Greg Copeland - Empire State EP (2024)

Greg Copeland, Empire State. Back in the late 1960s, Greg Copeland co-authored “Buy for Me the Rain,” Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s 1967 pop single, and collaborated a bit with Jackson Browne, a friend since high school. During the decades that followed, however, he worked as an attorney and issued only three full-length albums: 1982’s Browne–produced Revenge Will Come, 2008’s Diana and James, and 2020’s The Tango Bar.

Now in his late 70s, he’s back with Empire State, a release whose brevity doesn’t exactly make up for lost time: an EP, it clocks in at only about 20 minutes and includes just four songs, all self-penned. (A fifth track is a 53-second recording of coyotes howling in Copeland’s backyard.)

More would have been better but take what you can get. Copeland—accompanied here by a small ensemble that includes his producer, Tyler Chester on keyboards—is a quirky but fascinating folk and rock performer with a distinctive perspective and an eclectic approach. The best cuts on Empire State include the acoustic, affecting “4:59:59,” a song about drug addiction; and the poetic title cut, the first-person tale of a woman who leaves New York and her boyfriend and proclaims, “Everybody’s got their own little jukebox, this is mine.”