Pancake Song

Shady Maples front man Owen Roberts' 2016 EP, Mama Sun, produced by Drew Nix at Bird Creek Studios.

River's Song

October Arms

Mama Sun

The Only One

Tracks from Owen Roberts' 2007 album Bay to Maples, produced by Yair Evnine, featuring Greg Peters' first recordings on lap steel and harmony vocals by Megan Slankard

Blue River

Ya Sabia

Mattine a Modena

My old friend and former bandmate Gabriel Griffith brought a verse, hook and guitar and we scrambled together this song. We each wrote and sing two verses and bassist Alex Baum lay his first cello track on top, a nonchalant novice part by an old pro.

Surprised By Love

I wasn't feeling a guitar on this one so tried my hand at the tambourine and foot on stomp box run through the acoustic amp. If the tambourine hadn't clipped the voice memo mic and sounded like a sampled snare I wouldn't have posted the song.

Mama Sun Papa Shade

Shady Maples' debut 2012 album is a boiling concoction of acoustic, lapsteel and electric guitars, organs, mandolin, and harmony. Singer songwriter and guitarist Owen Roberts wraps "visceral lyrics" (SF Chronicle) around hard driving and kick back melodies for a sound that swells and recedes.

After two years touring the west coast and a successful crowd funding effort, Roberts and co-producer Greg Peters holed up at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley with drummer Trent Boeschen, bassist Dennis Haneda, Brooklyn Bill Bell and his pump and Hammond organs, and Bay Area songstress Kelly McFarling. 

KQED describes the album as "perfectly Californian" in its lyrical treatment of nature and social consciousness, and NBC San Diego calls the sound "explosive" and "dynamic." Live they are joined by cellist Shira Lee Katz and Micah Dubreuil on keys.

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