Terminal Avant-Blues Duo Great Sadness Release Vinyl Debut

The Los Angeles-based duo of guitarist/singer Cathy Cooper and drummer Stephen McNeely known as The Great Sadness are releasing their long-playing debut of harrowing, blues-rooted mayhem, Weep on vinyl. The album was produced by Joe Cardamone (ex-Icarus Line) at Valley Recording Company in Burbank.

This pair met seven years ago. They started playing stripped-down, Folk-Blues which slowly spiraled down into staggering, swampy, sexy sonic-tableaus of love and murder. BuzzbandsLA's Daiana Feuer described them as, "a sludgy crawl through a swamp of doom full of madness and chaotic emotion. Cooper's voice is that of a possessed witch. She plays guitar and lap-steel, twisting dark blues like a knife to split space open for her quivering voice. McNeely is right there with her, another agent of darkness, pounding his drums like he's crushing souls." Cooper believes that everything they'd achieved in their live show was made "bigger and better" by Cardamone's involvement in Weep.

Cathy grew up in beautiful, north Orange County and moved to Los Angeles after graduating from Cal State Long Beach. She began writing music, painting and doing performance art, eventually forming her first band "Beaver Trap" ("a cross between the Meat Puppets and the Mentors"). Cooper next played guitar in a band called Touchcandy, who specialized in Hard Pop delivered via crazy guitars. Cathy and the bass player left to form a trio that eventually was

The Shotgun of Khando. After that, she went solo. recorded a couple records, toured, then took time off from music to work, do sculpture and hang out with her dog. McNeely was born in Austin, raised in Aurora, Colorado where he composed hip hop and dance music for a few years before coming to Los Angeles in 2011.

Cooper was working with members of the WIFE dance performance group including Nina McNeely, Stephen's sister. She was asked to perform at the Echo Park Rising festival, and - lacking a drummer - began searching for one. Nina suggested Cathy try jamming with her recently arrived brother; they did the festival as The Great Sadness and just kept on playing together. and the train kept a-rollin'.

At the outset, their raw materials were the traditional Delta Blues and Chicago-style electric blues Cooper's parents played around the house when she was growing up and that McNeely got into as a teenager. Over time they began to interweave this with the sound of Australia's Birthday Party, Nick Cave's erstwhile band who had wrapped the core of the Blues in primal force, fire and tears - a sound Cathy had fallen in love with on first hearing. These two sorts of influence showed the band how to form songs around a groove and that the intent of the voice is the essence of the whole thing. Eventually this intersection of Fred McDowell, Jessie Mae Hemphill, Son House, The Birthday Party and an infusion of ultra-heaviness that Stephen treasured since his first exposure to "War Pigs" formed the basis of their inimitable explosive style.

The Great Sadness has turned the traditional music on its head and skinned it down to its most lovely and brutal essence. If there were music that could make you feel like ripping your heart out, watching it dissolve, then taking that long walk down the road to death it is Weep.