Circles Around The Sun has announced a new album, Interludes For The Dead: Volume 2, a follow-up to the collection of Neal Casal-led instrumentals composed for Fare Thee Well‘s set breaks that became the now-beloved band’s debut album a decade ago.
While Casal’s death by suicide in 2019 left CATS’ story forever marked by tragedy, the rest of the band has soldiered Much like the original Interludes For The Dead, the new collection was “recorded over four days with nothing written or rehearsed beforehand. … All of the music was created on the spot and tracked immediately with little to no overdubs and every bit of the energy and the spirit of the first release.”
The first two tracks from Circles Around The Sun’s Interludes For The Dead, Vol. 2 are out now. As bassist Dan Horne explained in a social media post, “‘Charleston Choogle’ was the first notes we played in the session, and it just instantly felt like we were picking up where we left off. Of course we’re missing Neal, but somehow the spirit felt like it was there. We continued that challenge with ‘Golden Boot,’ which I think sounds like a classic CATS jam. We decided to release those two songs first because they magically felt like they were coming from the same batch of inspiration, as if we just picked up where we left off ten years ago. Thank you for listening and happy birthday, Jerry🌹.”
Circles Around The Sun – “Golden Boot”/”Charleston Choogle” – Interludes For The Dead, Vol. 2
The decade-long story of Circles Around The Sun is marked by equal parts unexpected triumph and unfathomable tragedy. In 2015, Neal Casal was recruited by Justin Kreutzmann to compose and record set break music for the Grateful Dead‘s 50th-anniversary Fare Thee Well shows. Casal rounded up his Chris Robinson Brotherhood bandmate/keyboardist Adam MacDougall, bassist Dan Horne, and drummer Mark Levy—the group now known as Circles Around The Sun—to help with the task.
“It wasn’t a band,” Adam MacDougall reminded Live For Live Music when he sat down for a conversation aboard Jam Cruise 18 in early 2020. “It was just an idea, a concept, an exercise: “Make something that feels a bit of how some of the iconic songs of the Dead feel without being able to point your finger at it and be like, ‘That’s that.’ So we just kind of sat in a room and thought, ‘Alright, let’s think about a song. … Let’s just play some stuff and make it up with that in mind.’ Don’t try and do anything that’s close to it, just think with that kind of feeling in mind, trying to just play some music. That’s what it was.”
Due to the massive scope of Fare Thee Well, which boasted five sold-out stadium shows and countless viewers streaming from home, the little project debuted to an enormous audience—a far cry from the dive bars and tiny venues where most bands make their names. “We were so lucky to get all those people that heard our music … We didn’t even realize it was going to be like that. I mean, the livestream stuff,” he added of the widely-viewed Fare Thee Well webcasts, “there were hundreds of thousands of people sitting and all just rolling a joint or getting another beer while this music is playing over their computer or their TV. We didn’t even think about that. That was like winning the lottery. How do you have that? You don’t even have a band or a record out and already, like, hundreds of thousands of people hear your sh*t.”
The positive response to the Grateful-Dead-turned-inside-out psychedelic jams they created was so overwhelming that the music was released as an album. A tour soon followed, then another album. The band eventually revisited those initial sessions and released them for the first time in their entirety as Interludes: The Complete Set-Break Recordings.
“We got really, really lucky. We shouldn’t have a career, honestly.” MacDougall reflected. “From starting as just doing instrumental music, as not a band, and then everybody being so busy—you know, me and Neal with the CRB. I mean, I don’t think we played more than four shows the first year after that came out. We shouldn’t have survived any of this.”
On August 26th, 2019, however, the feel-good story of Circles Around The Sun took a turn for the devastating when Neal Casal took his own life at the age of 50. Revisit our full interview with Adam MacDougall for a candid discussion about how he and the band have coped with the complex emotions surrounding Casal’s death and found a way to carry on: Circles Around The Sun: Adam MacDougall Talks Losing Neal Casal & Finding A Path Forward Without Him [2020 Interview].
Per Casal’s last wishes, the band soldiered on—first with a rotating cast of guests, then with permanent guitarist John Lee Shannon. The band has continued to tour and release new music since. Later this month, CATS will mount a run of live shows in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Colorado. In January, the group will join Widespread Panic in Mexico for Panic En La Playa. For a list of upcoming Circles Around The Sun tour dates, head here.