Alex Jordan Releases Steve Berlin-Prod. 'Queen Kerosene' LP

Bay Area heavy-hitter Alex Jordan releases his new LP Queen Kerosene via ALP.

Produced by four-time GRAMMY winner Steve Berlin of Los Lobos and mastered by seven-time GRAMMY winner Jim Scott (The Rolling Stones, Tom Petty, Sting), the album finds Jordan coming into his own as a frontman and songwriter after years of playing with bands like the Grahame Lesh-fronted Midnight North and sharing the stage with icons like Bob Weir, Phil Lesh and Peter Rowan.

To celebrate the release of the record, Jordan will play a special album release show at Sweetwater Music Hall in Mill Valley on March 14 with a slew of special guests including Berlin. 

“If you told me I would make a record in Austin, Texas with Steve Berlin at the helm and Jim Scott was going to mix it, I'm not sure I would have believed you,” Jordan shares. “Every performance, every tone, every word on this record was created and captured with great passion and care from all involved, and it was a joy to meet and work with so many talented individuals along the way. From the first ambient sounds of ‘Queen Kerosene' through the final seconds of the fadeout of ‘Saving Grace,' I could not be more simultaneously proud of our work and humbled by the experience.” 

Queen Kerosene was recorded at The Finishing School in Austin, Texas with a band of Austin-based musicians — including harmony singer Carrie Rodriguez who also played violin and fiddle and accordion player Josh Baca (the protégé of Norteño icon Flaco Jiménez). Prior to today's release, Jordan shared the album's incendiary title track and its nomadic music video, directed by award-winning duo Neilson Hubbard & Joshua Britt (John Prine, Jason Isbell). The duo also directed the spirited music video for most recent single “Saving Grace.” The LP has already garnered acclaim from Guitar World, American Blues Scene, Americana Highways, Glide Magazine and Magnet who praised the album's “bluesy rock consistency and distinct pop sensibility.” 

Jordan and Berlin captured the album's songs in a series of live takes, and the result is a quintessentially American LP composed of barn burners, piano ballads, Americana anthems and adventurous explorations of organic roots music. Like the artists and songwriters the record pays homage to – namely Buck Owens, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Hayes Carll and Robert Hunter – Jordan's new music is timeless in its sound and its songwriting, and his songs tell the stories of the people who have, who do and who always will inhabit this land we call home.

Jordan may be a fresh face when it comes to his solo career, but he's spent the better part of the past decade playing with West Coast bands like the aforementioned Midnight North. His ability to play guitar, piano and Hammond B3 organ landed him onstage with Weir and Lesh, becoming a fixture at the latter's Bay Area music venue Terrapin Crossroads. Now with a kaleidoscopic LP that pulls from soul, Tex-Mex, groove-driven R&B, Americana, jazz, honky-tonk and heartland rock & roll, Jordan has developed a sound that is entirely his own.

Photographer Credit: Bob Minkin