John McCauley has a reputation for enjoying a good collaboration with other artists between projects with his band
Deer Tick -- some time off from the band led to the album
Middle Brother, featuring
McCauley,
Taylor Goldsmith, and
Matthew Vasquez -- and
Diamond Rugs is a group that came together when
McCauley happened to meet one of his favorite musicians.
McCauley saw a performance by
Los Lobos in his adopted hometown of Nashville, and after the show he met
Steve Berlin, who plays sax, keyboards, and percussion with the veteran Los Angeles group.
McCauley and
Berlin struck up a conversation, and
McCauley mentioned he was planning on recording some solo material; he invited
Berlin to play on the sessions, and
Berlin agreed.
McCauley soon rounded up an eclectic group of musicians to join them for the upcoming project, including
Deer Tick bandmate
Robbie Crowell, Ian Saint Pé of
the Black Lips, Hardy Morris of
Dead Confederate, and Bryan Dufresne of
Six Finger Satellite. Once the six musicians arrived in the studio, plans for a
McCauley solo album quickly fell by the wayside as the players began exchanging ideas and introducing material of their own into the mix. The musicians soon gelled into a band, and
McCauley dubbed the new group
Diamond Rugs. The results of their initial recording sessions appeared on a self-titled album, issued by Partisan Records in the spring of 2012. The group reconvened for a second outing at the same Nashville studio to record their follow-up Cosmetics which arrived in early 2015. ~ Mark Deming