Big Sur means different things to different people. For some, the familiarity of that rugged central Californian coastline is thanks to Apple and macOS Big Sur and its colourful array of desktop wallpapers of the area. For me, it’s thanks to literature…I first heard of the location through the post-war Beat Generation author Jack Kerouac. Following the publication of Kerouac’s On The Road in 1957, he was desperately needing to get away from the attention his novel brought to his personal life. So, following in the footsteps of the writer Henry Miller who lived in Big Sur at the time, he headed to the area and stayed at the late poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti‘s cabin in Bixby Canyon, Big Sur for that much-needed respite “to get away to solitude again or die”.
His stay there also fuelled his novel Big Sur in which the character Jack Duluoz (a semi-autobiographical figure based on Keraouc) battles with his demons…a journey out of hedonism that ends in the long poem Sea – Sounds of the Pacific Ocean at Big Sur.
The area is pretty unspoilt, thanks to the protection the land receives from development so it still looks as amazing now as it did in 1960. For Holly Lerski, the place delivered on all fronts as she reveals today with the release of her new double A-side single, which features the song “Mighty Big Sur“, a love song to Big Sur that, dappled in a West Coast vibe, captures the magic of the place perfectly:
“Ever since reading Kerouac as a teen, I’d always dreamt of driving the Pacific Highway to Big Sur. It’s where I ended up on both of my US songwriting road trips in 2019. With that bohemian, creative vibe going on, as soon as I got there I felt I’d come home. There’s just something about that rugged coastline and those piney forests.
“Then this year in lockdown, my friend James ‘Hutch’ Hutchinson, (Bonnie Raitt’s bassist) sent me an instrumental he’d written and recorded while working with Crosby, Stills and Nash. He’d helped me record some of my songs in LA in November 2019, and thought I might have some lyrics for it. When I heard it, I fell in love with it. It had that real West Coast feel and just reanimated the hippy beatnik fantasy I have of Big Sur in my head. My happy place. And a song fell out – a homage to Big Sur, West Coast and all things road-tripping.”
The accompanying press for the single tells more about this fascinating backstory – Mighty Big Sur is teamed up with Holly’s song Carmel, written on Carmel Beach, California, while following an American road trip in 2019. It was recorded in the States before the pandemic and involved four Grammy Award winners – Hutch on bass, Tony Braunagel on drums, Diego Garcia on electric guitar, and sound mixing was by Johnny Lee Schell (who also provided the studio).
Key to this whole story is one of those award winners – bass player James ‘Hutch’ Hutchinson who gave her the initial music track for Mighty Big Sur and plays on both the single’s songs and Holly’s previous release Home Is Your Shoulder.
Hutch toured with Crosby, Stills and Nash in the 1990s, as well as playing on several of their records, and wrote the music whilst working with the iconic trio.
Holly said: “David Crosby and Graham Nash always encouraged him to do something with the track, but he had it hidden away. Graham nagged him to do something with it recently so Hutch sent it to me in January and the lyric literally fell out. I wrote it one lunchtime and recorded the vocals in my back room. A homage to California, as I was missing it so much. Hutch did everything else.”
Mighty Big Sur has received praise from American singing star Bonnie Raitt after being played it by Hutch, her bass player. He told Holly: “She absolutely loved it. Loved your vocals and everything about it.”
Holly sees the AA-side single as the perfect song to bring us out of lockdown and into summer with renewed optimism.
She said: “Last year was so tough for us all. I was a week away from returning to LA when they shut down travel. I even got COVID later that year – but I carried on making music and Hutch and I managed to release Home Is Your Shoulder. This year it feels like the tide’s turning in the world. We’re starting to feel optimistic again. And Hutch and I want to celebrate that with a summer AA-side single the colour of the ocean (blue vinyl).”
The single is out today and available on streaming services and via Bandcamp here: https://hollylerski.bandcamp.com/
For more information and the latest tour dates, please visit: https://hollylerski.com
Photo Credit: Abby Dees