Brashear-McLaughlin duo return to Tucson’s Hotel Congress for CD release

“Desert Heart, Mountain Soul” is Brashear and McLaughlin’s third album together, although both have guested on each other’s solo efforts over the years.

The album is a rollercoaster ride through all the emotions we’ve felt since the pandemic began in March 2020, from reflections on simpler times in McLaughlin’s bluegrass-flavored “Take Me Back Where I Was Born” that opens the album, to the exhilarating sense of shedding emotional baggage and taking a long-awaited sigh of relief with Brashear’s instrumental romp “Run Little Hank.”

The pair mixed their originals with covers of songs that have stuck with them over the years, including Kate Wolfe’s “Across the Great Divide” and Woody Guthrie’s “Pastures of Plenty.”

McLaughlin said “Desert Heart, Mountain Soul” “stands up really well” in the pair’s catalogue largely because of their writing. The pair held a mirror up to their lives especially in light of the pandemic and took chances that their younger selves were never brave enough to take, he said.

One of the album’s special moments for McLaughlin was finally recording “Right Time of Year,” a song he wrote 10 years ago that was inspired by his daughter, Annie. The song is an ode to a father’s love for his daughter — “I feel the Earth turn when I’m with you” — from the simplicity of taking a walk together to the joy of singing her a bedtime song.