On the heels of their 2024 Roll It Out LP, New Orleans’ The Deslondes strove to do something a little different with their latest collection of songs. Don’t Let It Die Vol. 1 sees the country-folk collective dipping into the proverbial great American songbook for a series of covers, including their takes on Johnny Cash, Swamp Dogg, and Shelby Lynne—along with several of their peers, who they hope to lift to the level of great-American-songbook canonization. The end result sees the band making these songs their own while paying homage to some of the figures—both communal and mythical—who helped pave the way for them.
Somewhere in between the songwriting icons and local heroes lies the artist behind the album cut that lends the collection its name, a bit of an outlier even beyond the fact that he wasn’t American. “‘Don’t Let It Die’ is a single by the not-so-well-known, but more-well-known-than-you-think, Hurricane Smith, a.k.a. Norman Smith,” the band’s Riley Downing shares. “Unbeknownst to many, he engineered all of the Beatles EMI recordings from 1960 to ’65, as well as three records by Pink Floyd, including their first. He originally wrote this song as a demo with hopes John Lennon would record it, but put it on his own record. [It was one] of his first singles, which would ride to #2 in the UK for a short period of time.
“Lucky for me,” he continues, “that meant they made a lot of copies, and during a spare hour, a smoke, and a walk around the block before soundcheck while on the Deslondes’ second tour in Europe, I stumbled into a small record store. All the 45s look completely different than the ones in the US. I was out of my element, but his name particularly stood out amongst the rest of the singles I was flipping through, and the song titles intrigued me so much that I purchased it for around a pound or less. Unheard of. When I finally was able to listen to it, I had one of those goosebump moments you can only have when you find a really special new-to-you song in the wild. I became obsessed with the single and its production and just the sound of Hurricane singing with a voice only a mother could love. The band listened to it on repeat the rest of that tour and still do.”
For their “Neighborhoods” session, the band filmed a performance of the track while on the road in Laramie, Wyoming. Watch them play through the tune below, and listen to the full covers collection here.
