The last time Tucson musician Amy Munoz made an album, it was a DIY affair that took a year.
Ten years later, Amy Munoz and the Strange Vacation pulled out all the stops on her long-awaited follow-up.
For “Nashville, California,” the band spent three days at El Paso’s iconic Sonic Ranch studios.
“It’s magical. ZZ Top has recorded there. Fiona Apple. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs,” Munoz recalled. “You walk in there and the vibe is there. It’s a really creative space.”
A release gig is planned for Friday, July 26, at Che’s Lounge on North Fourth Avenue.
The EP is a follow up to “Suicide on the AM Dial,” which Munoz recorded under her married name Amy Mendoza. Munoz described that album as a labor of love that felt disjointed.
“This album was different in that I really pulled together my bandmates and we gelled and had a cohesive collaboration,” she said.
“Nashville, California” was percolating in those years since “Suicide.” Since Munoz first formed Amy and the Strange Vacation, the band had been writing together with songs in various stages of completion, sidetracked by life events including Munoz’s divorce.
Early this year, Munoz decided it was time to commit to the recording.
“Half the songs were done, half the songs weren’t, but it was like I’m going to book this and just do it,” she said during a phone call from the UK, where she was on tour with the Bay Area band The Control Freaks.
One of the biggest hurdles Munoz had to overcome was carving out time for her original solo music while juggling a role in a number of bands including Billy Shaw Jr.’s country band and the all-female cover band Surf Broads, both in Tucson.
The Cali band was a project she picked up to keep her busy when she goes out for her monthly visits to spend time with her longtime partner, who lives in San Francisco.
“It feels easy to me so it doesn’t feel like a job,” she said of playing music. “Music is my therapist, the best therapist I’ve ever had.”
(Munoz knows a thing or two about therapy. Since 2009, she has worked as a therapist after earning a doctoral degree in behavioral health from the University of Arizona. She moved to Tucson from her native California in 2005 to attend the UA.)
“I’ve actually tried to go on a band diet, so to speak,” she said of walking away from most of her outside musical commitments. She still plays with Shaw’s band, where she said she learned a lot about playing country music after spending a lifetime playing rock.
In liner notes, “Nashville, California” is described as “broody rock-country” with elements of goth and country and lyrics that lean more poetry and stream of conscious than country’s storytelling.
The title is a play on her native Bakersfield, California, home of the Bakersfield Sound made famous by Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, Dwight Yoakam and the Hacienda Brothers, which the late Chris Gaffney and Dave Gonzalez — both of whom had lived in Tucson — formed in the Old Pueblo when they played a 40th birthday show for longtime music promoter Jeb Schoonover.
“They used to call Bakersfield Nashville, California,” Munoz said, adding that the title also “was a cheeky poke at the commercialism” of Music City.
Munoz and the band spent three days in February at the sprawling Sonic Ranch, located off a bumpy dirt road past a grove of pecan trees in tiny Tornillo, Texas, a hour southeast of El Paso. Musicians stay in one of the ranch’s five houses, some dating back to the 1930s.
The six on-site studios are equipped with vintage gear and instruments, including a 1927 Steinway grand piano and more than 55 vintage and modern guitars.
“I used the same bass that the bass player from David Bowie (Tim Lefebvre) used on one of his albums,” Munoz said with a pinch-me-I’m-dreaming giddiness to her voice. “The place is just built for musicians.”
Tucson producer Steven Tracy mixed the album at his Saint Cecilia Studios.
Friday’s 8 p.m. concert will be held at Che’s, 350 N. Fourth Ave., which can hold around 175 people.
“I could have picked a bigger venue but it was important to me to feel like I was surrounded by friends and family,” Munoz said of Che’s, the downtown bar that regularly hosts live concerts and never charges admission. “That’s a great venue for Tucson. They have been a pillar in the community and it felt very natural for me to pick that place.”
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