Texan songwriter Casper Allen has been making a name for himself within the alt-country scene for a few years now, though it wasn’t until recently that he conceived of a track so ambitious that it required a backing band to bring it to fruition. “It’s pretty fuckin’ far out compared to my past solo records—really different on all levels,” the songwriter shares, explaining how he enlisted his longtime friend and fellow touring songwriter Shawn Hess on bass and his new pal R. Cooper Long on drums to record his new track “Damned Old Sun.” “I tried playing it at solo shows a few times and it just didn’t feel right, so I just kind of tucked it away for a few months until me and Shawn started talking about playing and recording together.”
Thus, Casper Allen & the Naturals were born, a three-piece band specializing in sun-soaked vintage rock and roll by way of classic pop, folk, Americana, and R&B (“I was listening to Roy Orbison’s Crying non-stop and reading a bunch of Yeats at the time,” Allen notes, “so apologies to Roy or Willie Butler if I accidentally swiped any ideas”). The trio recorded the single to a 4-track machine shortly after Allen introduced the composition to his soon-to-be band, with their third take being the one heard on the polished-up new single. “I really can’t stress enough how crazy the vibe was in that room,” Allen contends. “Shawn and I had toured together playing solo sets of our own songs and had gotten pretty close, but we’d never really even jammed with each other. I’d only met Coop once before... I’ve been in studios with crack sidemen and it’s never felt that good that fast. It was fucking immediate.”
While “Damned Old Sun” will appear on a new EP set for release in the coming months, for now we just have the track and its official music video to go by. Filmed while Allen was visiting LA in the eerie aftermath of the wildfires, the clip finds the songwriter making the most of things while busting out a few moves—albeit fairly self-consciously. “That little part where I’m on the side of the road in the Lexus—people were driving by honking and laughing at me, so we went on down to the park area and did some more stuff down there,” he recalls, assuring us he is “not a dancer.” “I really wish I could go back and revise some of my moves in the final video, but I guess sometimes you just gotta say ‘fuck it’ and dance.”
Check out the song (and Allen’s moves) below.
