Veteran New Orleans Rocker Ryan Scully Releasing Solo Album

Ryan Scully's most recent endeavor finds him capturing the current COVID-19 lockdown's early daze with his first truly solo album New Confusion which is released by Houma / Nouveau Electric Records November 20 on CD, as a digital download and via streaming services. The self-recorded and produced album addresses lingering questions and unstable emotions with oddball gallows humor and the rage that has been percolating in our collective societal mind during 2020.

Scully has been a vital voice in the vibrant New Orleans music scene for multiple decades now, working on everything from writing children's records / books, throwing community-based block parties and promoting eclectic NOLA artists at BJ's over the last three years.

A veteran of chronicling the debauched nightlife of New Orleans with the cult party punks Morning 40 Federation before turning to the gutter gospel rock redemption of The Rough Seven, and the country / Americana tinged Ten Gallon Tinfoil Hat, Scully has weathered storms figuratively and literally. Shifting dive bar drunken babble, late night epiphanies and the emotional weightiness of coming clean in a dirty world into song, Scully possesses an interpretive eye, an open soul and a raconteur wit that serves him well during these tumultuous times.

While locked down during the early days of COVID-19 quarantine, Scully shut himself off in his Bywater attic, writing and recording his most personal songs to date, surprising even himself with the 10 tracks now being presented on New Confusion. Regarding the writing and recording process he stated, "Once I started working on this album, everything just flowed out".

Capturing these nebulous times with all the grace, anger and absurdity they deserve, New Confusion cuts to the heart on topics of the moment; isolationism, political revolution, and becoming unstuck in time.

Opening track, and first single, "Manhole" is hits the bullseye as a response to the serial calamities of 2020 as good intentions, fear, confessional malaise and that haunting sense of the unknown pulse together perfectly ensnaring that elusive off-putting feeling.

Scully's humor, wit, and easy rolling funky groove -- honed by working with the likes of Andre Williams and Gibby Haynes -- are on display on "My Little Phony", "Look at Papa" and "Babies on the Way" which also bring in modern day societal worries. Those are front and center on "Melania's Blues" as the punk screams out a screed against the wannabe fascist in the White House while "N.O.L.A" is a troubled theme song for the Crescent City that sounds straight out of the early days of CBGB's. The brilliant record closes with the gorgeously orchestrated confessional "Go Home," Scully leaving listeners with an emotional tale of that "one more"... which is never enough.

Written, recorded and produced by Ryan who also plays nearly all instruments on the record, New Confusion lives inside our current societal phase; wondering and angry, aloof while engaged, scared yet hopeful...wondering where the hero goes.

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