First new album in four decades from "one-man Beatles" Emitt Rhodes due in February

Emitt Rhodes' new album Rainbow Ends is out February 26 on Omnivore Recordings. Watch clip below.

Emitt Rhodes began his career in his teens, as drummer for the SoCal band The Palace Guard. He eventually took the reigns as leader of The Merry Go Round, who scored pop hits with “Live” and “You’re a Very Lovely Woman” in the late 1960s. At the release of his critically acclaimed eponymous debut in 1971, he gained a reputation as a “one-man Beatles,” since he wrote, recorded and produced the album in his home studio. But then, the way many music stories unfurl, after battling bad contracts and industry demands, Rhodes saw his last release, Farewell To Paradise, in 1973. Emitt Rhodes never recorded another full-length LP. Until now.

On February 26, Omnivore Recordings will release Rainbow Ends, Emitt Rhodes’ first new studio album in 43 years, on CD, Digital and gatefold, colored vinyl. A PledgeMusic campaign has been set up for pre-orders, offering exclusive collectibles, the album itself, and even a day in Rhodes’ studio. Details are available at www.pledgemusic.com/emittrhodes

After connecting with producer Chris Price in 2013, Rhodes revived his home studio with help from Price and an all-star band, all of whom had been enamored of Rhodes’ work: Roger Joseph Manning Jr. and Jason Falkner (both solo artists, members of Jellyfish, and currently in Beck’s studio and touring band), indie producer and musician Fernando Perdomo, Rooney’s Taylor Locke and New Pornographers’ drummer Joe Seiders. They would cut the new record live in that space.

More special guests appeared to make this momentous release even more special: Aimee Mann, Susanna Hoffs (Bangles), composer and producer Jon Brion, Wilco’s Nels Cline and Pat Sansone, Bleu, and Probyn Gregory & Nelson Bragg from Brain Wilson’s band, among others. What was achieved is more than what folks thought would ever happen. They made Emitt’s first full-length in more than four decades.

Rainbow Ends is comprised of eleven new Emitt Rhodes songs for longtime fans who’d held onto their out-of-print ABC albums, for those who found out about Rhodes via “Lullaby” being featured in The Royal Tennenbaums, and for the uninitiated who’d heard their favorite artists and friends rave about his small, but truly vital and influential catalog.

Producer Price says, “I view this as a continuation album, meaning it isn’t meant to be recreating the sound from his first record, but instead what he might have sounded like after his third album, Farewell To Paradise, if he kept making music in the mid-to-late ’70s.”

According to Rhodes, “I had a spurt there, you know. I just wrote a whole bunch of songs. I’m just gonna write what my heart tells me, because that’s the only thing that really matters, isn’t it? Sometimes you don’t know, and then the light goes on and you do know.

“The music is very good on this record. I think that these guys are all wonderful players and there’s all sorts of interesting stuff. I hope people like it, and I want you young guys to be able to get your due.
 “I think whenever it happens, it happens on time.”

In March, Emitt Rhodes will showcase at SXSW 2016 with more dates in the works.