A feverish rock debut album tinted with folk and blues by French-American dandy and Moriarty's founding member, Mick Strauss. There's many a tale to be found out on the open road, something Mick Strauss knows only too well. An itinerant soul, over his 30-odd years Strauss has always wandered far and wide, his curiosity piqued by people and their cultures. And it was one such trip, undertaken in 2019, that shaped the sound and stories of his debut album 'Southern Wave' - six months journeying through the heart of the United States, his adopted homeland, from Duluth down through Missouri to the Louisiana coast. "It's a chronicle of the middle of the middle," says Strauss of the record and the months on the road that inspired it. "It was hard, and sad - the people there were hardened by the times and it was before COVID struck! But I felt at home with them." Snippets of real conversations are sprinkled throughout, as are field recordings that capture the American heartland: waves crashing in a cave on Lake Superior; train announcements at Chicago's Union Station, roadside thoughts from anonymous geniuses.