While his career in the spotlight really took off nearly 30 years ago as the director of the cult film and Renée Zellweger vehicle Love and a .45, as well as a music video for The Reverend Horton Heat, one of the artists featured on that movie’s soundtrack, CM Talkington resurfaced a few years ago with his debut album Not Exactly Nashville, a sober and sobering look at the expansive time period between the two projects that saw him wandering the metaphorical desert through addiction, cancer, and other obstacles only to find himself again with the help of an acoustic guitar.
Fast forward to 2023, and Talkington is already gearing up for the release of his solo album, Texas Radio—a lighter affair creating some distance between the darkness of his recent past with the help of collaborators Zellweger and Butthole Surfer’s Paul Leary. “I’ve definitely been on a harrowing and somewhat mythic journey for the past 30 years,” he shares. “I’ve wandered through a seemingly endless desert of addiction and soul sickness into the valley of near death, where I was transmuted on an operating table, marked with a cross-shaped scar across my torso, and born for the first time like a butterfly. I’ve been burnin’ my dross for 30 years, and this record’s what's left in the crucible. It’s pure. It’s spiritual. It’s my milk of human kindness.”
In fact, “Milk of Kindness” is the name of the record’s second single, a gentle acoustic guitar and jaw harp number at times recalling a Southwestern Cat Stevens that’s as healing as a trip to the apothecary. “‘Milk of Kindness’ is a human magic campfire song, channeled from the river, about fermenting our natural gifts into nectar for the world like bees,” he shares before diving into the track’s familial origins. “I was in Dallas on Christmas day in 2012 with my whole family. It was the last time we were all together before my mom got sick. I’ll never forget it. The room was bathed in golden sunlight and I was feeling all this warm love for my family, and suddenly my whole body started tingling and something just lifted me out of my chair and sent me flying back to the garage where I had a guitar, and the song just started gushing out of me… ‘Milk of Kindness’ was born whole like a baby, kickin’ and screamin’, from the sacred flame.”
Hear the song below, and pre-order Texas Radio here.
