<strong>Press Release</strong>
GRACE POTTER & THE NOCTURNALS’ LEAD GUITARIST SCOTT TOURNET 
RELEASES SOLO ALBUM, VER LA LUZ, ON MAY 14

ALBUM FEATURES CONTRIBUTIONS 
FROM FELLOW NOCTURNAL GRACE POTTER

SOLO NEW ENGLAND TOUR DATES SCHEDULED FOR MAY
Burlington, VT (April 5, 2013) – VER LA LUZ, Scott Tournet’s first solo album since 2006’s Everyone You Meet Is Fighting A Hard Battle, will hit streets on May 14. The self-produced and independently released effort was recorded and engineered by Mike Kamoo (The Stereotypes, The Loons, Lights On), who engineered and mixed VER LA LUZ at his Earthling Studios in San Diego.

The sound on VER LA LUZ is unpretentiously sophisticated, a seamless fusion of the homespun and the experimental; the songs are earthy, heartfelt; and Tournet’s vocals have an aching vulnerability and natural humanity. “I made the record because I needed to make it,” says Tournet with the same candor that characterizes the album. “The songs and the writing of the songs consumed me for weeks and months at a time.” These 11 songs of struggle, abiding hope and hard-earned acceptance—each resolving into a memorable chorus resolution—chart an internal world that is deeply personal yet universally relatable. The result is a musically invigorating and emotionally powerful piece of work. If ever an album deserved to be singled out as a sleeper, VER LA LUZ is it.
VER LA LUZ features contributions from drummer Austin Beede (formerly of Alberta Cross); fellow Vermont natives Lowell Thompson and Kelly Ravin, who blended their voices with Tournet’s for some soaring harmonies; and Scott’s band mate Grace Potter, who co-wrote “Treasure” and “The Longing,” dueting with her longtime band mate on the latter. Apart from the drums, Scott played all the instruments except for Ravin’s acoustic on “The Longing.” He and Kamoo started tracking in the spring of 2012, calling on Beede to handle the drum parts.

“That’s really when the process opened up,” Scott recalls. “I would play guitar, bass or keyboards along with Austin on drums, and we would record what we did to tape. We did eight or nine songs that way, and then he headed home to Santa Barbara. Over the next couple weeks, Mike and I tackled a song a day and I overdubbed all the other necessary instruments/sounds as we saw fit. Once we got the music where we wanted it, Lowell and Kelly flew in from Vermont and laid down harmony vocals. Kelly and I also tracked ‘The Longing’ on acoustics.” 

Using a portable rig, Scott recorded his vocals in hotel rooms and on the bus while on tour with Grace Potter & The Nocturnals as the opening act on a stadium tour. “We recorded Grace’s vocal for ‘The Longing’ in a football stadium locker room,” he recalls. Throughout the summer, Tournet engaged in a long-distance dialogue with Kamoo back in his San Diego studio.” I would send vocal tracks digitally to Mike and he would piece them together for me. It was amazing and cool in the way that technology was allowing us to work on album together while being in different parts of the country. I never could have completed the record otherwise.” 

VER LA LUZ, which translates from the Spanish as to see the light, is not only the album’s title but also its theme. “The record is about getting your ass kicked, getting the wind knocked out of you, waking up in the morning and not being able to get up—being paralyzed by life,” Tournet explains. “But really, it’s about those first moments where you can see something beyond the despair and ugliness—like eating a saltine cracker after having the stomach flu for two days; that glorious and delicious first bite. Or like being in the ocean and getting caught under a wave—then you finally find up and you gasp in that first breath of air. This album resides within that moment. It comes from darkness, pain and ugliness, but the songs themselves are the light that contrasts with all of that.”


