Omar Velasco is a singer-songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist whose music reflects a deep spiritual and emotional searching and a certain kind of modern folk-soul built on honesty, simplicity, and craft. 

Born to a Mexican mother and Jewish father and raised in California and Mexico, Velasco spent years navigating the industry as a collaborator and sideman, playing with artists like Jonathan Wilson, Jenny O. and Mia Doi Todd. He has also toured internationally and opened for My Morning Jacket and Father John Misty. 

But eventually, the gridlock of city life and the grind of the business left him feeling spiritually adrift. In his own words, Velasco describes a turning point in his life as a kind of escape: “I just wanted to get clear of the rat race, clear my mind, rejuvenate my spirit… I felt I had to find a way to get [my family] out of the city to someplace more peaceful, more innocent.” With his wife and two children, he left behind the urban sprawl and constructed a small cabin on a friend’s ranch—surrounded by cows, birds, and rolling hills. It was a move inspired as much by personal necessity as artistic longing.

This return to simplicity laid the foundation for Over the Hill, Velasco’s stunning upcoming solo album. Written during the chaotic transition from city to countryside, and recorded in a house on that same ranch over the course of ten days with close friends Grant Milliken and Justin Flint, the album is an introspective yet energetic body of work.

The songs which are spare, soulful, and emotionally raw, blend folk, roots rock, and Velasco’s multi-cultural background with lyrics that reckon with love, mental anguish, faith, and redemption.

But rural life, he quickly learned, was not a cure-all. The peace he was seeking couldn’t be found in just setting alone; it had to be fought for - from within. The songs became a way to wrestle with that internal search. Written and recorded with equal spontaneity, the music captures the kind of clarity that only comes from deep questioning.

Velasco’s sound is both timeless and contemporary, firmly rooted in storytelling and rich with sonic texture. Critics have noted his work as a bridge between the grounded vulnerability of artists like Nick Drake and Leonard Cohen and the expansive arrangements of Caetano Veloso and George Harrison.

With Over the Hill, Omar Velasco doesn’t just affirm himself as a solo artist, he also opens a window into a deeply personal journey. It’s an offering of songs born of quiet desperation and shaped by a desire to live more honestly. In the quietude of the countryside, with the noise stripped away, Velasco, through the music, has found what he’s been chasing all along: purpose, presence, and a precious few fleeting moments of peace.

Photo by Roberto Johnson