It’s been almost a decade since singer-songwriter Conor Donohue relocated to New Orleans from Charleston. And while his plans to return home continued to be thwarted by connections in the Big Easy — romantic and otherwise — his musical output continues to show strong collaborative traces from the diaspora of musicians he’s met in both places.
Just like on 2019’s Let Love Contaminate, a record that seems to trace Donohue’s journey southward, the singer-songwriter once again collaborated heavily with Charleston multi-instrumentalist Joel T. Hamilton (Mechanical River, Working Title) on his new album Stray Dogs, with both Hamilton and the New Orleans–based Emily Eck (Arcade Fire, Dr. John) getting production credits. Among the liner notes you’ll also see a whole host of former and current Charleston scene musicians, from Slow Runner’s Michael Flynn and Josh Kaler to percussionist Nic Jenkins to lap steel guitarist Tyler Ross.
According to Donohue, the bulk of the recording was done in two sessions during 2020 and 2021 at the height of Covid-19, and utilized a core group that included Hamilton and Ross, as well as drummer Ron Wiltrout and bassist George Baerreis. The finished arrangements, however, came together gradually over the last few years, with Donohue recording and trading overdubs with the co-producer and numerous others as he tinkered with the songs and arrangements in his home studio.
“I was just endlessly working on it there in my music room back in New Orleans,” he recalls. “I would fire stuff to Joel [Hamilton], he would give me notes, and then I would just keep on hammering away.”
While the songs on the album retain the wry introspection and existential lamentations that Donohue became known for in the Holy City scene, it also feels like a natural evolution for the singer-songwriter. There’s more of a groove base to the arrangements, which decenter the rhythm guitar in favor of dominant bass lines or propulsive percussion as the guiding principle.
“I try to not just work with a guitar in my hands,” Donohue explained. “There’s an old Tom Waits saying that ‘your hands are like dogs, they go to familiar places.’ So when I’m on a guitar, I’m very much in my hands, going to familiar places. They go to where they are comfortable, and the stuff that comes out is very comfortable, but if I’m on a wurlitzer, if I’m playing bass, if I’m just going for a walk and trying to sing a melody, sometimes it opens it up a little bit easier to find something a little bit different.”
The result is evident in songs like “Feel That Hit” and “Franklin & Royal,” where the rhythm section and vocals are enough to carry the song as the guitars and keys spurt in and out of the mix. It’s a little jazzy, a little Waitsian, even a little Radiohead — and 100% Donohue.
He also credits his rhythm section of Wiltrout and Baerreis for their contributions, as well as collaborators like Nic Jenkins, who would send him potential drum loops and different parts to spur the composition process.
Lyrically, many of these songs seem like a reflection of Donohue’s maturing life in New Orleans. He’s both part-settled with a long-time partner and a clear sense of community in the city, but also working as a bartender with a staff he affectionately describes as “psychopaths” in a place that gives him a front row seat to the ecological shifts of climate change. Songs like “Apocalypse Industry” and the title track, he said, were literally penned while closing up the bar in moments of pure inspiration.
The meditative period of early Covid-19 lockdowns played a big part in the writing and recording process as well, he noted, given the reduced hours and hum of human activity in a town that thrives on it.
“I wasn’t working as much. People weren’t going out as much,” Donahue said. “I had time to almost be a full-time musician, which I’d never been able to do in my life before.”
Some of the political content on the record, like “Wait” and “River,” the latter of which was directly inspired by a protest speech in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, also stemmed from this time period. Even at his most scathing or downhearted, however, Donohue, as always, manages to find a glimmer of hope and warmth in his bleak narratives.
“That’s pretty much how my brain works,” he said. “It’s like, ‘What’s the world going to be like in three years? Are we all going to be washed away? Financial collapse, wars waging everywhere, nuclear explosion, blah blah blah.’ You just try to focus on the breath, focus on the moment.
“This record is definitely big-picture, but also full of the kind of those smaller moments, whether it’s bike rides or being in love or nice dinners with your partner and friends or just focusing on your health. Taking those moments for yourself is important too.”
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