From Louisiana to Los Angeles to ‘Sensitive Devil,’ these are some songs that have stayed close.

Crash Richard has lived a few musical lives by now. Some people first met him through the Deadly Syndrome, that scrappy, inventive ‘00s LA band whose records turned into minor cult artifacts. Others caught him in the wide-open orbit of Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, where he became one of the group’s secret weapons. In the years since, he’s carved out a solo path that bends through R&B, folk, New Orleans rhythm, and the kind of late-night jazz phrasing you hear only from writers who’ve spent years listening harder than they talk. His new album, released Friday, is called Sensitive Devil.

A shapeshifter by instinct but a storyteller by nature, his tastes tend to reveal the map more clearly than any résumé ever could. For this installment of 5 Selects, Crash reaches back through the songs, people, and odd moments that steered him — the bar introductions that cracked whole worlds open, the film jobs that accidentally birthed new material, the Louisiana ghosts he still carries, the records that helped him find the sound he’d been circling for years.

These five tracks aren’t a genre tour. They’re five points on the compass he’s been following, whether he knew it at the time or not.

The Replacements – “Johnny’s Gonna Die”

The year was 2005 and I had just landed in Los Angeles after escaping the tragedy of a gulf coast hurricane we will not name. I knew very little and close to nothing about Southern California culture and lifestyle. Coming from an upbringing stacked with historical relevance and enrichment, I foolishly felt there was little to learn about the new west. So I thought nothing of it when my employer at the time invited me to a little divey bar in Hollywood to see the town. It was his way of buying me a drink while showing me a place I may want to put at the top of my list of watering holes.

Arriving at the dive, he (the boss) introduced me to his friend Tommy who he invited for his own company so as to not have to babysit my green little ass. All I remember of Tommy was he had a salty snarl and appeared to be a real rocker type. I grew up with a pretty great rock and punk scene in the south, but this intro would be one of many to open the LA punk scene before me in the widest of ways. 

You see, Tommy was from the Replacements, and I wasn’t so hip to him/them yet. While hearing the song “Treatment Bound” from a film the boss made, I still had very little awareness of the raw unbridled infamy of Tommy’s group. Oh, how much I’ve learned since then. Read Bob Mehr’s great book Trouble Boys if you care to dive deeper on one of the most self-sabotaging bands punk rock has ever seen.

As much of a fan I am of the genre, punk isn’t a sound I find myself listening to in my normal routine of filling the air with sound. It’s just too much for my general processing in wanting to be focused and at ease. That said, I have found some real downtempo gems from the band who usually are drenched in chaos. Who knew that over the years I’d end up covering the Mats on my own tours, and even now, it seems like “Swinging Party” is all the rage to cover for so many new artists. I swore I heard a spa version of that tune going around, funny enough.

This journey led me to another less popular tune by the Replacements (from their first album) which I’ve really come to love and can easily be thrown into my personal listening practice. It’s got edge, it’s got filth, and it’s got a groove about it. It makes me think of Tommy because of the killer bass line repeating in the tune. And while I’m sure it may be written about a different fella, it does remind me of the ol’ boss Johnny who introduced me to Tommy. And to be most sincere about it, I for one cannot deny a perfectly simple riff with great lyrics. This one sure hits me right in the crotch.

The Deadly Syndrome – “Villain”

It ain’t much like me to pick a song I wrote for a selects list, and I get how that might look, but this one came about in such a strange way that I figured it was worth talking about. A close friend also nudged me to include something from my first LA band, the Deadly Syndrome. We did three albums, now minor collector relics. Not long after releasing our debut on Dim Mak, the four of us started piling up new tunes for the follow-up. I’d been writing songs for a minute by then. During that stretch, I was doing film production work and assisting a documentarian on Julien Nitzberg’s “The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia.” If you don’t know it, climb that tree.

Most of my job was clerical, nothing thrilling, but when it came to music placement he leaned on me for renditions he needed in certain scenes. For one heavy moment, he wanted a somber acoustic track but was referencing GG Allin’s “A Fuckup.” He loved the lyrics, crass as they were, but wanted it to feel more like an Eels song, something downbeat and folky. So I took to my guitar, worked up a new melody and mood, and sent it over. I liked what came out. Julien placed it in the edit, and we waited on notes.

They came back saying they liked the tune, but Spike Jonze thought GG’s lyrics were too on the nose for the moment. That happens a lot in music supervision. You get used to it. Still, I didn’t want the song to die, so I brought it to my Deadly mates and we added it to the pile. I rewrote most of the lyrics because I didn’t want to cover a GG tune on the album, though I kept two or three of his lines, which explains the odd mix of messaging in the final version.

