Dion Releases “Song for Sam Cooke (Here in America) with Paul Simon

Press Release

Dion’s new album, Blues With Friends, is released by KTBA Records on Friday 5^th June and is available for Pre-Order worldwide at: KTBArecords.com

Dion releases his sixth single “Song For Sam Cooke (Here In America)” with Paul Simon today. The single is taken from his upcoming album ‘Blues With Friends’ released on Friday 5^thJune via Keeping The Blues Alive Records.

10% of all profits from Joe Bonamassa’s new label KTBA Records (aka “Keeping the Blues Alive Records”) will be donated back to the Non-Profit for promoting music education to students and schools in need.

Says Dion about the song: “I wrote this tune back many years ago. At first I just had the melody and the refrain ‘Here in America.’ A friend suggested I use an episode from my memoir about walking southern streets with Sam Cooke in 1962. I finished the song, but it felt too personal, so I put it aside. Then in 2019 I saw the movie Green Book and after that I couldn’t shake the song. My friend Paul Simon wanted to record it what he was hearing on the tune; it’s a story we both share. Thank you Paul. Rest in peace, Sam.”

“Blues With Friends” features 13 tracks with special guests including Billy Gibbons, Bruce Springsteen, Jeff Beck, Paul Simon, Joe Bonamassa, Van Morrison, Brian Setzer, Sonny Landreth, Joe Louis Walker, Samantha Fish, Stevie Van Zandt and many more.

Dion and Joe Bonamassa

For this outing, Dion worked with producer Wayne Hood in whose Florida studio the basic tracks were recorded. “From the first day, I was at home. We hit it off like brothers on a mission. We caught the same vision and sound and off we went.” Over the course of the last part of 2019 and the first part of 2020, the album began to take shape. Dion had the songs and the collaborators began to reveal themselves. As Dion tells it, he ran the album’s first track, “Blues Comin’ On,” past Joe Bonamassa. He noted, “It’s funny how a song evolves. For me it usually starts with a few words. In this case it was “If I didn’t know better” I wanted to sing those words, so I wrote a song around them. Joe Bonamassa is a monster and took the song to a whole new level.” Joe would be the first of many of Dion’s Blues With Friends co-conspirators.