Instrumental alt-country dream pop duo, Quiet Cowboy have released their first single, “The Space Between,” from their self-titled debut album set for release on July 14, 2023 on Declared Goods.
“‘Quiet Cowboy’ plays like an exquisite soundtrack,” says AMERICAN SONGWRITER’s Tina Eves-Benitez of the encroaching full length effort. The publication’s feature, posted today to coincide with the aforementioned single release, could be read in its entirety HERE, as a Q&A with Quiet Cowboy members Michael Chacon and Ron Raymond.
From the gritty streets of New York City to the pristine wilderness of the Boise Mountains in Idaho, Quiet Cowboy roams across a musical landscape inhabited by the unmistakably expressive sounds of the pedal steel guitar. Constantly moving through the wide open spaces of ambient, electronic and rock, Quiet Cowboy inspires everything from trance-like reveries to a sudden shock of recognition, sliding into your consciousness with melodies and textures that will linger long after the last sound dissipates into the wide open sky.
Quiet Cowboy is the collaboration between Chacon and Raymond, fueled during pandemic weekly Zoom calls with the CBC (Composers Breakfast Club) Agoura Hills (LA) chapter. The Zoom meetings resulted in a musician’s collective The Sum of All Music, which has created an extensive sound library for Film and TV. Michael had recently finished an album of his original songs, with Ron playing pedal steel on 8 of the tracks. While recording his new pedal steel tracks, Ron heard Michael’s songs re-imagined as instrumentals, with pedal steel guitar replacing all the vocal tracks. Intrigued, Michael sent Ron the raw instrumental tracks from his previous CD without any vocals or lyric sheets. Ron stripped the songs apart, cut them up, rearranged sections, creating new original songs from the pieces, with his pedal steel as the expressive vocalist. They were recorded and mixed in Ron’s home studio on the Lower East Side of NYC and at a rural rental house on Old Kingston Road in upstate New York’s Hudson Valley.
Ron Raymond is a multi-instrumentalist known for his pedal steel guitar, lap steel guitar, dobro, mandolin, upright and electric bass, guitar, vocals. Ron has played with legends Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley, co-written songs and recorded pedal steel guitar tracks with producer Ned Douglas (Dave Stewart, Mick Jagger, Katy Perry, No Doubt), Benny Reitveld (Santana, Miles Davis); worked with Andy Shernoff and JP Patterson of The Dictators; played the legendary NYC rock clubs - CBGBs, The Continental, Trash Bar, etc.
A Southern California boy, Michael Chacon, came of age surrounded by the Beatles, Stones, Beach Boys, Carole King, James Taylor, Motown, and basically all the music that was built on the backs of the Wrecking Crew. With music at the center of his universe, he absorbed the sounds bouncing off the walls of his hovels in Topanga and Laurel Canyons, playing his songs at open mics at places like the Palomino and moving through transient groups and jams across the San Fernando Valley. Continuing through the years, Michael also built out a consulting career that took him around the world, guitar always in hand, performing in restaurants, parks, pubs, and bistros with pianos against the back wall.
Coming round full circle his original musical comrades brought him to the composing collaboration group Sum of All Music (SOAM) where he met and worked with Ron to add Pedal Steel to a few of songs. This collaboration grew into the exquisite Pedal Steel driven ambient sounds that are Quiet Cowboy.
