Stiv Cantarelli - Innerstate (2012)

Innerstate is the debut solo album by Italian musician Stefano "Stiv" Cantarelli, released in 2011–2012 on Portland-based El Cortez Records, the label founded by members of Richmond Fontaine. Richmond Fontaine served as his backing band on the record, blending raw punk-rock edges with border-crossing narratives that feel equally at home on both sides of the Atlantic.
The collaboration came about by chance: after a late night in a Barcelona bar, the Richmond Fontaine musicians offered to back Cantarelli on a solo record and release it on their own label. For Cantarelli — a native of Forlì in Emilia-Romagna and a veteran of the Italian alt-country scene with Satellite Inn — it proved a career-defining moment: Innerstate was warmly received by European radio, and the album's release led to Cantarelli opening Richmond Fontaine's subsequent European tours.
The record is notable for the presence of Willy Vlautin — writer, singer-songwriter, and Richmond Fontaine frontman — who co-wrote and appears on "A Farewell Letter", a rare and natural convergence of American roots tradition and a distinctly European sensibility. Musically, Innerstate moves between acoustic intimacy and electric density, preserving the raw, live energy of the recordings throughout.
Cantarelli first came to prominence as the leader of Satellite Inn, an Italian alt-country band recruited by North Carolina's MoodFood Records as a replacement for the rising Whiskeytown. All of that accumulated experience — intensive American touring, proximity to Vlautin's narrative songwriting tradition, and deep punk roots — is audible across every track of Innerstate.

Tracklist:
1-1 Stiv Cantarelli - Innerstate [1:50]
1-2 Stiv Cantarelli - 19 and Jaded [3:31]
1-3 Stiv Cantarelli, Willy Vlautin - A Farewell Letter (feat. Willy Vlautin) [4:14]
1-4 Stiv Cantarelli - June [4:23]
1-5 Stiv Cantarelli - The Spinning Wheel [3:38]
1-6 Stiv Cantarelli - The Rookie [4:50]
1-7 Stiv Cantarelli - Countryside [5:22]
1-8 Stiv Cantarelli - Under Colored Lights [4:24]
1-9 Stiv Cantarelli - Soon Forgotten [2:41]
1-10 Stiv Cantarelli - Barcelona Girl [2:42]