Alex Dupree - Thieves

Thieves is full of stories: stories about people who are unable to rise to the occasion of their life, who are helpless in the face of a world that doesn’t play by their rules. There’s Fortunado, the small-time hustler who “thought he’d be braver,” that is until he faces his own capacity for betrayal. Or the stooge of “Fake Diamonds, False Powers,” unrewarded for his loyalty and made violent by his affection.

According to Alex Dupree, these are stories about the Trump years, a span which coincided with his own attempt to rebuild a life after divorce. It was a time for the painful ending of illusions, about himself and about the country. Dupree was living between artist residencies, sublets, and storage units along I-10, and long hours spent on the highway soon found a form in the long lines of traditional folk ballads. Slowly, very slowly, new songs began to emerge:

The characters that populate Thieves are plucked from a wide variety of historical and fantastical sources, but in Dupree’s voice they tell the story of a single self and, taken together, feel deeply confessional. 

Producer and engineer Michael Krassner (Califone, Simon Joyner, Boxhead Ensemble) heard Alex Dupree perform at a house show with Simon Joyner around this time, in late 2019. He immediately registered the cinematic quality of the new songs and offered to record and arrange them. Fast forward to March 2021: one election, one insurrection, and two vaccines later: Krassner and Dupree were in a car together, driving to Los Angeles to make a record.