We're excited to announce that we are working with Brooklyn alt-country songwriter Emily Frembgen starting with a brand new single titled “Fentanyl” across all digital platforms. The single arrives accompanied by a music video, which can be seen HERE. The video was directed by Clare O’Kane of Saturday Night Live, Shrill, The Best Show and SpongeBob SquarePants. It is O’Kane’s music video directorial debut.
“Fentanyl” is the lead single from Frembgen’s forthcoming Don Giovanni debut album, to be released in 2024. The single is streaming across all platforms now.
“Fentanyl” opens with the lyric “Two years of doing nothing makes everybody crazy,” and is a song about the kind of alienation that can render a person motionless and self-medicated, but it also has an infectious melody and catchy guitar licks. Written after a particularly frustrating bout of writer's block, the song was recorded at Excello Studio in Greenpoint, Brooklyn with Hugh Pool. Emily laments the loss of who she was before the world shift of 2020 when it felt easier to connect with people. The single is streaming across all platforms now.
Emily found her footing in the New York music scene largely by way of the comedy scene, producing comedy & music shows at the doughnut shop where she worked. This led to co-writing and performing the theme song to Kate Willett’s popular podcast “Reply Guys,” touring with Ben Kronberg (Last Comic Standing), and having Clare O’Kane (Saturday Night Live, Shrill, the Best Show) direct the music video for “Fentanyl.”
Frembgen also has become a mainstay of the Antifolk community that originated at the Sidewalk Cafe on the Lower East Side. There, she starred alongside Jason Trachtenburg (Trachtenburg Family Slideshow) in his musical Me & Lee. She often performs with Jeffrey Lewis, and was featured on “Songs By Turner Cody: A Tribute Album” alongside Adam Green, Diane Cluck, and Toby Goodshank. She also became a mainstay at Knitting Factory where she has ran a weekly Americana series for several years, at which she has performed with Wayne Hancock, John Craigie, Daniel Rodriguez, and Paisley Fields.
Don Giovanni Records will release Frembgen’s forthcoming album in 2024.
"Quintessential, New Jersey roots-rock storytellers, with songs full of empathetic third-person narratives" - Pitchfork
Jersey veterans Roadside Graves return with a new Rumblefish inspired album I Won't Cry Alone due November 10, 2023.
Today, were releasing the album's first single "We're Not Here"
I Won't Cry Alone is available for pre-order now HERE.
I Won’t Cry Alone is the seventh full-length release from Roadside Graves. In 2011, the band released We Can Take Care of Ourselves, based on S.E. Hinton’s classic novel The Outsiders. During the heart of the pandemic, the band collaborated remotely and again returned to Hinton’s writing for inspiration, this time drawing from her more painful and surreal book Rumblefish. I Won’t Cry Alone mashes up narrative features of the book with morbid and almost-triumphant personal experiences. The song “Closure” introduces a third element, intertwining these threads with bits from the tragic lives of songwriters Jackson C. Frank and Sandy Denny (a third verse on Kirsty MacColl was written but ultimately left out). The album was recorded, mixed, and mastered by Derril Sellers (Lowlight, Last Legs) and Rob Lombardo (Mon Goose) at Cako Studios – a mighty and beautiful studio located in a repurposed church – and features contributions from Dana Sellers (piano, vocals) and Eric Haugen (pedal steel). Cover art drawn by Joe Galuppo. Roadside Graves are educators and an environmental scientist and a tech guru who hail from all over New Jersey with one stray up in Providence, RI. They’ve been a band for 25 years and have no intention of ever stopping because why not.
John Gleason explains:
"The majority of the record I Won’t Cry Alone was inspired by S.E. Hinton’s novel Rumblefish and the song We’re Not Here is an answer to themes (memory, attachment to others, abandonment) and characters contained within. The hope is the song works beyond the novel, and taps into a few universal truths.
How well can we accept what/who we truly are? Can we recognize strengths and attributes in others we don’t seem to have obtained ourselves and still move forward without giving up? I think so. The repetition of “I won’t cry alone” is pure defiance regardless."
I Won't Cry Alone Track List:
1. Closure
2. We're Not Here
3. Fight Clean
4. Steve's Song
5. Feel Everything
6. Here For The Lights
7. Patty's House
8. Long Death
9. If You Know Where To Look
10. Nothing Happened
Pre-Order / Pre-Save I Won't Cry Alone
Stream "We're Still Here"
