Joselyn & Don
Album: Lost & Found Highway
Release Date: Oct. 3, 2025
From Montana but now based in L.A., Joselyn Wilkinson on vocals and ukulele and guitarist Don Barrozo are joined by such luminaries as pedal steel legend Greg Leisz, bassist Bob Glaub, drummer Mauricio Lewak and Chris Pierce, Abby Posner and Cristina Vane on vocals for this, their third album on which soul, blues and country provide the musical settings for songs that are both political and personal.
Vane provides vocal harmonies on the album opener, 'Right On Through', a slow rolling train time rhythm providing an appropriate framework for a recollection of a 1989 cold midwinter night crash ("Rolling backward down the mountain, it hit down by the college/Knocked out the power and the lights/That sound was so loud, it shook the whole town") that serves as a mirror to a relationship coming off the rails ("You remember that night you told me you loved me/It was all for the very first time/I was back home for Christmas and I wanted to feel it/Could've stayed in that basement all night/But time and distance had done their work on us/We were done before we ever could start").
Coloured with string quartet, the slow walking 'Golden Hill' is another reflective number, here about the finding peace and an anchor in a place that holds a place in the heart ("Birds flying back to the place they're from") where "roads carve pathways in my mind" and there's "stories in bricks that I can read".
There's a similar sentiment on the more uptempo late 60s flavoured bluesy folk 'Girl From The Mountain' ("Well I smell like the river and I'm dry as a bone/Warm as the summer and brown as a stone/But I know, I gotta get back to LA/I'm young as the morning and old as the hills/Tired out from trying but it pays the bills/Can I stay, just one more day/But July is gone and I got to get back on to LA") with its notes of self-affirmation ("I go cause she believes, that I'm more/Than a girl from the mountain").
Joined by Pierce on duetting vocals and harmonica, things take a different musical and lyrical direction for 'Choose Love', a psych-soul folk protest song with vague echoes of Jefferson Airplane that, opening with the line "If I'm going down, I'm going down fighting" is defiant in the face of the religious right ("They wanna take control of my body and my soul…Ain't no secret who they're trying to please/You'd have to be ashamed for calling on God's name/If hate's the only poison you bleed") in a call to take ownership of your past and forge a better future ("They're telling me I don't love my country/But I love what I know it could be/We walk on stolen lands, in cities built by shackled hands/But I can own my dirty history/And make it history") in a call for an army leading "a loving revolution".
Mica Nafshun-Bone on fiddle and with some gritty electric guitar, 'Seminole Wind' is a slow tribal walking cover of John Anderson's 1992 number about the destruction of the environment for economic gain and the draining of the Florida Everglades due to flooding in the name of progress with its reference to Seminole war chief Osceola.
Riding a chugging riff, the soulful bluesy 'Four AM' touches on insomniac anxiety ("waking me up with everything that I'm scared of/Leaves me wanting, in the cold/Just me, the night, the moonlight and my soul/All these thoughts, they circle around/Till I'm defenseless on my shaky ground") and maternal identity angst ("Babe used to wake me every hour/Wanting all I had to give like a higher power/But that was a long time ago, now my body's my own/Will they still need me when they're grown"). Ultimately, you just have to accept "the people that love you, they still love you/And the people that aren't thinking of you, still aren't thinking of you/The world keeps on spinning no matter how you fret".
Leisz's pedal steel colouring the intro, Barrozo on trumpet, 'What Are We Doing Here' is couched in Eagles feathered 70s alt-country and would seem to speak to Wilkinson's musical journey ("There's a girl in this town, folks think she's still a kid/Cause they seen her running round, they know everything she did/But she's got dreams and a guitar, gonna take 'em on the road/Cause nothin' in this whole wide world can settle a restless soul… The promise of tomorrow/Has never felt so near/The road is calling, what are we doing here").
If that's her story, Barrozo on lead vocal, the folksy shuffling 'Working' the Hi-Line' is that of his immigrant father (" I came across the ocean back in 1929/They gave me a new name in the immigration line/Me and dad we worked the fields 'til summer days grew cold/Then we worked the railroad/I was fetching water for the men who laid the tracks/Seattle to Chicago on the labour of their backs/Men of every colour together as a team/Building an American dream"), recalling a time before divisiveness set in, and building a life in Montana ("I taught myself some instruments and started up a band/I learned to cook and how to fish and how to work the land/This country is my home now and this is where I'll die").
The title track finally puts in an appearance clothed in Laurel Canyon yarn stitched with trumpet and flugelhorn as it travels a path of restlessness and search for self ("Somewhere on these roads I could lose myself a little/Somewhere on these roads I'll get it right/I could drive right through the night if I keep it in the middle/Chasing down a peace I'll never find"), fear of commitment turning the engine ("Guess I'm always leaving cause it's easier to do/I never stick around to do the hard work/To see it through …I found a lot of friends and lost some time/Now I'm second guessing why I'm always on the move") but asking "how does it feel to know where you're going/How does it feel to know your place?".
Joined by Posner on electric guitar, vocals and claps, it ends with 'Rock and Roll Heart', a tribute to and lament for those who, " From Amy to Zevon, from Aretha to the Ramones", have reached the end of their musical road ("I heard it on the news this morning/Another legend passed away/And I was struck with the memory/Of the last time I ever saw him play/So I put those records on, and I'm wrapped up in a song/In my mind, he's never truly gone"), and of how they and all musicians brought meaning to those who heard them ("I found my jacket in the attic/That I wore when I was back in school/In the pocket was a ticket/For that band we all thought was cool/Yeah we loved to sing along, even when the words were wrong/The music kept us going all night long"). But yes, while "It's a sad day when you lose the spark", there's always going to be someone waiting in the wings to take up the torch because "With just a song you can light a spark" and "every new voice is a shot in the dark" and "the lights never go down on a Rock and Roll heart". Consider this a defibrillator.