Kevin Bronson on September 3rd, 2020

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Singer-songwriter, label impresario and all-around do-gooder Inara George last month launched the Road Angel Project, an effort benefiting Sweet Relief’s COVID-19 Fund for musicians and music industry workers in need. The project’s first release was a new version of George’s song “Sex in Cars” from her May EP “The Youth of Angst” — this one a duet with Dave Grohl.

Volume 2 of the series, which comes out Friday, triples the fun. It leads with Alex Lilly’s “Goodbye Reckless Things,” a pandemic lament that she initially unveiled as a home recording in May, now fully produced. It makes you pine for shareable food, among other things — or as Lilly says, “it’s a spare but light-hearted lament for all the small (and germy, but now deemed reckless) things we’ve said goodbye to … hopefully, just for the time-being.” (Lilly also recently put out the EP “Love in Three Colors” via George’s Release Me Records.)

It’s followed by Dannielle De Andrea’s gorgeous piano ballad (that’s Larry Goldings on the ivories), “The Call,” the title track of the L.A.-based Australian’s 2017 album. Despite being three years old, it rather speaks to our times, too: “What if your world just closed down / No one came to visit your town.”

“Before I moved to the U.S. from Australia, I heard a piano solo on a track called ‘Mean Old Man’ by James Taylor,” De Andrea says. “I saw that the piano player was Larry Goldings, and I became a little obsessed. I met Larry at a show, and after the gig, we set up a writing session! I asked if he had any melodies that he may need some lyrics for and he had the melody to what would become ‘The Call.’ I wrote the words so quickly. I wanted it to be about the simple things in life, that we are given for free, but somehow lose perspective on and need to get back to what is real.”

And topping off the three-song bundle is Mike Viola, the singer-songwriter, Grammy-nominated producer and onetime Candy Butchers frontman whose music has been central in films such as “That Thing You Do!,” “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story” and “Get Him to the Greek.” Viola’s big-hearted jam “Motel Mood” actually dates to 2007 but never made it on the album he released that year, “Lurch.”

“I wrote this song for my wife Audrey before she was my wife and we were falling in love in New York City,” Viola says. “We loved to rent a car and just start driving until we found some dumpy-looking Bates Motel to check into. The song kind of explains why. The only reason why it ended up in a pile of unreleased music is because I had too many songs for the record that we were making. But I always liked the song and I like singing my wife’s Audrey’s name.”

As for the Project, George says that Lilly, De Andrea and Viola were eager to contribute as soon as she contacted them. “As the pandemic hit and it became very clear that live music would not resume for many, many months, I immediately thought of Sweet Relief, not only because they help so many musicians, but also because they help everyone in the music industry,” George says. “All of those people who work at venues booking shows, stage managing, bartending, lighting, mixing sound, and on and on… Sweet Relief is set up to help all of these workers during this crisis and also any other crisis that might come.”

||| Stream: “Road Angel Project, Vol. 2”

||| Also: Stream “Sex in Cars” (feat. Dave Grohl)