Austin’s Swampadelic R&b Supergroup Shinyribs New Single ‘Highway Of Diamonds’

Austin-based, swampadelic R&B band Shinyribs premiere their new single, “Highway of Diamonds,” today with PopMatters. To view the premiere, see here.“Highway of Diamonds” comes off of the band’s forthcoming release, titled “Fog & Bling,” out this Friday, June 14. There will be an official album release show also on the evening of Friday, June 14 at Mohawk, located at 912 Red River St, Austin, Texas 78701. Doors are at 7:30 p.m. with David Beck’s Tejano Weekend opening the show. Tickets are $18 in advance, $22 day of show and can be purchased here. “Fog & Bling” can be pre-ordered on iTunes as well as on Shinyribs’ online store.

“The track reinforces Shinyribs’ uncanny ability to fuse elements of swampy, rhythmic-centric blues into their sound,” said Jonathan Frahm at PopMatters.“Wrapped in an easygoing soul, the atmosphere that the band encapsulates with this release is palpable.”

“‘Highway Of Diamonds’ is about two misfit wallflowers who run away out onto the open road and transcend the superficial lives they led before – a kind of coming-of-age story,” said Shinyribs frontman Kevin Russell. “They have no idea of the magic and beauty they would find. They only knew they had to go.”

“Fog & Bling” is the sixth studio release for Shinyribs and one that has been years in the making. The idea for the new record was born out of a conversation between frontman Kevin Russell and the late Austin bassist and producer George Reiff when the two discussed taking Russell’s home recordings and building on top of them to create something new. After Reiff’s passing in 2017, Russell continued to work on the recordings and with the help of David Boyle of Church House Recording Studios, “Fog & Bling” came to fruition. For more information on Shinyribs, please see www.shinyribs.org.

“Time capsule opened in the presence of poets leading clergy to a field of wine drunk hippies parading half-nude behind a cattle drive,” said Russell when asked to describe “Fog & Bling.” “It’s multiple radios lost in time crossing signal paths. It’s stained pages of books with dead flowers and moths pressed between its pages. It’s grackles’ feathers festooning the hats of dancers sliding slowly across a wooden dance floor. It’s all that and more than I can even begin to conjure.”

Shinyribs’ eight-piece band features Kevin Russell on lead vocals, uke and electric guitar, Winfield Cheek on the keys, Jeff Brown on bass, Keith Langford on drums, with the Tijuana Trainwreck Horns (trumpet player Tiger Anaya and Mark Wilson on sax and flute) and the Shiny Soul Sisters (Alice Spencer and Kelley Mickwee), as well as occasional on-stage appearances by the Riblets, Shinyribs’ very own dance troupe. Additional musicians were tapped for “Fog & Bling”’s album closer, “Doin It (With Ya)” including Bobby Perkins (bass), Dan Nugent (singing doo-wops) and Robb Kidd (drums), plus Conrad Choucroun providing percussion and Boyle on additional keyboards throughout the record. The record is a co-production by Russell and Boyle, engineered by Boyle and mastered by Dave McNair.

“Kevin came to me and said that every time he makes a record and it comes out, it’s never what he thought,” said David Boyle. “I had him give me everything on his hard drive – all the songs and two-second ideas – and I took those 50 songs and ideas with me to Mexico and played them for a month. I played Kevin’s brain nonstop. At the end, we had picked about 20 songs to work with. Kevin’s weird and colorful mind is Psychedelic Ground Zero; the album is wild and imaginative with far more psychedelics. It’s one of the most favorite things I’ve ever done.”

“There are two kinds of people in Texas – those that got West Texas Dust, and those that got East Texas Rust,” said Doug Sahm to Russell. “You got both of ’em!”