[Cover photo credit to Phil Nelson]

Songwriter, composer, and pianist Alan Walker, the former front man of NYC’s The Brilliant Mistakes, will be releasing his second solo album, A Little Too Late, on June 28, 2024 on his own label, Aunt Mimi’s Records.

Walker and Producer Lincoln Schleifer (Donald Fagen, Levon Helm, Buddy Miller) set out to make a record that had the feel of a classic 70s album in the vein of early Jackson Browne. With that approach, they let the songs determine the arrangements, instruments and players, and overall mood.

“Mama Kat,” the second streaming single (and first to radio) is available now. The ballad features special guest Larry Campbell’s pedal steel and acoustic guitar playing. This song, like a few others on the album, derives from Walker’s unfinished song ideas from his 20s or 30s.

He explains:

Back then, songs came out of me on a daily basis (for better or worse). So more than 20 years after the initial verses and lyrics were written I finished the song by adding the bridge. This is a love song written at the very precarious moment when you think you’ve met the person you want to spend the rest of your days with—the mysterious ‘Mama Kat.’

A cast of hand-picked session musicians gathered in Lincoln’s Log Cabin basement recording studio in the Bronx to make the album. With Walker on piano and singing lead and Schleifer on bass and percussion, the core band on A Little Too Late includes Jon Herington (Steely Dan) on electric guitars, Rob Schwimmer on Hammond B3 and synthesizers, and John Morgan Kimock on drums.