61 North travels ‘Back Down to the Woods’

Shimmering with sprinkles of rock and funk elements, yet mostly covered in blues, New Jersey’s 61 North is out prove why they’re their state’s best kept secret with their new album, “Back Down to the Woods.”

Released at the beginning of the month, the album is available at Barnes and Nobles at the Christiana Mall, and will soon be available via the band’s website and iTunes. The band will host an album release party at the World Café Live at the Queen on Friday at 8 p.m., sharing the bill with local bands Mad-Sweet Pangs and Spokey Speaky.

Brian LaPann – 61 North’s front man and an alum of the University of Delaware – discusses how the group’s new project features production work by a Grammy-nominated producer, and appearances by star musicians who’ve worked with the likes of The Roots and Common.       

Q What can you tell me about the new album?
A The name is “Back Down to the Woods” and we call it that because one of the tracks on it is called “Back Down to the Woods.” “Gooch” and I – Ryan Gooch Nelson (Gooch is his nickname) – kind of co-wrote that song; and [in 2006] I was visiting home from UD, and we were jamming a lot since we started the group then. I’m from Woodstown, N.J., in South Jersey, and that’s where we practice. It was about that feeling of coming home, and the older you get the more you realize how important home is and we call it the woods: Woodstown.

Q The production of your first album: “The Open Road,” sounded pretty sophisticated and clean. How were you able to kick things up a notch on “Back Down to the Woods?”
AThis record we recorded twofold: we did four tracks at StarCity Recording Studios (Bethlehem, Pa.) with Jeff Glixman. Jeff produced the first four tracks for “Back Down to the Woods.” We wanted to go in and get a bigger sound. We wanted to get more of the Black Crows, Gov’t Mule, big amps, big guitar, big power sound. So we used some old vintage amps and a little bit of a different set up there. And then we took it down to Turtle Studios (Philadelphia, Pa.) and we mixed and recorded six other tracks, which we produced ourselves. In that regard, I think it has a wider sonic pallet – it really covers the lows and highs. It’s a cleaner and bigger sounding record and that was the one main thing, and I think we achieved that. I think it sonically exceeds the first. The second thing was we brought in some really awesome players to play on it. A couple of the guys are pretty well known in the Philly area: Korey Riker and Ernest Stewart – they’re session musicians; they play with everybody from The Roots to Queen Latifah. This other player came in to play the Hammond B3 organ on five songs – his name is Luke Carlos O’Reilly, another Philly name and an absolute beast. We tried to expand the instrumentation on this one.

Q 61 North has been together since 2006. What needs to happen for you guys to be able to record and play shows full-time?
A Right now we’re looking at management companies. We’re looking to really up our touring schedule this summer. Our band is different because Gooch is wheelchair bound, he’s a quadriplegic, so we’ve really stuck to the local area. We’ve taken some trips but we’ve never really done a full tour. Between getting a management company in the next year and also doing a tour, which we’ve begun to plan out a little bit, we’d also like to get in the college circuit. This go around we’re really trying to get in people’s ears and on the road.