Half wide wake, but dreaming

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Recorded live at Dog House Studios in Nashville, Tennessee, this album is a collection of harmonically-intricate stories capturing a shared essence of middle America mixed with outback and urban Australia. Stories of being apart from the ones you love and an uprising of yourself in a world that wants to hold you back. The 10-song release is set for Friday, July 16th 2021, on the bands own label, Two Hands Records.

In making the record, The Winnie Blues worked with Producer/Mixer Nick Bullock and built a band of world-class musicians to capture their sound. With Ryan Brewer (drums & piano), Cam Carrus (bass), Chris Lippincott (pedal steel) and Joanna Sugermeli (strings), ‘Half Wide Awake, but Dreaming’ is at times lush, uplifting and sprawling, and at other times sparse, intimate, and devastating.

The band’s core is made up of Alice Beatty and Cameron Potts. If you know them, you know their accents are not from ‘round here. The meeting of the pair could surely one day be written into a screenplay. Both are originally from Australia, however despite their common home ground, that is not where they met.

In the Spring of 2016, Potts (who had lived in NYC for some years) was at Rockwood Music Hall to see a Ruby Boots show. Little did he know at the time, he was standing shoulder to shoulder with Beatty, who had just moved to the city 1 week prior. The pair heard each other’s Australian accents and bonded over a beer. They went their separate ways that evening and did not encounter each other again until a serendipitous meeting 8 months later at Mickey’s Tavern in Nashville, TN. Unbeknownst to either of them, they had both separately moved south and were living in the same neighbourhood. 

Starting their writing partnership shortly after that second meeting, Beatty describes it as “like breathing properly for the first time. Sitting in that room with Cam, generally speaking, there is such an ease in his disposition. I remember thinking how musically talented he was, but there was an absence of ego. I was also caught off guard by his ability to actively listen and seek to understand without judgement. No idea was too small or too silly. That all happened in the first 5 mins of our co-write, so with this level of comfort and confidence in each other- the songs just started tumbling out of us.” From there, the two began compiling and creating a collection of songs and stories. Some personal, some written from a social commentary perspective. But retrospectively, listening to the songs on the album, it could seem that their art became the biggest predictor of their story as a pair. 

‘Half Wide Awake, but Dreaming’ flirts with the Americana-genre, by gently caressing parts of its main domains- country, singer-songwriter, folk and sexy pop (what?).

As part of their debut album launch, The Winnie Blues are set to tour across the U.S through late-summer/fall of 2021, starting with their album launch at Nashville’s famous Dee’s Country Cocktail Lounge on Friday July 30th. Initial dates are listed below, stay tuned for full tour dates!