The Duane Bartels Band is a funk-rock group from New Orleans, founded by singer-songwriter Matthew Duane Bartels in 2016. Bartels aimed to fuse his unique voice, guitar playing, and lyrical sensibilities with the energy of a tight rhythm section and horns. The band honed their sound by performing at various venues around New Orleans, eventually releasing their debut album, The Ballad of Johnny Loveless, in 2018.
The six-piece band’s music combines California indie-rock with the diverse sounds of New Orleans, anchored by Bartels’ distinct vocals. In 2020, during the COVID pandemic, the band entered the studio to record their second album, Electric Baby Carriage. After recording two tracks at Marigny Studios, the band was taken under the wing of Grammy award-winning producer Justin Armstrong, who mixed, mastered, and engineered the album in his Slidell, LA studio. Despite delays due to COVID and other factors, the album was completed at the end of 2022.
Electric Baby Carriage showcases the band’s musical range, with a finely-tuned electric sound and a mix of genres including funk, Americana, and blues. The album’s primary theme is unrequited love, with each track effectively capturing various emotions associated with the theme, such as longing, nostalgia, determination, and tranquility.
