Tying that mix together is Shiflett himself, a musical Renaissance Man whose influences are every bit as wide-ranging as his resumé. “ There’s nothing better than when influences converge taking you places you never expected.”Ĭaught halfway between the honky-tonk saloon and the punk rock dive bar, Lost at Sea is both eclectic and electric, making room for alt-country crunch, guitar-driven grit and sharp songwriting. “ I love that the musical inspiration on this one was late-stage Clash, but we wound up layering it with banjos and what-not. With its layers of reverb, pulsing percussion and Echoplex tape delay, ‘ Damage Control’ went through a number of versions before reaching its final form in the studio with Johnston. “ All the other tunes were written in the months leading up to recording, but when Jaren and I were sorting out which songs to do he mentioned something about The Clash and I remembered this old one I’d demoed about 15 years prior,” recalls Shiflett. It’s also the only ‘old’ tune that Johnston and Shiflett included on Lost at Sea.

‘ Damage Control’ is the track he’s referencing, which strays further from the country influence than most of the album. We made a guitar-centric record that encapsulates everything I’ve been listening to over the years, from the most country songs I’ve ever recorded to punk rock and even songs that sound like a California version of The Clash.”

He and I have a lot of overlap, in terms of the music we like. “ Then I began making trips to Nashville to work with Jaren. “ We wrote a lot of these songs during the lockdown,” recalls Shiflett, who spent much of the pandemic at home in Southern California. Most of the new album was recorded in Nashville, working with his producer and collaborator Jaren Johnston, frontman of The Cadillac Three, as well as the songwriter behind nearly a dozen Number 1 country hits.

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