March released his fourth album, Let The Winter Come. in August, 2023, welcome news to many fans who had urged him to record again for a number of years. March took time away from performing in 2013 when he joined the Peace Corps and spent 27 months as an education volunteer in Ethiopia. Despite the deeply emotive lyrics and themes explored in his songs, March keeps his tempos bright and his musical language breezy, in keeping with his California, country-soul tradition. Match will play both solo and also some numbers with his longtime songwriting and singing partner (think Everly Brothers!!) , bassman extraordinaire Tyler Ragle and brilliant Telecaster master,
Steve Randall.
“The LTWC album opens with the hard-luck heartland acoustic-rocker, “Leaving,” which recalls Steve Earle at his most viscerally vulnerable. March opens up here about losing his son and his divorce. His words speak to a lump-in-your-throat swell of emotion. He sings: Leaving, startin’ new/Heavy feet are hard to move/Taking off ‘fore the glue gets dry/Hope you learned a thing or two/Buddy when this is through/You better not ask why.
On the seething, “Abraham,” March shines a line on the horrors of modern war, recalling Bob Dylan’s “Masters Of War” and, more recently, Jason Isbell’s “Dress Blues.” He points the finger at the politicians, generals, and American Military Industrial Complex, through the metaphor of Abraham. March tackles the world’s deepening climate and economic crises in “Happy New Year” with cinematic writing that paints a stirring portrait of the fallout from our “greed is good” model. “The unregulated American capitalism that took off in the 1980’s, decimated the middle class and has left us with an ever widening gap between the 1% vs the 99%,” he says. “Now, post pandemic, economic despair fuels a drug crisis and unaffordable housing creates tent cities.”
Here’s March’s most recent “NPR Tiny Desk Concert” offering “I Like A Town With A Train” : https://youtu.be/haVIL3X9BcY?si=QdikmWo4N_gU_rZk
