreak and through the continued lockdown into 2021, and continuing at Skinny Elephant Recording in Nashville by engineer Dylan Alldredge in 2021 and again in 2022.
Acclaimed record producer, film director, film producer, singer-songwriter, and photographer, Neilson Hubbard joined Bill as co-producer during the Nashville sessions, and also played drums and/or percussion on all of the tracks.
The Crosswinds of Kansas is an indisputable triumph and presented in a lavish, detailed CD package, which was an utter joy to review.
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Bill Scorzari’s New Album
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