Cavalo55 is the musical project of very well-travelled Simone Carugati, a multi-instrumentalist, folk singer-songwriter. Growing up in Northern Italy, Cavalo55 didn’t have much to do apart from learning how to play the guitar and dreaming that he was somewhere in America.
After playing in a few bands and studying at a film school, he quickly realized he’d never settle to be an armchair wanderer. As soon as he got a chance, he left Italy and travelled to Australia, Indonesia, Scotland, and the United States, where he mingled with anarchists and jammed with New Orleans’ music-loving crust punks. During those days of busking and train-hopping, he dug deep into the great legacy of old-time folk guitar music, absorbing the Delta blues of Robert Johnson, Blind Willie Johnson’s slide guitar, and picking up the Appalachian banjo.
A family emergency prompted him to fly back to Italy, and soon he made his way to Lisbon, Portugal, the westernmost part of the European Continent. After a short while, he was already playing with countless local artists, with these collaborations bolstering his reputation and songwriting. Now the right moment has presented itself for him to create and release the first songs under his own name as he looks to shape his musical identity as a solo artist. Debut EP ‘Late Harvest’ will follow in July.
His new single, Espresso Martini, is out tomorrow, a song about a relationship the artist had on his travels (which he talks of below). It’s a reminder that even if often fleeting, memories can often be everlasting, providing an ironic testimony that everything living is constantly changing, including songs, as this one did with its lyrics, tonalities, drums and eventually title changing over time.
Simone on Espresso Martini
“We met one night while I was busking in Byron Bay. She asked me if she could sing. She was really good; the crowd went wild.
We were lovers.
We parted ways and met some months later. She spent some time in a hippy commune up north. She was completely different, even though we were both soul searching, we were not on the same vibe anymore. The idea I had of her, rightfully crumbled with all my expectations as I saw her van rattling away through the lush green tropical rainforest surrounding the parking lot where we were hanging out. I turned the radio on, I had this old car I got from this guy with a glass eye, and it had a copy of Neil Young’s Harvest stuck in the cd player. So that was on all the time, and I was also diggin’ Townes Van Zandt a lot.
A couple of lines and chords, and this song first came out. Some months later we got together in Melbourne. I was really down at that time; one of my bandmates got deported. The band split, I was broke, and without a place to stay. She helped me out a lot, I stayed at her’s for a while.
We had a fun time, she was from there, so she showed me around. Cool places in town, but also the suburbs where she grew up in a family with Sicilian roots. After a couple of days, I understood she was also in a rough patch, going through a toxic relationship with someone and also coming from months of intense travelling. After talking, helping and understanding each other, we said goodbye.”
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