The fourth record from singing pianist Brian Barlowe. It’s eight songs of Americana and soul, envisioned in Berlin with piano, horns, drums, guitar, and bass. These are songs written in flights of inspiration and desperation with Chris Stapleton, James Booker, Dr. John, Kyle Craft, and The Band somewhere in the ether. Analog, live, imperfect by design.

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What’s 45 supposed to mean? No one has asked that, but seems like they might if they did. Well, 45 could be a lot of things. Highways records guns presidents angles bulbs. The halfway point or more for me. I’ll tell you how it started then you tell me.

In 2025 I was longterm unemployed throwing good time after bad into the job market. I still am, but I was then too. I was looking to make the most of the opportunity even if I was broke. All I planned to do was remix a couple of old albums of mine and then do a piano+drums version of what would become the much more involved **45*.That was going to do me. This thing was a side project off a side project. I was still mulling it over. I didn’t really know if I was going to actually do it. After 35 years I didn’t really know if I wanted to keep doing music.

Then everything changed.

I’d just bombed at an open mic night. I showed with a few songs of mine I didn’t believe in. They wouldn’t let anyone touch the piano ahead of time and I just got more and more uneasy. Next thing I knew I was looking down at the keys in a quiet room and had no idea what I was doing. I started out. The words didn’t come. Some phrases, but nothing was hanging together. The applause was polite. I floated out like a ghost. For sure, this was it for me. Afterwards I smoked too much hash with a clarinet player on a bench by the trash cans and then got lost on my way to the train. I was so stoned I fell into some bushes. I guess I nodded off.

Next thing I knew I was seeing commuters in the hazy sun and heaving myself onto the train. Leaning my temple into the window was about the only way I could keep my head up. Then a downpour started. Out of nowhere a piece of paper flopped against the window in the drizzle, its edges flitting in the wind. It was right by my face, pressed into the dirty glass. Scrawled across it in thick red lines were a handful of words. I read them over and over and marvelled as it slid down the open collar of the glass, a streak of red swirling in the eddies of rain.

Those words in that moment changed everything.

In case you’re wondering where all this comes from, I can tell you quite simply. It’s songs written on the spot in flights of inspiration tinged with desperation to get it right as well as tunes from the past that were still relevant to me but aching for something more, to be updated and reimagined. Even those two songs that crashed into the piano and died on the floor that night are here. Which ones, of course, you’ll never get out of me. And there’s no way to not mention Chris Stapleton, James Booker, and Dr. John. Nor Kyle Craft and The Band. Hours I spent poring over the advice of guys like Joe Carrell and Vance Powell. I put all that measured sound through my Audioscape 76D compressor and EPQ-A equalizer. Then it all hit my Revox A77 tape machine and flowed through my little SSL console. In the end they gave me this album in my own voice.

Not just those gods, but the other musicians who imparted so much life and soul into this album. We’re talking Kelly O’Donohue for all the brass parts and her insights on my writing. The ferocity and groove of drummers Francesca Pratt and Danyal Ince. Hugo’s baritone sax part on At the Bottom of the Wishing Well is a revelation and Kevon’s tenor sax work on I Run to Root Your Heart turns me to goo every time I hear it. I also had the pleasure of welcoming a few Berliners into the studio. Folks like Stewart McLean on mandolin and Tilda Lynander doing some backup vocals lend perfect shading in certain spots. The mastering engineer Michael Hynes then took my best shot on all the mixes and made them land.

It’s the fifth of September 2025 as I record the final takes in my little rented practice room in an artists house in the Lichtenberg district of Berlin. I’ve been rambling on a bit here with my drink as I freewheel into the microphone. When all this is done I’ll get around to editing it at some point. Then I’ll likely drive my car home over the limit and take a shower and go to bed soaking. Getting this together so far has been what I knew it would be. I think back now to beat-up me squinting at that red-letter note on the S-bahn in the rain. Could he imagine doing all this again? I really don’t know.