Echo Sparks

Often forgotten is the long agricultural heritage of the great state of California and the country and western music that has grown up out the stories of the working life of small towns, orchards, and farms. The sounds of this other California come to life on ‘Ghost Town Girl,’ the new album from the talented trio Echo Sparks. The 10 tracks are built around the tandem vocals of CC Kinnick and DA Valdez, who are supported on upright bass from Cindy Ballriech and surrounded by guitar tones that are equal parts jangle and twang, along with some creative percussion, accordion and organ.

The album opens with a rollicking western rocker of lost love, “Broken Arrow,” then easing back a gear for the loping road song “Rolling 60’,” that paints a picture of the California countryside. The swinging “Princess of Fresno” is a detailed dishing on a gal who’s a bit full of herself. The lovely waltz ‘Mexican Moon’ highlights the partnership of the skilled vocal duo and the dichotomy of Kinnick’s smooth alto and the gritty tenor of Valdez. The danceable “Shallow Water” has some fine Bob Wills styled flair, and you can smell the dust and kerosene of a barn dance in the title track, punctuated by banjo and marching snare. Kinnick stretches out playing a women scorned during the saucy “Torch Song,” before the album closes with another high lonesome love song, “I Think It’s You.” - Rick Bowen, Innocent Words Magazine and Records

Ghost Town Girl, Echo Sparks. It’s no surprise that this trio’s infectious debut—billed as “sounds of the new Old West”—comes out of Orange County, California. What is surprising is that it comes out of the year 2015. The male/female harmony vocals and country-influenced folk/rock have less in common with contemporary music than with late 1960s/early 1970s acts like the Stone Poneys, It’s a Beautiful Day and the duets of Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris. Expect twangy guitars, strong melodies and hints of rockabilly and south-of-the-border music. - James Burton, No Depression

Ghost Town Girl

Echo Sparks

Leapin' Llama Records; 10 tracks

Some records evoke a sense of place, creating palpable images of 1960s Belfast, 1920s New Orleans or points beyond. Some few records just create their own place, an imagined or idealized world apart from this one, but bordering it sufficiently for its gravity to pull you in.

Such is "Ghost Town Girl" by OC's Echo Sparks. The album's 10 tracks use every gear on the roots-rock stick shift, yet even the trio's most upbeat tunes are laden with an eerie, fogbound mood. The place it evokes feels like California, but a California haunted by the scent of orange groves long after the groves are gone; where the Bakersfield sound is supplanted by the whine of tumbleweeds caroming down abandoned boulevards; and where the Hotel California has some decidedly Overlookian overtones.

Little of this creepy vibe is spelled out by the lyrics, which for the most part offer only slightly skewed stories of frayed and disconnected love. Instead, it is the music, and especially the vocal harmonies between the trio's CC Kinnick and DA Valdez, that propel the songs into Outer Limits territory.

Kinnick and Valdez's voices stand well on their own, in a ballpark with the likes of Emmylou Harris or the Byrds' Gene Clark. As for their blended sound, only fans of the 1990s gothic country band Tarnation might be prepared for Echo Sparks' disquieting harmonies. Their voices lay atop each other like Pendleton blankets, muffling the edges and meanings of words, but you can tell they're telling ghost stories under there.

The album was produced by the trio — rounded out by acoustic bassist Cindy Ballreich, who delivers sturdy, empathetic backing throughout — and was recorded for the most part in power pop king Walter Clevenger's Costa Mesa studio, Brewery Records. The result has garnered a glowing review in the alt-country bible No Depression, and it will most likely glow on your home stereo as well.

"Ghost Town Girl," the title track, is also the album's standout. Kinnick and Valdez's harmonies here have a circular quality, like a hymn circling the drain, while the lyrics seem wrapped in mist:

In your shadowy mind, I was panning for gold

I would stake my claim, but it has all been sold

We kicked up some dust and we tumbled some weeds

It's so haunting my love, living in a dream…

I could give you my love, you're so out of this world

Things just don't work out with a ghost town girl.

The aptly named "Torch Song" gives Kinnick a chance to raise her expressive voice to a sultry strut, while Valdez's keening guitar darts between clouds.

The band's website, http://www.echosparks.com, hosts a bogus bio claiming, "Echo Sparks was formed in 1923, deep in the mines of Cerro Gordo." It further asserts that Valdez — who wrote nine of the 10 songs, along with providing vocals, guitar lines, drums, banjo and percussion — "was born during the strife and bloodshed of the Mexican Revolution."

But the mystery here is that the guy is no great mystery. Valdez is hardly the type to go loping through the desert, brushing his teeth with a creosote bush. No, he's a mild-mannered musician who drummed for years with the OC's venerable Pontiac Brothers, and who, by day, managed Orange's Pepperland Records and today runs his own shop, Beatnik Bandito Music Emporium in Santa Ana. In a short time, the small store/venue has become a mainstay in the downtown arts scene, in large part because Valdez acts as a tireless promoter of other people's art and music. Who knew he was bubbling over with words, licks and a reservoir of noir of his own?

If you're ever lost in a dirt road canyon on the way to Brawley in a '64 Plymouth, "Ghost Town Girl" would be an ideal soundtrack. It will probably sound just as good in a Duffy boat in the bay, so long as the fog is in.

—Jim Washburn - Jim Washburn, The Daily Pilot