Golden Shoulders with Aaron Ross

Golden Shoulders is a band from Nevada City, California, and they've been a band from Nevada City, California since late 2001, so they have literally decades of experience at being a band from Nevada City, California. The Sacramento Bee once said "with all due respect to 'Lady Bird,' Golden Shoulders embodies 2000s-era Sactown," which is very nice, and I like it when a movie I enjoyed gets a tip of the cap while a journalist reminisces about when Golden Shoulders was ever-present in Sacramento. See, years ago Golden Shoulders used to play shows in Sacramento constantly, but they haven't played in Sacramento since late 2019, which is not only a shame, but also, possibly, an actual travesty. 

Listen to Golden Shoulders on Spotify

Aaron Ross has been writing and recording music in the Sierra foothills of Northern California for more than twenty years. His songs fuse elements of classic American folk, blues, and rock-n-roll with an appetite for eclecticism and a dose of absurdist glee to create a sound that is at once spectrally familiar and relentlessly innovative, both rooted in tradition and bracingly original. From the plaintive acoustic reveries of his beloved first release, The Hallelujah Side (2003), to the grunge-country syncretism of Shapeshifter (2007), the schizophrenic symphonies of Paranormal Attitude (2008), and even a series of experimental collaborations with Sacramento math-rock artists Hella, Ross's songwriting transcends genre and defies expectations. Yet it is his lyrical genius that has truly set him apart. Channeling Bukowski and the Beats as much as old-time religion and the dreadful poetry of the Bible, Ross delights in summoning spirits and warbling esoteric, weaving together the sacred and the profane. He likes to mesmerize and he likes to disgust. In these wanton God-haunted verses, as another poet once put it, "the pure products of America go crazy."