Tony Holiday didn’t gather a bunch of blues artists to perform on his upcoming album, Motel Mississippi, like he did on his 2019 Porch Sessions album.
“It’s not the porch concept,” says the blues harpist/singer. “It’s just me. It’s just my record. But it was written by A.J. Fullerton. There are a couple of covers.”
And Holiday co-wrote a song with Victor Wainwright. “But I really chalk it up to A.J. Fullerton, a really cool artist out of Colorado. He moved to Memphis about a year ago.”
Holiday wasn’t looking for songs when he contacted Fullerton. “I called A.J. one day ’cause he’s a great hill country guitar player. I was going to make a new record and wanted to do more of a hill country thing. I called him and asked if he’d play guitar on the record. He said he would love to.”
Holiday says that Fullerton also said, “But I have these tunes.”
Fullerton thought they would be “a good fit” for him, Holiday recalls. “That’s when he moved to Memphis and we sat down with the material for about a week.”
The songs matched Holiday’s concept, Fullerton says: “He wanted to still have that Memphis feel, but he wanted it to be a lot more rural, south of the Mississippi border kind of thing.”
“A.J. is a killer songwriter,” Holiday says. “It’s impossible not to like A.J.’s songs. They’re very catchy.
“I don’t know what it is about the songs he writes. It’s just if I knew what it was, then I would write the damn things myself.
“I can’t say if he’s a wild man or not, but he writes the songs from the perspective that is my wild life. And I was taken by that.”
He told Fullerton, “You wrote my life.”
Like Fullerton’s “Get By.” “Everybody just needs a little bit to get by. Whatever that is. Little bit of money, little bit of love, little bit of pain to get by.”
Describing what compels him to write, Fullerton says, “It’s about day-to-day things. It’s about life. It’s about love. It’s about losing people. For me, writing is just as natural as breathing. That’s why it’s so cool when somebody like Tony connects with my material.”
Holiday and Wainwright wrote “No Trouble.” “It’s like, ‘Don’t call me on the phone. Don’t come around my home,’” Holiday says. “It’s basically telling trouble, ‘Don’t come around.’”
Wainwright is “the Grammy-nominated piano player that ruled Beale Street for a few years back in the day. Victor Wainwright and the Train.”
“No Trouble” was conceived when Wainwright was “playing a little groove on the piano” at Holiday’s house. “We just came up with it sitting around the house being lazy.”
Mississippi Motel was engineered by Kevin Houston at Zebra Ranch in Coldwater, Mississippi. In addition to Fullerton on guitar, Lee Williams Jr. plays drums, and Terrence Grayson plays bass.
Dave Gross co-produced the album with Fullerton and mixed and mastered it at his Fat Rabbit Studios in Montclair, New Jersey.
“We signed with Forty Below Records out of Los Angeles. They have the release date at April 14th.”
Born in South Jordan, Utah, Holiday, who moved to Memphis three years ago, says, “Still happy in Memphis. I’m just a student here in Memphis. I just came here to listen and learn.”
He likes to spend as much time as he can with his family, but he’s got “cool projects coming up.”
Holiday already recorded 70 percent of a “Tony Holiday and friends record. I have eight to 10 really special guests on it.”
He adds, “I do have another record in the bank, as they say. That record is essentially a soul record, soul R&B.”
Holiday, who has three daughters, has a new daughter on the way. “I’ve got six sisters. I’m the only boy.”
The new baby’s name will be Barbara Mae Holiday.
“The release date for the baby is May 22nd,” he says.
To hear the single, “Rob and Steal,” from the new album Motel Mississippi, visit fortybelow.ffm.to/rob-steal.
