Six months after Tucson singer-songwriter Brian Lopez dropped his fourth solo album “Tidal,” he’s finally performing a hometown CD release concert at Club Congress on Saturday, Jan. 6.
He would’ve done it sooner, but 2023 was a pretty busy year for the Tucson native.
There was the European and American tours with Calexico to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Tucson’s band’s breakthrough fourth studio album “Feast of Wire.” Lopez played guitar, bass and lent vocals for the band in addition to being the opening act.
He was on the road for a half dozen shows with Americana/folk band DeVotchKa and still managed to squeeze in 56 shows under his name, many in support of the new album.
Lopez’s Arizona dates — he’s in Phoenix on Friday, Jan. 5, before his Congress show — kick off what he expects will be another busy year. From here, he takes his “Tidal Winter Tour” to Europe in late January for two weeks of shows in Paris and Belgium.
“Tidal” is Lopez’s first solo album since 2018’s “Prelude” — an album he wrote and recorded in his bedroom over a two-week stretch to satisfy his former record deal — and the XIXA cofounder’s first studio album since 2014’s “Static Noise.”
His experience with his former record label “left a sour taste in my mouth,” he said, and for the first time in his music career that went back to his early 20s as frontman of the Tucson buzz band Mostly Bears, Lopez fell out of love with songwriting.
Then along came the pandemic in 2020.
“The pandemic allowed me some time to reflect on my relationship with music and my relationship with the process of creating songs and whether or not I was still in love with the process,” Lopez said. “I hadn’t really thought of that in a decade. I had just done it and I don’t think I really liked it for a while; I just did it. So I had to make a deal with myself, really. I actually had time to think and really gather like a protocol for what a serious career as a songwriter looks like to me.”
Lopez spent the latter half of 2020 and the early months of 2021 writing and recording the album, which includes collaborations with his longtime friend Scottish singer-songwriter KT Tunstall, Calexico’s John Convertino, Lauren Cervantes with Black Pumas and others, all contributing digitally due to COVID restrictions.
With his friend and XIXA co-founder Gabriel Sullivan producing, Lopez recorded “Tidal” at the XIXA’s Dust and Stone Recording Studio before sending it off in spring 2021 to be mixed and mastered in Los Angeles.
Then came the waiting game as he shopped the album to small indie labels.
“It fell through the hands of a couple different labels,” he said. “I thought I had a deal and then I didn’t then I had to kind of start from scratch.”
Los Angeles-based indie label Cosmica Artists stepped in and agreed to release the album last July. It was quickly embraced by critics including Psychedelic Scene Magazine’s Jeanette Diaz, who called “Tidal” “a lush, dream-like collection of songs and guitar-driven storytelling that conjure the melodic melancholy of Elliott Smith and Nick Drake and swirling atmospherics of Radiohead’s ‘OK Computer’ while staying true to Lopez’s signature desert noir sound. He delves into darkness without succumbing to it — masterfully merging heartbreak with hope.”
Lopez said “Tidal” marks a fresh start for his solo career and a new beginning for his songwriting.
“It definitely feels like a new life, a second start. Not everyone gets a second chance at this and I am very lucky and fortunate,” he said. “I feel more confident than ever in my ability to create a song and if anything to have fun with music again after a long time of not having much fun. And that’s really the key to anything you do in life, to find the joy in the craft and everything will fall in place.”
Saturday’s 21-and-older CD release show at Club Congress, 311 E. Congress St., begins at 7 p.m. with special guest Nicosa. Tickets are $18 in advance through hotelcongress.com or $22 day of show.
