Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives

In a career spanning over 50 years, dozens of albums, and too many shows to count, Marty Stuart still charts a course through new territory at every chance possible. Joined by his longtime band The Fabulous Superlatives, the five-time GRAMMY® Award winner, Country Music Hall of Famer, Congress of Country Music founder, and AMA Lifetime Achievement Award recipient cruises into another stratosphere with his first-ever full-length instrumental LP, Space Junk. The inimitable interplay between Marty, Kenny Vaughan, Harry Stinson, and Chris Scruggs fuels this cosmic cowboy trip with sun-kissed surf guitar, breezy California rhythms, soul-stirring steel guitar, and fluid fretwork all around. “We thought the world needed a fresh instrumental album by a pretty good band,” Stuart laughs. “So we composed twenty instrumentals and took them to the microphones.” Space Junk sounds like country music’s preeminent band crash-landing on a Malibu beach and performing the most epic jam you’ve ever witnessed by starlight. “Instrumentals have always been a part of The Fabulous Superlatives’ repertoire, but this is the first completely instrumental album we’ve done,” Stuart says, noting the project was largely inspired by two of his favorite bands from the sixties, The Ventures and Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. “They did some dangerously cool instrumental records. We’ve done bluegrass, gospel, and country records. Our hearts just led us to this one. Space Junk turned us back into kids with our first guitars.” Ironically, the cover art of Space Junk is a painting by Stuart’s longtime hero and friend Herb Alpert, who generously consented to its use for the project. Stuart’s deeper understanding of the instrumental form can be traced back to the turn of the century, when he took a year off from touring to focus on composing music for film and television. He notably scored All the Pretty Horses, garnering a Golden Globe® Award nomination for Best Original Score, and earned GRAMMY® Awards for Best Country Instrumental Performance with “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” and “Hummingbyrd.” The experience proved pivotal. “Scoring required a cinematic way of thinking,” Marty reveals. “I had to make music for what the scene called for, which turned me into more of a visual player in an understated way. That kind of thinking followed me into the studio during the making of Space Junk. I knew the music had to be pretty, but it also had to say something without losing its drive.” He and The Superlatives ventured to Hollywood to record the bulk of Space Junk at the legendary Capitol Recording Studios. The palm trees, sunshine, and energy of the world-famous room set the perfect mood for the band to blast off. “Just walking in, you feel the weight of that room’s history,” Chris observes. “You can’t help but think of The Beach Boys, Ray Charles, Nat King Cole, and Buck Owens walking down that ramp. It lifts you up and helps you take flight.” “A place like Capitol makes you want to...