Ed Dupas is a Michigan-based Americana artist crafting songs that feel lived-in, honest, and quietly profound. On Codename California, his first release in six years, Dupas reemerges with clarity and purpose, following a nine-month retreat that carried him from Ann Arbor to Laurel Canyon to Vancouver Island.
Rooted in the textures of late-‘60s California folk-rock, the album blends vintage atmosphere with modern urgency. The title track stirs something elemental - a mood, a memory, a longing reaching toward a California dream half-remembered. Highlights include ‘Barbed Wire Cross’, featuring longtime folk artist Drew Nelson and ‘Holy Land’ born from a chance encounter with a priest at a remote truck stop, along with the album’s first single, ‘Box of Lonely Men’, an anthem for every man, and the bartenders they love.
Produced by Ed Dupas and Michael Crittenden and mastered by Warren Defever at Third Man Mastering in Detroit, Codename California is a quiet reckoning - an album about voice, place, and coming home to yourself.
Players include Michigan pedal steel mainstay Drew Howard, Tony Pace formerly of Cold Tone Harvest and Caroline Barlow, who lends standout backing vocals on ‘Queen of Hearts’. ‘My Only One’ features strings by Savannah Madigan and Kate Larson, best known for their work with The Accidentals.
Praise for Ed Dupas
“Dupas may be from the home of the Stooges and MC5, but instead he chooses to kick out the classic Steve Earle-esque jams in a contemporary manner not too dissimilar to the likes of Sturgill Simpson.” Americana-UK
“Ed Dupas’ songs are truthful and delivered with a real emotion that rings true; made not for profit, but for merit.” Lonesome Highway
“Standing tall in the line of dusty blue-collar troubadours, Dupas details contemporary working-class life with gimlet-eyed honesty. A Good American Life is an outstanding album that catapults Dupas from nowhere into the first rank.” RNR
“Songs that could or should have come from the pen of Springsteen, Kristofferson or more recently Sturgill Simpson...” No Depression
Bio
Ed Dupas (pronounced Du-paw) is an Americana artist with a knack for crafting songs that stick with you - songs that balance grit and vulnerability while cutting to the heart of things. His music has earned airplay across the U.S., Canada, and Europe, resonating with listeners drawn to its emotional weight and lyrical honesty.
Born in Houston and raised in Winnipeg, Dupas now calls Ann Arbor, Michigan, home. His geographic journey mirrors an inner one - a lifelong search for meaning that runs through his songwriting. A self-described searcher and thinker, he draws from country, blues, and rock traditions to create music that doesn’t chase trends but taps into something lasting and real.
While his sound draws comparisons to legends like Springsteen and Kristofferson, Dupas forges his own path, creating music that’s deeply personal yet universally relatable. His latest release, Codename California, captures a songwriter in motion - wrestling with change, chasing truth, and laying it all bare in a record both timely and timeless.
Codename California was conceived shortly after my father passed in July 2019, three days after the release show for The Lonesome Side of Town. While preparing for his memorial, we sorted through old photos, and I was surprised when my mom handed me one, saying, “Look, here I am pregnant with you in Los Angeles.”
I was born in Houston and had no idea my mom was four months pregnant with me when the family left California in 1971. Their time there had always held a mythic quality in my imagination. Growing up, my parents and sisters would reminisce about Tommy’s Hamburgers, Dodger games, and days at the beach. Those memories came to shine brightly for me, as if they were my own. So imagine my surprise to learn I had lived there too - albeit in utero.
Some say we’re invisibly tied to where we’re conceived or born. I don’t know if that’s true, but I’ve felt drawn to Los Angeles my whole life. I was born in Texas - but my journey began in California.
After the memorial, I toured the central US. One afternoon, at a BBQ in Kansas City, I was struck with the idea to create a record centered around California - or rather, resident with it. On one level, I wanted to explore the sounds, tunings, and instrumentation of the late ’60s Laurel Canyon scene, which shaped so much of the era’s music. But on a deeper, more numinous level, California became a stand-in for something I couldn’t quite name. It felt like a placeholder for Teilhard de Chardin’s “Point Omega” - that unseen attractor pulling us forward as our clumsy steps try to make sense of this life.
You see, at that point, I’d lost my way. My voice on the last record didn’t sound like mine. The songs didn’t feel like mine. Something had shifted, but I didn’t know what. All I knew was that things had been feeling more and more off - and the album starting to take shape in me seemed to be reaching for a way back - or maybe a way forward. The concept was vague, and not strictly musical. So I gave it a name - Codename California.
I stepped away from music after that tour, and soon after, COVID-19 took hold and everyone stepped away for a while. With the world in turmoil, I moved to Vancouver Island to let things settle. I figured time away from my home in Ann Arbor, Michigan, might offer some perspective.
On the way to the island, I stopped in Los Angeles. I wanted to “close the loop,” so to speak - to return to the place it all began and begin anew. I rented a small place in Laurel Canyon and found deep peace there. Though I was unsettled by the contrast I witnessed - encampments of unhoused people lining the roads on the way in, set against the extraordinary wealth of the Hollywood Hills. And then, above the bed in my Airbnb, a large, barbed wire crucifix.
Amidst the tremendous peace, those elements agitated me. I felt like I had to do something with the feeling, so I began to write - and the music began to flow, as if it had been waiting there for my arrival.
When I returned from the island eight months later, I rented another place in California, one themed in the 1960s, complete with egg chairs and orange shag. I had limited recording gear with me but managed to cut the core guitars and vocals for the title track before returning to Michigan and completing my nine-month trip.
Codename California became an exercise in rediscovering my musical voice, reconnecting to authenticity, and finding my way back to the center – to the eye of the storm, the only place in this reality capable of offering us peace. The journey is lifelong, and the destination imagined, I know. But life feels lighter now, and there’s a quiet excitement in me about what might come next. It’s a marked improvement over the space I was inhabiting that afternoon in Kansas City. I’m calling it a win.
I truly hope you enjoy listening to Codename California as much as I enjoyed making it.
For further information Geraint or Deb Jones at G Promo PR
Email: gpromo@btinternet.com • Web: www.gpromopr.com
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