Scott Tournet’s upcoming solo tour dates are as follows:
Thursday, May 16 Higher Ground Burlington, VT
Friday, May 17 Brighton Music Hall Boston, MA
Saturday, May 18 Brooklyn Bowl Brooklyn, NY
Sunday, May 19 8x10 Club Baltimore, MD


Official Site: <a href="http://www.scotttournetmusic.com">www.scotttournetmusic.com</a>
Facebook: <a href="http://www.facebook.com/ScottTournet">www.facebook.com/ScottTournet</a>
Twitter: <a href="http://www.twitter.com/ScottTournet">www.twitter.com/ScottTournet</a>


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Biography
This self-produced solo album from the lead guitarist in Grace Potter & the Nocturnals is not what you might expect. VER LA LUZ (May 14, 2013) is not Scott Tournet’s “guitar record,” nor does it remotely resemble any of GPN’s LPs. To this listener, Tournet’s music as evidenced by this surprising record more closely resembles that of Wilco at its most soulful and like-embracing. The sound is unpretentiously sophisticated, a seamless fusion of the homespun and the experimental; the songs are earthy, heartfelt; and Tournet’s vocals have that aching vulnerability and natural humanity we’ve come to associate with Jeff Tweedy. But at the same time, there’s something here that belongs to Tournet alone. These 11 songs of struggle, abiding hope and hard-earned acceptance—each resolving into a memorable chorus resolution—chart an internal world that is deeply personal yet universally relatable.

To create this world, Tournet called on some skilled and simpatico fellow artists: Mike Kamoo (The Stereotypes, The Loons, Lights On), who engineered and mixed the album at his Earthling Studios in San Diego; drummer Austin Beede (formerly of Alberta Cross); fellow Vermont natives Lowell Thompson and Kelly Ravin, who blended their voices with Tournet’s for some soaring harmonies; and Grace Potter, who co-wrote “Treasure” and “The Longing,” dueting with her longtime bandmate on the latter. Apart from the drums, Scott played all the instruments except for Ravin’s acoustic on “The Longing.” He and Kamoo started tracking in the spring of 2012, calling on Beede to handle the drum parts after Scott realized his own drumming wasn’t up to the level the music required.

“That’s really when the process opened up,” Scott recalls. “I would play guitar, bass or keyboards along with Austin on drums, and we would record what we did to tape. We did eight or nine songs that way, and then he headed home to Santa Barbara. Over the next couple weeks, Mike and I tackled a song a day and I overdubbed all the other necessary instruments/sounds as we saw fit. Once we got the music where we wanted it, Lowell and Kelly flew in from Vermont and laid down harmony vocals. Kelly and I also tracked ‘The Longing’ on acoustics.”

There was still work to be done, including Tournet’s lead vocals, when he rejoined GPN, who were booked as the opening band on a stadium tour. Using a portable rig, Scott recorded in hotel rooms and on the bus. “We recorded Grace’s vocal for ‘The Longing’ in a football stadium locker room,” he recalls. Throughout the summer, Tournet engaged in a long-distance dialogue with and Kamoo back in his San Diego studio.” I would send vocal tracks digitally to Mike and he would piece them together for me. It was amazing and cool in the way that technology was allowing us to work on album together while being in different parts of the country. I never could have completed the record otherwise.”

In its flow—more like a tidal pull, really—VER LA LUZ moves along with a seeming effortlessness. But in truth, it didn’t come quickly, nor did it come easily—far from it.

“I made the record because I needed to make it,” says Tournet with the same candor that characterizes the album. “The songs and the writing of the songs consumed me for weeks and months at a time. The idea for making the record happened in the fall of 2011. I had just moved to San Diego. I didn’t really know anyone. I had a fair amount of half-finished songs or small ideas for songs—lots of music without words. I had recently gone through a prolific time when I was writing music very fluidly, but for some reason I could not for the life of me come up with anything to say on top of the music.

