Las Vegas singer-songwriter Heidi Guinn has always played well with others. Since the days of performing in the indie-folk supergroup Dusty Sunshine and with local female duo The Petals, Guinn has been a part of a unit, always in joint harmony with the musicians she admires most. On Boughs, her first solo project as Heidi & The Guinns, the singer-songwriter branches out—but not without a little help from her longtime friends.
“The collaborative element has been so strong since the very beginning on this album, and it’s been incredible to connect with not only great producers like [Naked City Studio’s] John Kiehlbauch, but musicians that I looked up to in the scene that were just stunners,” says Guinn. “I really feel like it’s more than me. I’m just a tree trunk and all these incredible people are my boughs.”
Boughs isn’t so much an album as it is a memory chest for Guinn, who says the record represents “a collection of music that I’ve written over 20 years.” She dusts off songs from The Petals that never got traction; she fleshes out tracks with Dusty Sunshine that originally ran aground. She also taps back into the talent of her former bands, bringing members of Dusty Sunshine and The Petals into the studio with her, as well as The Killers’ drum tech Rob Whitehead, and the late Blair Dewane, who was frontman of the Vegas band Rusty Maples.
Boughs swells with a particular warmth and wistful vulnerability. And that’s punctuated by the poignant fact that the songs Guinn and Dewane worked on— “The Whale” and “Time Travelin Man”—were some of the last he recorded before his death in 2022. Guinn didn’t realize it at the time, but those studio sessions with Dewane and Kiehlbauch, who goes by “Def,” would leave a lasting impression.
Heidi & The Guinns: Boughs
“That last part of [“The Whale”], that was him again making magic. He was like, ‘Def, play it again. I want to do a harmony over my harmony.’ He was just having fun. I loved to watch him do that,” Guinn says. “But when we were in the studio that day, he heard a little bit of ‘Time Travelin Man,’ and he really liked it. He was like, ‘I hear harmony.’ I was like, ‘You should come back and record that.’ Little did I know … Blair contacted Def like, ‘Hey, I’m free. Let me listen to that track we listened to the other day.’ He recorded several tracks of harmony over that song, and I never knew it, until he passed away.”
In February 2023, Kiehlbauch contacted her about “Time Travelin Man.”
“Def was like, ‘Heidi, You’ve got to hear this. You’ve got to come into the studio,’ and we both just bawled. He was in the room with us again.”
Throughout the creation of Boughs, Guinn experienced those “speckles of magic.” One even involved a saw. Mike Busch, former Dusty Sunshine bassist who also played guitar and harmonica on Boughs, wielded his trusty sharp-tooth musical saw to make folk-tinged notes sing on “Time Travelin Man.”
“That saw just blew me away,” Guinn laughs. “It sounded like a UFO landing.”
On “Miles Away,” a track Guinn and friend Brittany Houston began in their living room, also recalls the magic of imperfection. “Brittany’s voice is not perfect. She kind of cracks a little bit but that’s what I wanted, those imperfections. I wanted it to be natural,” Guinn says. “That song really captures a lot of magic that happened in real life before we ever went to the studio in a way that I couldn’t even imagine.”
Guinn says she’s toying with the idea of a followup LP called Roots. And the vinyl for Boughs is currently being pressed and artwork inside reveals various photos of Guinn and her friends throughout the creative process.
In every sense, the album is just as much about Guinn’s personal experiences as it is about the people who make those experiences worthwhile. “I want to emphasize how much gratitude I have for this incredible music scene and the collaborative element ... of people saying I should do it, and then actually contributing,” says Guinn. “It really has been a love letter to the Downtown music scene.”
HEIDI & THE GUINNS heidiandtheguinns.bandcamp.com
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