BRIM — California Gold

Re-promotion...

From the heart of California comes gold. Brim's debut album California Gold is being re-promoted in 2025 as Fire Country (CBS/Paramount+) introduces the music to a wide new audience...

Fire Country introduces a wide new audience to the scintillating sound of Brim

Brim feature in hot CBS / Paramount+ TV show

Delta PR for Royal Oakie

This is scintillating music from the San Joaquin Valley. A region where there's fire and there's firefighting. Here's the story. Singer and songwriter Daniel Rice and musician Hayden Doyel formed Brim with Daniel’s wife ReNelle Rice playing keyboards and enabling the wonderful vocal harmonies. Written and recorded in their hometown of Visalia, CA, Brim's debut album California Gold is a paean to the dirt-road back streets and down-to-earth humanity of rural California's small towns and valleys. The band is signed to Royal Oakie Records.

Brim's local friend, sound engineer Marc Dwelle, recorded most of the album over the course of three hot summer days in Visalia, and Royal Oakie Records' David Glasebrook mixed at his studio in Oakland, CA. The first songs written for the album were inspired by Daniel’s experience with the growing pains of sobriety and the faded dreams of a rock ’n’ roll life. Other songs sprang from a meditation on more lasting things, the kind of things you can pin your hopes and your dreams on.

The album recalls the lonesome pedal steel of Bakersfield country, Gram Parson’s stories of sin and salvation, and Neil Young's loose and dusty years. Inspired by the unassuming fellow feeling of the farm towns of the San Joaquin Valley, Daniel Rice looked to his core and wrote about overlooked California territories, as a sort of metaphor for the finding of beauty in the simple things of life. Not the postcard views of Malibu sunsets and sandy beaches, but a very different California.

Daniel Rice on the songs of California Gold:

California Gold

"California Gold is about growing up in the agrarian and natural beauty of the Central Valley. Name drops Huell Howser because his TV program California’s Gold celebrated the simple, everyday things here in this state.

In A Smile

A fun, goofy song about the way things seem and the way they really are. Girls, dogs, and politicians in one song. We did it.

Mudpie Kings

An appreciation for the mundane can be a virtue, but there is also a tension present, as there is with the danger of 'slumming it' as a lifestyle, in simply taking what life gives you rather than believing that there is something richer than a default existence. I see folks all over undervaluing and neglecting their education, health, and a variety of other vital things. Coming out from under the 'little brother' mentality of small-town USA and claiming a better life is addressed here in “Mudpie Kings”.

Oleander

Seeing as California has been subject to much public criticism and a recent population exodus, the track “Oleander” has taken on even more layers of significance.

Nothing Gold

Remember when you first picked up a guitar with one of your buddies and you formed a band? Do you recall the dreams you confided to one another, the camaraderie and vows of undying loyalty? I’m trying to get back to that place again, even if 'nothing gold' can stay.

When the Evening Comes

The kind of life I want to live.

There’s More to This World

Discusses the wisdom of leaving glossy 'good' things for humble 'better' things. Quitting something you’ve poured yourself into and gained identity from is hard. Sticking with it might be worse. A wise man once had some words about holding or folding the hand that you’re dealt…

Won't Do It Again

When you quit old habits, those old habits better get replaced by something else with true life-giving value, or they will be back again with a vengeance. “Won’t Do it Again” is a story of relapse and renewal for those experiencing the varying degrees of dependency.

Shadowland

There’s lots of trauma getting covered up by our dependencies and psychological jiujitsu moves. “Shadowland” confronts a huge loss my wife and I experienced together a few years back. This song could be about any kind of loss you may experience, but I’m really glad that the experience of miscarriage is finally something we are talking about publicly."