“It was pretty magical,” says Austin-based singer-songwriter LISA MORALES about writing her new single and video “IMPOSTOR” with Sir Woman’s Kelsey Wilson from her fourth album SONORA, released today, September 13, 2024via Luna Records.
“We went to the desert to work on the album, to be completely creative, with nothing around us but instruments and tortillas,” Morales recounts her time at Sonic Ranch outside El Paso. “Kelsey and I had planned on getting together at Sonic Ranch to write, but that morning, the word ‘impostor’ came to me in the shower. Later, when we met up, she asked if I knew a bossa nova feel, so I started playing one, and the song flew out. It’s a song about being true to yourself.”
That’s where she co-wrote “Have it All” with Jojo Garza, “Impostor” with Kelsey Wilson, and “La Paz” with AJ Haynes. “Sonora nods at the Ranchera music I was raised with,” says Morales. “Through the whole album, there is a ribbon that ties it together, which is my Mexican culture,” she explains, “though there are songs in both English and Spanish.”
An album drenched in the ballads, boleros, rancheros, and corridos from her youth, Sonora marks the first album in which she immerses the listener in the “third” language she’s fluent in, Spanglish. “Everything just comes from a deeper place when I’m singing in Spanish,” she explains. “All of that Mexican music, it’s the fiber of who I am.” It’s this depth and soul-bearing vulnerability that Morales imbues into the album, which incidentally also serves as a tribute to her late sister, Roberta, who passed away from cancer in August 2021.
In their younger days, Roberta and Lisa formed the internationally acclaimed duo Sisters Morales, which No Depression lauded as “sizzling… redefining Tex-Mex by combining honky-tonk with Latina influences.” Though Lisa launched a solo career in 2011, the sisters remained close. Sonora is inspired by Roberta’s passing, including the first single, “Hermanitas In The Rain.”
“I started writing this song three days before my sister, Roberta, passed,” explains Morales about the track. “I went into her room to have her help me with it, but it was hard. I had all these beautiful memories flooding me at that moment. I wrote it all in minutes but didn’t realize it was done until I brought it back out a year and a half later.”
“When we were little girls in Tucson, AZ, the monsoon rains in July and August would fill the busy streets around the block,” she reminisces about her sister who passed away from cancer in August 2021. “Roberta would grab me, and we would sit on the curb to get splashed by the cars driving! I put in pieces of our culture in this song, lyrically. Mom crawled to the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico City to be able to have us—in the song, I refer to ‘Guadalupe – she watches over.’”
On Sonora, the brunt of that grieving doesn’t come until the very end, with “Hermana” — Morales wrote the mournful ballad shortly after her sister’s death. Two years later, the heart-shattering anguish in Lisa’s voice as she sing-cries, and the last two lines ring even more poignant: “Puedes escucharme, Hermana? / Can you hear me, Roberta?”
The album is also a collaboration between friends. “Hermanitas in the Rain,” “Hermana,” and “What Do You Want” are the only three songs on Sonora that Morales wrote solo. The rest were all co-writes — “Flores (En Un Jardin)” with Tish Hinojosa; “Have It All” with JoJo Garza of Los Lonely Boys; “La Paz” with A.J. Haynes of Louisiana’s the Seratones; “Adios Mi Vida” with Mariangela Guerra; and “En El Limbo” with Nick Diaz — aka Buenos Diaz — and Felipe Castañeda. Closest of all to her heart is “It’s a Common Thing” — a song she got to co-write with Roberta, honoring one of her sister’s last wishes.
Roberta can be heard on “It’s a Common Thing” via the brief snippet of her original voice memo that opens the track. But she’s not the only blood relative of Lisa’s featured on Sonora. Thomas Spencer, Lisa’s 19-year-old son and latest full-time addition to her road band, makes his studio debut, playing lead or classical guitar on several tracks (alongside such esteemed industry vets as JoJo Garza, David Pulkingham, Davíd Garza, and Michael Ramos). And much to his proud mother’s delight, he sings a fair amount of background vocals, too. “I really missed the effortless family harmonies that Roberta and I always had together, so I asked him one day to try singing with me, and bam, there it was — that same unmistakable family quality.” Just call it una tradición familiar. Sonora is out today, September 13, 2024 via Luna Records.