Moon Calendar by Travis McNamara

Played and recorded entirely by himself in his apartment during the pandemic, Trout Steak Revival's Travis McNamara explores more indie and electric territory on his lush and experimental debut solo release, MOON CALENDAR.

Trout Steak Revival's win at the 2015 Telluride Bluegrass Festival - a lineage including Chris Thile, Greensky Bluegrass, and The Lil Smokies - launched them into an odyssey of national touring, playing alongside artists like Brandi Carlile, Billy Strings, and Emmylou Harris. When the pandemic struck and McNamara's touring life ground to a halt, he turned to self-recording as a salve against great fear and uncertainty. A group of other waylaid Denver songwriters met online each month - the Beaver Moon Songwriting Club - and helped each other keep moving.

MOON CALENDAR represents McNamara's exploration into a more electric and experimental form of his folk writing; a moving pastiche of layered recordings inspired by the sounds of Adrianne Lenker, Bon Iver, The Books, Jason Isbell, and Denver’s own Natalie Tate and Nathaniel Rateliff. No fewer than 16 instruments appear on the record, all played by McNamara himself. As always, he makes generous use of his most dynamic themes: expansiveness and adventure, balanced with isolation and freedom, and of course the perennial search for love.