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Matt Palka Chases Love and Open Roads on New Single “Gypsy Queen”
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Matt Palka releases “Gypsy Queen,” the second single from his forthcoming collaborative album ‘Moment In The Sun’, due June 19. The track draws from a true story, the kind that starts with a sold motorcycle, a new suit, and a plane ticket to a best friend’s wedding in Los Angeles. “Then I fell for a bridesmaid,” Palka says, “and two months later we drove cross-country to make a new home together.” The song captures that instant, unexpected pull of new love with exactly the warmth the story deserves.
Americana Highways premiered the single, praising its “nostalgic swirls of pedal steel” and Palka’s “emotionally expressive vocals,” calling the result expansive and evocative. It is the kind of track that opens a window and lets the road rush in, rooted in lived experience and delivered with genuine feeling. The accompanying audiobook, also titled ‘Moment In The Sun’, arrives June 25 and follows a college graduate making a solo cross-country bicycle journey from Ohio to California on $600 and a guitar.
The audiobook is based on Palka’s own real-life adventure, a 2,361-mile ride over five weeks that took him across the highest highway in America, down Route 50 (The Loneliest Road in America), and through encounters that shaped both the man and the music. Performing Songwriter Magazine called the project transcendent, writing that it “shines bright.” The first single, “Oh Angela,” arrived last month to strong early response.
The audiobook also serves as season one of Palka’s new podcast, Americana Bohemia, with new chapters dropping every Monday and Thursday at mattpalka.com/podcast.