For their third release on Telarc, blues group Moreland & Arbuckle enlist the production expertise of Seattle-based record producer Matt Bayles (Mastodon, Minus the Bear, Soundgarden, The Sword). The resulting '7 Cities' is their best written, finest sounding and strongest performance to date.
Since their beginnings in the Kansas heartland, guitarist Aaron Moreland and vocalist/harpist Dustin Arbuckle have captured the visceral spirit and raw energy of the early 20th century Delta blues and distilled it all down to a hard-driving and powerful garage-rock configuration. For '7 Cities' the band is completed by new drummer Kendall Newby.
The 13 track album includes nine originals and opens with "Quivira", an area of Kansas, Moreland & Arbuckle's home state, where the Spanish explorer Francisco Vasquez de Coronado went on his search for Seven Cities of Gold in the 1500's. "The song is about ascent to power and - as so often happens when people seek great wealth or power - it all crumbles, and they come down", Arbuckle says. "That ended up being the thread for the album, right down to our version of Tears for Fears' Everybody Wants to Rule the World."
