Diamond Rugs

Between commitments to his band Deer Tick, John McCauley has often sought out musical partnerships with other performers. Time away from the group produced the album Middle Brother, which united McCauley with Taylor Goldsmith and Matthew Vasquez. Diamond Rugs itself took shape after McCauley crossed paths with a musician he had long admired. While living in his adopted hometown of Nashville, he caught a Los Lobos show and afterward met Steve Berlin, the group’s longtime Los Angeles saxophonist, keyboardist, and percussionist. Their conversation turned to McCauley’s plan to cut solo material, and he asked Berlin to contribute; Berlin accepted. McCauley then assembled a varied lineup that included Deer Tick’s Robbie Crowell along with Ian Saint Pé of the Black Lips, Hardy Morris of Dead Confederate, and Bryan Dufresne of Six Finger Satellite. Once the six players entered the studio, ideas began to circulate and original songs from several members entered the sessions, causing the solo project to be set aside. The musicians coalesced into a working band, which McCauley named Diamond Rugs. Their first recordings surfaced as a self-titled album released by Partisan Records in spring 2012. The same Nashville studio later hosted a second set of sessions that yielded the follow-up Cosmetics, issued in early 2015.