Album by Brim

9 tracks | 36:48 run time

Released 05/20/2022

Available on: Digital, Streaming, CD, and Cassette

Singer-songwriter Daniel Rice and bandmate Hayden Doyel originally formed Brim as a rootsy side project to their main gig in psychedelic hard-rock band Slow Season, now known as Westing.  Shortly thereafter, Daniel’s wife ReNelle Rice joined the fold, playing keys and fleshing out their three part harmonies. 

Written and recorded in their hometown of Visalia, CA, the band's debut album "California Gold" is a paen to the dirt-road-back-streets and down to earth humanity of rural California's small towns and agricultural valleys.  Local friend and engineer Marc Dwelle recorded most of the album over the course of three summer days in 2019, and David Glasebrook mixed the album at his studio in Oakland, CA. The album recalls the lonesome pedal steel of Bakersfield country, Gram Parson's stories of sin & salvation, and Neil Young's loose and dusty years on the beach.

The first few songs written for the album were inspired by Daniel’s experiences with the growing pains of sobriety and the dwindling dreams of a rock n’ roll band. However, the next batch of songs sprung forth from a meditation on greater and more lasting things on which to pin one's hope and dreams—family, friends, and faith. 

Inspired by the humble humanity of the farm towns in California’s San Joaquin Valley that the band calls home, Daniel returned to his roots and wrote about the overlooked nooks and crannies of California flyover territories as a sort of metaphor for finding beauty in the simple things of everyday life. Not the postcard views of Malibu sunsets and sandy beaches, but the California landscape of walnut orchards, rolling hills, and tule fog. No surprise they call it California Gold.