Coming into his own as a singer-songwriter and visionary solo artist, former Chordaes frontman Leo Sawikin wrote his recently released debut single, the soaring, ethereal pop/rock ballad “Golden Days,” before the era of COVID-19 – yet its prescient lyrics capture our anxious collective moment perfectly: “We were chasing dreams/Way back then life was serene, but we blew it all to smithereens. . .can't help but long for the golden days.”

Produced by two time Grammy winner Marc Swersky (Joe Cocker) and mixed by Grammy-winning engineer Tony Black (Alicia Keys), and Seth von Paulus (Smashing Pumpkins) “Golden Days” marks the beginning of a unique rollout of tracks (including several double-sided singles and videos) from Sawikin’s debut album Row Me Away, tentatively set to drop in May 2021. These include the tracks “Born Too Late”/”Take What You Want.”

Production-wise, “Golden Days” and the other tracks on Row Me Away are influenced by Leo’s lifelong passion for The Beach Boys’ groundbreaking Pet Sounds, while still creating a unique vibe of their own. Feeling limited by the alt-indie meets soulful contemporary soft rock vibe of The Chordaes, the singer and Swersky charted a fresh sonic path for Leo’s solo material that includes more “bleed,” running vocals through guitar pedals and recording strings with a bullet mic.

As a songwriter, Leo is deeply inspired by classic pop and rock legends Brian Wilson, Carole King, Burt Bacharach, and Jimmy Webb – the latter two especially for the way they blended simple melodies with complex harmonic ideas. Tempo wise, Leo ventures on the album from hard driving rockers (“Born Too Late,” “A Whole World’s Waiting”) to dreamlike atmospheric ballads (“If I Stayed,” “Take What You Want”).

“I feel like ‘Golden Days’ sums up the whole theme of Row Me Away perfectly,” says the NYC based Leo, whose critically acclaimed recordings with The Chordaes (also produced by Swersky) include Touch the Ground (2016), the EP In Itinere and What We Breathe In (2019). “The song was inspired by a trip I took with friends in the summer of 2019. It’s about taking things for granted and not realizing how good we had it. I wrote the song from the perspective of my future self, looking back and longing for times that ironically, I probably didn’t enjoy so much while they were happening. A lot of our best memories are from times that seem better in retrospect than when we were living them.

“Overall, the new album reflects this feeling that you’ve missed out on the best the world has to offer, and just the pervading sense that things are getting more difficult in the world – and every attending emotion that goes along with it,” Leo adds. “It’s kind of like letting go of that and trying to figure out what you do after everything falls apart. When I wrote these songs, they were about the way my friends and I were thinking, that the world we think we have is not going to last long. We were thinking more in terms of issues like climate change or political divisiveness, but the pandemic, which none of us expected, gives the songs more power. We’re already starting to live that new reality where you can’t turn your back for a second. In the old world, we could distract ourselves with our day to day lives, but now we’re forced to stare down just how fragile everything is.”