Big Machine Midland‘s sophomore album, Let It Roll, arrives today, featuring a cover photo of Cameron Duddy, Mark Wystrach, and Jess Carson perched against a vintage pink limousine.
Cam confesses the Austin-based trio originally had a completely different vision for the artwork of album number two.
“We thought we already had the album concept figured out in the form of a painting collage,” he reveals. “So when we went to do that photo shoot, we didn’t have any intention of doing shots for the album. We knew we wanted to shoot some places in Austin, and Harper, my wife, found that pink Cadillac.”
Cam’s better half also took the pictures.
“Cam’s wife is a very successful… talented fashion photographer…” Mark explains. “It’s like Midland doing kind of fine art… You know, us just being goofballs but Harper actually making us look cool.”
Midland may’ve been set on a limo for the shoot, but the color was purely accidental.
“We didn’t need it to be pink…” Cam says of the car they found via Instagram. “Turns out we knew a guy who had that pink limo. It’s a Lincoln with longhorns on the front.”
Midland ended up parking their pink limo in front of the iconic Nau’s Drug in the Tarrytown section of Austin.
“It’s old school,” Mark says. “So it has these really beautiful neon lights on the outside. And it has this kind of really gorgeous art deco exterior.”
Once Midland saw the snaps from the shoot, they scrapped their original plans.
“It was a complete accident…” Cam reiterates. “We saw it, and we were like, ‘That’s the album cover.'”
If you buy the physical CD of Let It Roll, the insert unfolds into a poster of the threesome standing by the car with a full view of Nau’s Drug.
Copyright © 2019, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
