Greensky Bluegrass’ Dave Bruzza Details Debut Solo Release ‘Heart Of Santa Cruz’

Greensky Bluegrass guitarist Dave Bruzza detailed his debut solo release, a double single featuring originals “Heart Of Santa Cruz” and “Pearl Street Lounge.” The instrumental surf rock songs will be available as a limited edition vinyl 45 at Bruzza’s Unsafe At Any Speed tour stops.

Dave’s solo work grew out of necessity as the pandemic stopped the Greensky Bluegrass founding guitarist from touring with his band. Bruzza detailed the uncertain but ultimately fruitful time:

As we all know, in 2020, things stopped. Being a touring musician I was grounded for the first time in my adult life. Unable to perform for people in person I had to adapt and figure out new ways to play for the people. I made videos and went live on social media and was feeling creative. One side of my job has been recording music. I was never very good at doing that on my own so faced with endless time away from my bandmates and friends, I decided to get some gear and start to really understand the process. Having made records in the past I had a basic knowledge of what that would take. I asked a lot of questions to friends with knowledge of how this worked. The best advice I received was “Recording software is like a car. You know it has lights, wipers, and a turn signal – you just have to dig around and see where it is.” Thanks Ian!

Dave is speaking of Ian Gorman, who owns La Luna Recording in GSBG’s hometown of Kalamazoo, Michigan. Gorman helped Bruzza with mixing remotely which “gave the music the sparkle and feel of musicians playing together in a room.”

The bluegrass musician also spoke about how he came to record surf rock:

At the time I was listening to a lot of old rock n roll. Particularly instrumental surf rock. The Ventures, The Lively Ones, Dick Dale and the like. So naturally I started playing that style and recorded it. I was fascinated by the reverb and simple force of the music, so I asked myself “Why does it sound like that? How did they go about recording this” After some research I read how they would place microphones to capture the songs and started conducting my own experiments in my apartment in Denver. That just opened the door for me, and I was making new songs everyday! Playing all the instruments overdubbing part by part was a great learning process for me and just a hell of a lot of fun. A bit of light in some dark times, and I was feeling it and started to compose my own take on that kind of music and capture it to sound as the vintage recordings did.

Putting the icing on the cake was cutting the surf rock songs on vinyl, the “format [that] makes the most sense for these two songs,” Dave said. “Just like the ones kids would buy in the early 60’s but with a modern flare to it,” he continued. “The subtle crackle of the finished product just adds to the recordings and complements the music in such a way that wouldn’t be heard or felt digitally, it is the best way to hear and experience these songs.”

Dave had help in the vinyl process from Colorado-based engineer Anna Frick. “She is an extremely talented engineer with a lot of experience with mastering and cutting vinyl records and she helped me understand the process,” Bruzza stated. “After months of waiting the test pressings arrived and I went to meet Anna in the studio to hear the cuts, and that was such a magic feeling! I have never made a solo record before; I have always worked in groups, so this was a special moment in my life as a musician. I have always wanted to make a record by myself, it was just something that always had been intriguing to me being a multi-instrumentalist. And I never thought in a million years that it would be surf rock music!”