Donna Jean Godchaux Band with Jeff Mattson is proud to announce the release of their debut album, Back Around on February 18, 2014.

The album will be sold for digital download through Heart of Gold Records’ exclusive agreement with The Orchard on ITunes and other digital media ? CD distribution will be online through Grateful Dead (Dead.net), CD Baby and Amazon.com.? Recorded in Muscle Shoals, AL at the Nutthouse Recording Studio, the album blends a Muscle Shoals groove with a psychedelic San Francisco vibe.? The Legendary Muscle Shoals Horns and Muscle Shoals musicians bring their Muscle Shoals sound to the recording.

Donna Jean Thatcher, later known as Donna Godchaux, was born in Muscle Shoals, Alabama on August 22, 1947. She visited her first recording studio at age 12, and knew that she would be a singer. By age 15, she was a session singer in Muscle Shoals and was working with artists like Elvis Presley, Percy Sledge, Boz Scaggs and Cher. Donna can be heard on such tracks as Elvis Presley's "Suspicious Minds," and Percy Sledge's "When a Man Loves a Woman." In 1970, she decided she wanted to experience a new life, and moved to California. Thereafter she recorded and toured with the Grateful Dead for eight years. A recent Rolling Stone magazine article (June 2013), “1977 The Grateful Dead’s Greatest Year” written by David Browne attests to the creative surge of the band during her tenure.
Donna Jean appears in the documentary about the Muscle Shoals music history, Muscle Shoals (2013), a Magnolia Pictures release, and with Bob Weir and Phil Lesh and many others in the TRI Studios DVD release celebrating Jerry Garcia’s 70th Birthday by Justin Kreutzmann, Move Me Brightly (2013), and in Sunshine Daydream (2013), the HD digitally remastered film of the Grateful Dead’s 1972 benefit concert for Ken Kesey’s family’s Springfield Creamery in Veneta, Oregon.

Jeff Mattson is a guitar wizard whose playing ranges from rock & roll to blues, bluegrass, country, jazz, and folk, with a healthy dose of psychedelia. Jeff is also a strong original songwriter and his work is prominently featured on five original albums. Jeff is the lead guitarist in Dark Star Orchestra and has appeared in the documentary Wetlands Preserved (2008) about the famous NYC nightclub, major supporter of the jamband scene, and NYC activism collective.

Back Around features all the members of the band (Donna Jean, Jeff Mattson, David MacKay, Joe Chirco, Freeman White), plus special appearances by Mark Adler, Pete Lavezolli, and Muscle Shoals music scene mainstays the Muscle Shoals Horns (Charles Rose, Harvey Thompson, Jim Horn and Steve Herman) as well as Will McFarlane, Jimmy Nutt, Clint Bailey, Richard Bailey, Cindy Walker, Marie Lewey, Gary Nichols.