Available Now on Apple Music and Spotify
Nashville, Tenn. — Emerging singer-songwriter Jake Loban has released his all-acoustic debut album Saloon Sessions, showcasing his musicianship in its purest form as a one man band — available now on Apple Music and Spotify. Heavily influenced by Bruce Springsteen and the rocker’s cult-following record Nebraska, similarly Saloon Sessions was 100% self-made. The songwriting, the instrumentation, the recording, the production… all of it done by Loban inside his home studio in addition to the album’s namesake “Red Rose Saloon”, an old shed behind his home that he converted into a bar/creative space.
“I’ve always loved Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska album and when I found out he recorded the whole thing himself it blew me away,” recalls Loban. “There’s nothing more real than an artist alone in a room with a guitar. You get to hear songs in their rawest, most original form. No fancy studio, no producer, no band, no engineers, nothing. Just the songwriter and the song. The idea of doing an album like this was always a fantasy until I started listening to John Moreland. I learned he had a similar DIY approach and that’s when the fire was lit. I started saving money for basic studio equipment and began teaching myself different recording techniques. I loved it because I felt like a teenager again, setting up a tape recorder in my parents garage and just hitting record. I was being honest with my music for the first time in years, and nothing could get in the way except for myself.”
Loban, a once Southern California skateboarding misfit, found his true self when he first dove into the music of Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash. At 13, Loban ditched his skateboard and picked up the guitar (the result of undergoing 7 eye surgeries that left him blind in one eye) and life as he knew it changed forever. His lifestyle is that of “Old Nashville Modern” as he drives through town and to gigs in his ’63 Ford Falcon and continues the musical spirit of Country’s outlaw era. Loban is a troubadour in every sense of the noun’s often mystique descriptors; an Americana dream of pure, honest, and often melancholy songwriting that listeners crave to dissect its meaning, while his haunting harmonica evokes the underlying emotion.
“I’ve been told these songs don’t fit into a specific genre and some of them are too dark… I was discouraged by that for a long time, but finally got over it,” said Loban. “I started to really look at my influences. How are they categorized? What box do they fit in? I realized you can’t do that with certain artists though. How do you describe Bob Dylan? Or even Ryan Bingham? They are just simply themselves. They are true originals. That’s the kind of artist I want to be.”
Saloon Sessions Track Listing:
1. Confession (Loban)
2. Losing My Mind (Loban)
3. Dancing With Ghosts (Loban)
4. Mr. and Mrs. Last Call (Loban)
5. Chasing Fire (Loban)
6. Lost and Found (Loban)
7. Tough Love (Loban)
8. Solitary Blues (Loban)
9. Drinking You Away (Loban)
10. Wild Hearts (Loban)
For more information, visit www.jakeloban.com and follow on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Spotify.