First Light, Stoneback Drive

LYON-TRAILS-10-First Light, Stoneback Drive

Being able to drive again was a godsend.  I had originally planned on driving out to LA from the Midwest so I’d have my own car for the sessions, but it had met its end the preceding winter on a downtown bridge over the Chicago River.  The car had been my grandfather’s, and he had passed just a few months prior, so it felt like losing him all over again.  Before it was towed away, I pried a plastic insignia from the dashboard to have as a keepsake – of my grandfather’s car, the car I learned to sing in, the car I drove to New York in, the car I kept all of my possessions in for four months in Chicago before my best friend and I got our first real apartment. 

Michalis Koutsoupides - Violin / Viola

Recorded spring 2008, Lawrence, Kansas.
Mixed by Mike Giffin.
Mastered by Doug Van Sloun.
Remastered by Matt LaPoint.
Original Release Date: 31 July 2009 (Broken Horse // UK)

Image: The North Carolina (from Thalman family archives; restored by David Marquardt).

LYON // Cosmic Trigger Records

I'm excited to announce digital distribution for my instrumental music project LYON via Cosmic Trigger Records of NYC to iTunes, Amazon, Apple Music, Spotify, and Pandora coinciding with the release of new album TRAILS on the autumnal equinox.

LYON - FOUR SEASONS -- 14 November 2016 supermoon EP
LYON - VOYAGE TO SCOPRION ISLAND -- 2016 winter solstice single
LYON - LYON -- 2017 spring solstice album
LYON - NOCTURAMA -- 2017 summer solstice split EP
LYON - TRAILS -- 2017 autumnal equinox album

Twitter // Instagram: @lyonfrancemusic

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Portent

LYON-TRAILS-09-Portent

“The earthquake did not help,” I thought, nerves still frayed from the 3am 6.0 magnitude event as heat lightning pulsed above the creepy little casino town on the Nevada-Utah border.  Below the sky, fields of flickering red lights and the words "you're headed in the wrong direction” fading in and out of reception on the radio.  Then, a savage, Biblical rain, momentary skid-outs in standing water, and just flat-out not being able to see.  At a dive motel in the desolate eastern part of the state, a black moth on the shower curtain and June bugs in the bed.

AM - Piano / Grandfather Clock

Recorded fall 2013, Leawood, Kansas.
Mixed and Mastered by Matt LaPoint.
Original Release Date: 4 January 2015 (Moorworks // Japan).

image: "15th St. and Blue Ridge Road" (from Thalman family archives).

Rising

LYON-TRAILS-08-Rising

"But it is possible, it is possible: the old grief, by a great mystery of human life, gradually passes into quiet, tender joy; instead of young, ebullient blood comes a mild, serene old age.  I bless the rising sun each day, and, as before, my heart sings to meet it but now I love even more its setting, its long slanting rays and the soft tender gentle memories that come with them..."

      -Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (Father Zosima speaking)

Kristina Dutton - Violin
Teddy Rankin-Parker - Cello

Recorded winter 2014, El Cerrito, California.
Mixed and Mastered by Matt LaPoint.
Original Release Date: 4 January 2015 (Moorworks // Japan).

image: unknown (from Thalman family archives).

Granville

LYON-TRAILS-07-Granville

It takes days and days to drive through Pennsylvania.  Or at least that’s how it feels when you’re twenty-two and on the verge of setting sight on New York City for the first time.  Not that I minded.  Passages on I-80 East through a quintet of state forests replicated and extended the unreal pitch of autumn I had just experienced for the first time in Ohio.  A long, undulating stretch of America, then through New Jersey so much faster than expected, the world quickening, expanding, New York a flickering, pluming goliath through the geometry of cantilever bridges.

Shan-Ken Chieng - Second Violin
Sascha Groschang - Cello
Michalis Koutsoupides - Viola
Noemi Miloradovic - First Violin
Andrew Morgan - Guitar / Piano

Recorded spring 2010, Lawrence, Kansas.
Mixed by Mike Giffin.
Mastered by Doug Van Sloun.
Remastered by Matt LaPoint.
Original Release Date: 18 February 2011 (Moorworks // Japan).

Image: unknown (viewfinder card from Morgan family archives).

For a Little While

LYON-TRAILS-06-For a Little While

My own stint in New York was brief – half euphoria, half panic.  I had tried to move there from Kansas nearly two years prior in the fall of 2000, in love with versions of the city I had dreamed of while reading biographies of Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, and The Beatles in high school, and feeling desperately stifled and out of place in Lawrence after a life-changing year studying abroad at Oxford.  I dropped my classes – mostly post-modern philosophy – petitioned to graduate early, and got a job delivering pizzas.  I saved up two thousand dollars, and thought that would be enough to find an apartment in Greenwich Village – that it would be just like winter 1961 as recounted by Dylan.  Needless to say, I bounced off the atmosphere. 

Michalis Koutsoupides - Viola

Recorded spring 2008, Lawrence, Kansas.
Mixed by Jim Vollentine.
Mastered by Doug Van Sloun.
Remasted by Matt LaPoint.
Original Release Date: 15 January 2008 (Moorworks // Japan).

Image: Chicago Harbor (from Thalman family archives; restored by David Marquardt).

Leaves (III)

LYON-TRAILS-05-Leaves (III)

It was in Ohio where I became enamored with autumn, started measuring time by its approach or departure.  I’d left Kansas that morning in a t-shirt.  Hundreds of miles east and slightly north, I found myself rubbing my arms to warm up while stopped at a gas station that evening, rummaging through my backpack for a sweatshirt and a bit caught off guard by the bite in the air.  The sun had begun to set and, with the wind picking up a bit, the scenery took on a different character as I left the interstate for older roads leading up to Mt. Vernon.  On narrowing lanes alongside farmland, leaves already showing shades of red and orange that would not visit Kansas until closer to Halloween waved in the wind.  It was as if a portal was opening up, drawing my eyes away from the road for increasingly dangerous intervals.  Soon, it was nearly dark and I was lost, in a bit of a panic but at the same time entranced, wondering how there could be a place so beautiful that I’d never heard a word of.  Back on track and passing through Mt. Vernon toward Gambier after nightfall, leaves still fluttering in bunches showed their colors intermittently just above street lamps as if a light switch were being flipped off and on.  The feeling, like playing hide-and-seek in gardens of the wealthy as a child, was quietly electric. 

Kristina Dutton - Violin
Andra Kulans - Violin
Andrew Morgan - Guitars / Piano / Harmonium / Melodica / Feedback Bed

Recorded summer 2012, Lawrence, Kansas / spring 2013, Chicago, Illinois / summer 2014, El Cerrito, California.
Mixed and Mastered by Matt LaPoint.

Image: Hartford, Connecticut (from Thalman family archives; restored by David Marquardt).