When it came time to record Nolens Volens, we were at the cabin in Benedict Canyon where we did most of our work. “You want to do the villain song?” I said sure, then asked who wanted to play guitar while I sang. They all insisted I play and sing it live. Simple as the tune is, that intimidated me, but I tried it. We took a handful of passes, maybe. Then Mike Hughes added a gorgeous keyboard swell at the end. It’s now one of the top streaming songs from that record. Funny how it came to be. Thanks Julien and Spike.

Jimmy Mac – “Sugar in the Rain”

The Chenier family is about as rock n roll as Zydeco ever got. Take blues and French, drop it in the Acadiana marsh, and you get one of music’s most soulful stamps. Brother-in-law to Lightnin’ Hopkins and on a mission from God like any roaring bluesman, Clifton and his brothers knew how to play heavy and throw electrifying dance parties for towns where folks dance and drink like your parrain with the gold tooth. They spent their lives rolling through the southwest, playing as often as a Carolina Chickadee chirps.

I’m a fan of Clifton’s, and most of what I know about him comes from two sources: the films of the late Les Blank and Louisiana’s own James Macdonell, better known as Jimmy Mac. Not only does Jimmy keep me sipping on Chenier lore from Lafayette, but he’s also an accordion player and songwriter of the highest ilk. Cajun born, he’s played on enough records to fill a career. I once learned that if someone knows all the session players, they’re probably somebody. That’s Jimmy to me.

Macdonell’s legacy sits down in the murky water by the cypress roots, where the light barely reaches. He carries an old-world urbanity you can’t fake. Like the Cajun vampire he resembles, the one who could’ve sparked the Gambit character, Jimmy is also an avid collector of unusual treasures and a prolific sculptor and print artist. A legend in his own right, just as Clifton is.

Now, in a time when even the Rolling Stones are cutting Chenier tunes, “Sugar in the Rain” is a song Jimmy wrote and recorded in 2021 during his long tenure as a New York musician. Swinging and rocking like Chenier, he sings about the cutter in the cane and walking down to the smokey field. It reminds me of my Pelican State upbringing. I feel like I’m baiting a lure with a cold beer in hand just hearing it.

Tracked in a day or two at Bogalusa’s Studio in the Country, Jimmy brought in his crew: Shannon Powell on drums, Grant Green Junior on guitar, the late Ike Stubblefield on organ, and Chris Severin on bass. Raw, loose, and full of tricky rhythm, it keeps every foot tapping. I love Jimmy so much, and I’m glad I have this tune to hear him through when I’m out west instead of cooking it up with him. “So, let me take you down to that smokey field…”

Novos Baianos – “Acabou Chorare”

On the heels of my Big Waste EP, I was fishing for a new direction and felt pretty done with anything folk related. That impulse was real, but tough, because folk was most of what I’d written my whole life outside of BW. To grease the needle on my compass, I asked myself where Jazz and Folk intersect. Those were the two genres I grew up hearing most, and I knew the answer would scratch the itch: I wanted folk’s lines and words but chords with more sophistication. The one BW song that gave me that spark was “Le Marche,” and it lit a fire to write more in that vein.

The answer finally arrived thanks to a deep dive into world music. What sat at the intersection? Samba and bossa. That’s where I felt I could move past my usual protest mode. With bossa I could croon. That thrilled me. Like the Belafonte records of my childhood, it offered the musical landscape I loved—calypso and its cousins—while letting me fold in sounds from home. New Orleans is more than jazz and folk, and the Caribbean thread is key.

The biggest nudge came from Black Orpheus. “Samba de Orfeu” and “A Felicidade” still stop me in my tracks. That soundtrack isn’t just songs, it’s music in the streets, life pouring out of every measure. It pulled me toward the album concept immediately, but I wanted something that tied that vibrancy to the intimacy I gravitate toward as a writer.

Then came “Acabou Chorare.” I’ve heard it was written for his daughter after she bumped her knee — fact check me — but the charm is undeniable. Guitar and voice alone conjure an enormous emotional response. It held the essence I needed. That tune taught me the last lesson I was searching for, the one that let me chart my own voyage and eventually led to the birth of Any One Thing.

Everything But the Girl – “Mine” (2012 Remaster)

I’ll keep this one short. This remaster is a perfect rendition of an excellent song. It doesn’t take much to hit a homerun, just an easy swing aligned just right, the ball lifted clean over that big fence. This is that connection: pure, centered, effortless. Her voice, the lightly modified arrangement, the placement of the drum hits, and the personal weight of what the song sings about all land with such grace. I hope we remember how tasteful this band has remained and how well their catalogue has aged. I certainly do. It’s a song I can cry to every time the chorus blooms. So perfectly stated. Sigh.