Angela Petrilli & The Players:

The Voices EP

“Red River”—the dark, moody, slide-anchored epic that opens Angela Petrilli’s debut solo EP The Voices—draws inspiration from ancient Greek classics The Odyssey and The Iliad; given the trials, tribulations and loss Petrilli endured on the winding journey to this redemptive new set of songs, it’s an apt metaphor.

Back in 2019, Petrilli was one half of Los Angeles Americana duo Roses & Cigarettes, along with her bandmate, songwriting partner and best friend, Jenny Pagliaro. They’d already generated considerable buzz on the L.A. scene, opening for the likes of Jim Lauderdale, Luther Dickinson, The Record Company, Marc Broussard and Amanda Shires, and their impressive third album Echoes & Silence—recorded in the midst of Pagliaro’s treatment for Stage 4 breast cancer—seemed poised for a breakthrough. There was a tour in the works, and on March 25th of that year Rolling Stone named Roses & Cigarettes’ new single “Fast As I Can” one of its 10 Best Country Songs of the Week. But in a heartbreaking and tragic turn of events, Pagliaro—who had been fighting off cancer for years—passed away the very next day. She was just 35.

For Petrilli, losing her closest friend and collaborator, and the band they’d both worked so hard to build—right at the doorstep of success—was the most difficult experience of her life. So for the better part of a year, the grieving Petrilli put down her guitar, left L.A. behind and set out across the world. She traveled to Nashville, New York, Paris and Italy, eventually making it as far as Australia. Along the way, she spent a lot of time on the ocean, where she was able to find some peace and clarity. As she began to heal, she could feel her muse calling once again.

Finally back home in L.A., she reached out to some musician friends and booked a bar gig under the name The Petrilli Players. The idea was to shake off the cobwebs, play some covers and have a good time—and that’s exactly how it went down. With a reinvigorated sense of purpose, and a band of simpatico players—Brett Grossman on bass, Stephen Haaker on drums, Matt Lomeo on harmonica & backing vocals, Bobby Victor on keys, and Vic Vanacore III on percussion—Petrilli was inspired to start writing again. After several months playing shows around Los Angeles (including opening spots for Billy Bob Thornton & the Boxmasters, The Immediate Family, and a performance at Joe Bonamassa’s 3rd Annual Stream-a-thon concert), the new songs felt studio-ready, and Petrilli booked a session at Hollywood’s legendary Sunset Sound—the same hallowed ground that has hosted sessions by The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, The Doors, Janis Joplin, Van Halen, Ray LaMontagne and countless others.

Grossman and Haaker co-produced the EP with Petrilli, with Geoff Neal engineering. Working at peak efficiency with well-rehearsed material, they tracked live, and came close to finishing five songs in a single day. Petrilli was able to knock out all of her guitar parts in the session, using her 2013 Gibson Custom Shop R9 1959 reissue Les Paul, a 2012 Custom Shop 1958 reissue Les Paul Junior, a 1998 American Deluxe Strat with Fishman Fluence pickups, and a Fender Brown Derby resonator. For amps, she went through a Mesa Boogie Fillmore 25 for dirty tones, a Fender Vibroverb with a JBL E130 speaker for clean, and a Supro for the more washy tremolo textures.

The following day, sessions resumed at The Vanguard in North Hollywood, with Vanacore adding additional percussion. A few weeks later, Lomeo, Jessica Mahon & Phoebe Crenshaw laid down backing vocals. The finishing touches—including Petrilli’s lead vocals and some inspired sax lines from veteran musician Paulie Cerra—were recorded at Grossman’s studio, Cosmic Voyager.

The Voices represents significant musical growth for Petrilli—at once, it’s her debut as a solo artist, band leader and lead vocalist. The EP begins with an ominous intensity as if to herald her arrival, droning organ seeping out like blood over the languid yet insistent drum beat of “Red River.” The song’s haunting slide riff finds Petrilli channeling Robert Johnson via Jimmy Page, tracing a ghostly line from the Mississippi Delta to late-’60s London to Sunset Sound, while her vocals rise up from the ocean depths like a siren possessed.

The EP’s title track is another gorgeously meandering launch pad for the band’s live sets, the album version ebbing and flowing like an open-ended “Dark Star”-esque Grateful Dead jam, but delivered with a gritty soulfulness worthy of The Black Crowes. As its name implies, “The Voices” is a musical and philosophical conversation, illustrated by the animated call-and-response between Petrilli’s ripping guitar leads and Lomeo’s wailing blues harp.

The horn-anchored “High Roller” and instrumental showpiece “Slapjack” are hard-grooving modern updates on Meters-style New Orleans funk filtered through Petrilli’s native SoCal breeziness. Throughout both, she delivers the kind of slippery double-stop guitar hooks that would make Stax legend Steve Cropper proud.

Bringing The Voices home is “Ghost Inside a Frame,” a sighing, heartfelt, and emotionally potent nod to Petrilli’s beloved Roses & Cigarettes bandmate. The idea came from a conversation Petrilli had with her mother, who also lost a close friend at a young age. She’d told her that the strangest part of losing someone is when you look back at pictures—you keep changing over time, but they look the same. After several false starts, one day the song finally came, as if a transmission from beyond. Petrilli was caught off guard, but opened herself to the moment, got out her notebook, and the words began to pour out. The result is a disarmingly honest and vulnerable song; one that takes the personal and makes it universal.

Reflecting on the events of her life over the past few years, and the ways she’s evolved as an artist, singer and songwriter while making The Voices, Petrilli says that, above all, her journey has been about finding and maintaining an authentic voice, and being unapologetically herself. The songs on The Voices celebrate the joy and fragility of life, and for Petrilli—who is embarking on a new musical journey—recording them was a deeply profound and satisfying experience.