“In September of 2011, I had a bit of a personal breakdown,” he acknowledges. “Years of life on the road, a crumbling relationship and some issues with depression brought me too my knees. It was the most intense time I’ve been through in my life. I got broken down to the point where I had to let go of all ego and pride and ask for help. My friends and family picked me up and dusted me off, and I also got some professional help, which was long overdue. As I began to pull myself back together and to really address the things that I’d been covering up for so many years, these songs came flooding out. It was as if they were waiting to be written but couldn’t be written until I opened myself up.”

That opening up is vividly documented in these songs and performances, which form a gripping narrative arc of loss, yearning and redemption as psychologically wrenching as it is musically luminous. Among the album’s numerous stunners are the opening “Lights Go Down,” which hauntingly sets the album’s reflective tone; the driving yet buoyant “Treasure”; the lilting, Latin-tinged “Song for You”; the Cali-style midtempo cruiser “Demons,” overhung with harmonies as shimmering as a Pacific sunset; the aptly titled ballad “The Longing”; the anxious nocturne “Here All Night”; and the epic “Stand By You,” which resolves into a blazingly impassioned guitar solo—one of just a few on the album, though each is mind-blowing, as Tournet cannily picked his spots to let loose. “I love the guitar and am most definitely a guitar player,” he says, “but that’s not what this album is about. My main objective was to say something with the subject matter. Only after that did I get to indulge in lead guitar parts and sonic landscapes.”

VER LA LUZ, which translates from the Spanish as to see the light, is not only the album’s title but also its theme. “The record is about getting your ass kicked, getting the wind knocked out of you, waking up in the morning and not being able to get up—being paralyzed by life,” Tournet explains. “But really, it’s about those first moments where you can see something beyond the despair and ugliness—like eating a saltine cracker after having the stomach flu for two days; that glorious and delicious first bite. Or like being in the ocean and getting caught under a wave—then you finally find up and you gasp in that first breath of air. This album resides within that moment. It comes from darkness, pain and ugliness, but the songs themselves are the light that contrasts with all of that.

“Even the ‘love’ songs can be read as love songs to life itself,” he continues, “although they describe the journey of losing one long-term partner, falling in love with someone new and what that transition is like. “‘Ex-Lover’ is a farewell to life, in a way; there’s an eerie calm there. ‘Here in the Morning’ could be about rediscovering a love for life again, and ‘Crawl Back’ could be about accepting life on its terms and beginning the long journey back to happiness.”

As for the album title, Scott explains, “I was driving along the coastline and listening to some rough tracks and I saw this sign that read ‘Ver la Luz.’ It was on this funky mailbox, and the sign was pointing towards the sun and ocean. I didn’t even know what it meant at that point, but I jotted it down and ended up looking it up later that night. Only later did I realize that the lyrics ‘see the light’ appear in ‘Not Too Late.’”

When asked about specific influences or reference points for the album, Tournet singles out Louis C.K (“the way he looks at life and humanity is just so dead-on,” he notes) and the brilliant HBO series Six Feet Under (“I could write a thesis on that show”). “I’ve come to a point where I’m finding inspiration from nonmusical things just as much as musical things,” he says. But there is one central musical inspiration for VER LA LUZ.

“George Harrison’s solo work really was the main ingredient for me,” Scott reveals. “His songs like ‘Isn’t It a Pity,’ ‘All Things Must Pass,’ ‘My Sweet Lord’ and ‘Beware of Darkness,’ among others, touched me deeply. Someone described them as ‘spiritual love songs.’ They were waiting for me at my lowest point and gave me something to hang on to. VER LA LUZ is, in some ways, my personal All Things Must Pass. I hope on some small scale that my songs can help someone else out through a rough time and give them hope.”

The album closes with the devastating existential ballad “Crawl Back,” to which Tournet wordlessly brings a palpable feeling of resilience and redemption by way of a distinctly Harrisonian slide guitar passage—a fitting touch for this musically invigorating and emotionally powerful piece of work. If ever an album deserved to be singled out as a sleeper, VER LA LUZ is it.

Bud Scoppa
March 2013