California-based country/Americana singer-songwriter Julian Talamantez Brolaski (they/them) is set to release their album, It’s Okay Honey, independently on August 4th, 2023.

Slow, melancholy waltzes and rousing, upbeat numbers lend the album a variety of moods, and the album’s 12 songs combine the language of classic country with lyrical innovation and pacing that reflect Brolaski’s point of view as a transgender poet of mixed Mescalero and Lipan Apache, Latinx, and settler heritages.

Brolaski makes traditional, inventive Americana music, adding poetic lyricism to melodies inspired by some of country and western music’s original recording stars and most beloved sounds. Classical piano lessons, the poetry and queer country music scenes on both coasts, and years spent studying languages gave Brolaski the foundation to create “sweet, cutting, and melancholy” (Country Queer) music with various bands and now as a solo artist.

1. Racin the Train
2. Sittin in the Space
3. Gourd Flower
4. No More Lonesome Heartache
5. Just Like a Man
6. Goin to Nashville
7. Covid-19 Blues
8. Buddy
9. It’s Okay Honey
10. Joyin in Joy
11. Goodbye Brother
12. When I Go with You

The album opens on the perfectly jaunty Racin the Train and the melodic dancefloor swirl of Sittin in the Space, and then seamlessly follows those up with the lonesome ode Gourd Flower, the countrified honky-tonk of the album’s first single, No More Lonesome Heartache (called “both a love song and a lust song” by Brolaski), and both the embracing Just Like a Man and the low slung two-step of Goin to Nashville.

Along next is the blues-hued balladry of Covid-19 Blues (a song built around the Blues tradition of songs about illness) and the upbeat and playful Buddy and they are in turn backed by the reassuring, titular It’s Okay Honey (a song that’s built to soothe in times of difficulty), the gently rambunctious Joyin in Joy, the album rounding out on the fervent rhythms within Goodbye Brother, closing on the ornately sculpted ballad When I Go with You.

“They’re meant to be songs of solace,” says Brolaski of the tracks on the new album. “They represent a range of emotional experience, but ultimately the goal is to be healing: to heal myself, and to solace listeners. I’m interested in the way that language and song function as medicine. My songs are infused with the enthusiasm of addressing a person you’re newly in love with and intending to elicit a response, make them feel pleasure, and heal their hurts.”

It’s Okay Honey was recorded in 2022 in Philadelphia, during Brolaski’s yearlong Pew Foundation fellowship-in-residence. While in Philly, they connected with a talented group of local musicians: renowned lap steel player Mike “Slo-Mo” Brenner (also the album’s co-producer), bassist Michael Frank, harmonica player and harmony vocalist Boaz Kim, composer and electric guitarist David Laganella, and drummer Mark Schreiber.

For their part, Brolaski found inspiration for their guitarwork in the picking style of Mother Maybelle Carter of the Carter Family; they also emulate the heartbroken yodeling of another musical muse, Hank Williams Sr., particularly on the aforementioned “Covid-19 Blues.”

Julian Talamantez Brolaski - It’s Okay Honey [Official Music Video]

Official Spotify Purchase Link

www.juliantalamantezbrolaski.com

Julian Talamantez Brolaski @ YouTube