Soul Land Records announces new compilation Soul Land Music Series: Volume 1 out August 6, a collection of live music inspired by the life of spiritual teacher and cultural icon, Baba Ram Dass. With the announcement, they share first compilation single “Mid-America Motel” from Experimental-Americana band Dirtwire featuring Ram Dass and accompanying music video by acclaimed visual artist Johnathan Singer (Grateful Dead, Tipper, Dead & Company). Representing a merging point of ancient eastern spiritual traditions and contemporary western music culture, the band invites listeners into a “Mid-America Motel” for the peak of a psychedelic experience, illustrated through the interpolated, transformative words of Ram Dass and his meditation wisdom. Offering an eclectic and expressive assortment of genres ranging from folk and world, jam, rock and kirtan, to ambient electronic meditations, the new collection leads listeners through an ethereal and entertaining journey to the heart.
Dirtwire shares: “This track was built off of a jam that was initially recorded at Echo Mountain studios in Asheville, North Carolina. We felt we had a match when we tried combining it with Ram Dass' description of a powerful psychedelic experience he had in the Mid-America motel in Salina, Kansas. Something about the cyclical mystery of the harmonic progression and the sound of a vintage Telecaster through a vintage amp seemed to resonate with how he speaks of the transcendental set within the familiar, felt to us like expressions of a spiritual Americana that lies just below the surface of what this country believes itself to be. As we started to shape the music underneath Ram Dass' story, we began to add new parts to underlie and support the narrative tension. We found that musically, at the point Ram Dass' of surrender and ego death, the underlying tension of the guitar ostinato could rupture to support his realization - and through it an entirely new world of release and realization could be built.”
Featuring American Jam band Papadosio, soulful singer/songwriter Trevor Hall, chant master Krishna Das, artfully melodic East Forest, Shantala’s Benjy Wertheimer on the Esraj, the sophisticated electronic atmosphere of Boreta/Superposition (The Glitch Mob), and more extraordinary musicians. The collection is made up of hand-selected mastered tracks from each artist’s unique and specially-curated live performance on the first season of the virtual concert series Soul Land Music Series: Songs & Stories Inspired by Ram Dass. Soul Land Music Series: Volume 1 serves as a way to both honor Ram Dass’ deep connection to music, and provide listeners with a tool to bypass the thinking mind and be welcomed with open arms into the heartspace that is Soul Land.
