The story of Gitkin's new album begins not with a riff, but with a sound on the wind. Down in New Orleans, where the air itself seems charged with spirit, Gitkin started hearing fragments that felt like they came from somewhere else. "I started hearing melodies that felt like they'd been left behind," he recalls. "Nothing fully formed, but insistent. I made it my job to chase them down and give them shape without taming them."

Those whispers became Where the South Winds Wail. The record doesn't unfold like a traditional collection of songs so much as a séance with an unknown past. Surf twang draped in shadows, blues exotica wandering into humid night, psychedelic cumbia tangled with echoes like an Afro-Amazon juke joint - each track a ghostly transmission, pulled from the air and reanimated in the present.

The breakthrough arrived with "Night Tripper." The song, whose lyrics give the album it's title, conjures crossroads bargains and spectral figures: "Ol' night tripper, ring that bell / Ghosts don't sleep where the sinners dwell..." For Gitkin, it was a turning point. Until now, his guitar had done all the speaking. This track demanded something more. It demanded a voice.

That spark took root in New Orleans, a city where the air itself is heavy with history and mystery. Where the South Winds Wail is steeped in that atmosphere - cinematic yet soulful, spiritual yet earthbound and funky. It's less a polished hymn than a raw prayer, echoing like footsteps on a wooden church floor after midnight.