Julian Lage Shares Live Performance of Roy Orbison’s “Crying”

Julian Lage has announced details of his new album, Love Hurts, due February 22 on Mack Avenue Records. In advance, he has shared a live performance video of one of the album’s tracks, a cover of Roy Orbison’s 1961 ballad, “Crying.”

Love Hurts features Lage recording in a trio format, with bassist Jorge Roeder and drummer Dave King (The Bad Plus). The album was produced by Lage at the Loft, the Chicago-area studio owned by Wilco.

The album features of mix of originals and covers, including Keith Jarrett’s “The Windup,” the title track, written by Boudleaux Bryant and first recorded by the Everly Brothers, and Roy Orbison’s “Crying,” among others.

Explained Lage, "The covers on this record are like when you move into a new apartment; the last thing you do is hang your pictures on the wall. Those pictures define your aesthetic in a way. So the tunes we chose kind of define the aesthetic I love but hadn't put on a record yet."

He continued: "The connection we were trying to draw was between this effusive era of Keith Jarrett's music and all the tributaries that go away from or lead to it, and then mixing that with music like Roy Orbison, this early rock 'n' roll that was also kind of effusive, rich and heartbreaking. We were looking at it as couplets, so we could very casually say, yeah we're doing 'Love Hurts' and we're doing 'The Windup' in the same breath and for it to feel genuine or native. That's what we were excited about. It didn't feel like we were making a sampler, it has a narrative."

Love Hurts is available for pre-order here.