Jeremy D’Antonio’s Spinnin’ Wheels is a..

sumptuous yet succinct five-song slice of his past five years, elegantly and candidly ruminating on break-ups with a music veteran’s distinctive voice and phrasing. His first solo release, after many years in the bands Tiny Televison and San Geronimo. This release was a way to sequester away and numb the pain, while turning it into melodic musical art. As the band members changed alongside him over the years, these songs remained so he could put out something more personal. D’Antonio sings and plays acoustic guitar and wrote all the songs on the release except the second track, John Prine’s "Speed of the Sound of Loneliness.” It was cut live mostly except for a few backing vocals, basically five songs put down in five hours. Cutting his teeth in the Colorado punk scene, opening for bands like Fugazi, D'Antonio now lives in Marin County, where he plays as part of the Phil Lesh Terrapin Crossroads music collaboration and does music with people like Chris Robinson of The Black Crowes at the Papermill Creek Saloon. Musicians from the Buck Owens and Merle Haggard band are featured on the EP, and it was mixed by Malcolm Burn (EmmyLou Harris, Bob Dylan, Rachael Yamagata), whom D’Antonio had met many years ago when he was in Colorado; "I started to mix this record myself and called him up for some advice. He said he had been really interested in the Bakersfield scene and the project was right up his alley, taking it over and adding piano and keys.” The songs have a genuine mystical California honky tonk feel to it, especially evident in the mordant but mirthful title track. Barry Sless from Phil Lesh and Friends plays pedal steel on Spinnin’ Wheels, for the track “Crawlin’ Out of My Skin.” Another key track besides the title track or the Prine cover, is the darkly humorous opener “Sad and Blue.” “Because I like the first line, ‘I’m sorry that I left you on your birthday’ — which is cold blooded and true.” D’Antonio hopes to put out a full-length before the years end — “we will see if the world makes it that far.”