Denny Smith & Joshua Ketchmark From The Larimores Special Guests On 4/19/2021

If it pleases the court, I’d like to forego the standard bio, and testify as to what exactly transpired that led Joshua and I; after nearly 30 years of friendship and untold collaborative endeavors, to finally release a joint effort as The Larimores.

Sometime in 2018, the two of us got involved in writing what was originally intended to be become a solo album, for an artist who had recently parted ways with his band under somewhat acrimonious circumstances. The instructions were slightly vague, but having worked with this vocalist in the past, we thought we had a pretty good idea of the parameters we’d need to be mindful of while crafting material specifically for him.

So we set to work, squeezing in writing sessions once or twice a week, eventually cranking out demos of maybe a dozen songs, before the project came screeching to a halt, when the voice intended to be the vehicle for our compositions slammed on the brakes in order to take a position fronting a new band.

OK then, back to the proverbial drawing board.

Nope.

Rather than “part out” the spoils of our labor, and re-assign them to various other works in progress, we made the decision to pluck a handful of our favorites, and dress them up right, enlisting a few trusted associates to help us turn our rough sketches into slightly more refined art. Joshua donned his Producer/Engineer hat, and assumed the responsibility of collecting and polishing tracks from various studios and sessions, deciding what needed to be replaced with “proper” performances rather than just “scratch takes”, and eventually molding it all into a cohesive 4-song collection of “singles” we dubbed ‘The Hail Mary EP’.

Stylistically, this EP is a tip of the hat to several shared influences, with “For The Record” utilizing as many of the lessons from Cheap Trick 101 as we could cram into a 4-minute tune, “Over The Moon” taking us back to where it arguably all began, as we attempt the best impersonation of Oasis aping The Beatles we could manage without George Martin on hand to assist, “Beautiful & Tragic” the result of having worn out multiple cassette copies of Bon Jovi’s ‘New Jersey’, and “Thrift Store Hearts” our take on an imagined Westerberg/Whiskeytown summit. All combined, it’s the sound of two guys who grew up in the Midwest, shamelessly tapping an old vein to see what it might produce after years away from the source.

-Denny Smith (March 2021)