Ed Dupas Record Release w/ Lucky 17 | North Star Lounge
Schedule
Sat Nov 22 2025 at 06:00 pm to 07:15 pm
UTC-05:00Location
North Star Lounge | Ann Arbor, MI
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Ed Dupas (Du-paw) is an Americana artist with a knack for crafting songs that stick with you — songs that balance grit and vulnerability while cutting to the heart of things. His music has earned airplay across the U.S., Canada, and Europe, resonating with listeners drawn to its emotional weight and lyrical honesty. Joining Ed on stage, celebrating the release of Codename California, is the backing band Lucky 17 featuring Caroline Barlow, Tony Pace, Ozzie Andrews, and special guest Chris Ranney.The story behind Codename California:
Codename California was conceived shortly after the passing of my father in July 2019, three days after my release show for The Lonesome Side of Town. While preparing for his memorial, we sorted through old photographs, and I was surprised when my mother handed one to me, saying, “Look, here I am pregnant with you in Los Angeles.”
Having been born in Houston, I had no idea that my mother was four months pregnant with me when the family left California in 1971. Their time there had always held a mythic quality in my imagination. Growing up, my parents and sisters would reminisce about Tommy’s chili burgers, Dodger games, and days spent at the beach. Those memories came to shine brightly for me, as if they were my own. So imagine my surprise to learn I had lived there too—albeit in utero.
Some say we’re invisibly tied to the place of our conception or birth. I can’t say whether that’s true, but I’ve felt drawn to Los Angeles most of my life. And while I may have entered the world in Texas, my journey began in California.
After the memorial, I toured through the central United States. One afternoon, sitting in a BBQ restaurant in Kansas City, I was struck with the idea to create a record centered around California—or rather, resident with it. On one level, I wanted to explore the sounds, tunings, and instrumentation of the late ’60s Laurel Canyon scene, which shaped so much of the era’s music. But on a deeper, more numinous level, California became a stand-in for something I couldn’t quite name. It felt like a placeholder for Teilhard de Chardin’s “Point Omega”—that unseen attractor pulling us forward as our clumsy steps try to make sense of this life.
You see, at that point, I’d lost my way. My voice on the last record didn’t sound like mine. The songs didn’t feel like mine. Something had shifted, but I didn’t know what. All I knew was that things had been feeling more and more off—and the album that was starting to take shape in me seemed to be reaching for a way back. Or maybe a way forward. The concept was vague, and not strictly musical. So I gave it a name—Codename California, or just CNC, as I came to call it.
I decided to step away from music for a time following that tour, and soon after, COVID-19 took hold and everyone stepped away for a while. With the world in turmoil, I made the decision to live on Vancouver Island while things settled. I figured the time away from my home in Ann Arbor, Michigan, might offer some perspective.
On the way to the island, I made a stop in Los Angeles. I wanted to “close the loop,” so to speak—to return to the place it all began and begin anew. I rented a small place in Laurel Canyon and found deep peace there. Though I was unsettled by the contrast I witnessed—encampments of unhoused people lining the roads on the way in, set against the extraordinary wealth of the Hollywood Hills. And then, above the bed in my Airbnb, a large barbed wire crucifix.
Amidst the tremendous peace, those elements agitated me. I felt like I had to do something with the feeling, so I began to write—and the music began to flow, as if it had been waiting there for my arrival.
When I returned from the island eight months later, I rented another place in California, one themed in the 1960s, complete with egg chairs and orange shag. I had limited recording gear with me but managed to record the basic guitars and vocals for the album’s title track before returning to Michigan and completing my nine-month trip.
CNC became an exercise in rediscovering my musical voice, reconnecting to authenticity, and finding my way back to the center—to the eye of the storm, the only place in this reality capable of offering us peace. The journey is lifelong, and the destination imagined, I know. But life feels lighter now, and there’s a subtle excitement growing in me about what might come next. It’s a marked improvement over the space I was inhabiting that afternoon in Kansas City.
I’m calling it a win.
I truly hope you enjoy listening to Codename California as much as I enjoyed making it.
-Ed
https://www.nstarlounge.com/tickets/p/eddupas
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Where is it happening?
North Star Lounge, 299 Catherine St, Ann Arbor, MI 48104-1426, United StatesEvent Location & Nearby Stays:
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