In February 2005, Chris Reali, JP Reali, and Tom Kaelin, known as the Hudson River Drifters, got together at Blue Dot Studios in Brooklyn, NY, to record songs for Between the Late Night and the Early Make Believe. The trio recorded original songs, all written by Chris, but for reasons nobody can remember, the album was never released. This nine-song EP is a collection of what Chris calls, “traditional sounds for modern times.” The songs are a mixture of blues, country, jazz, and folk. In other words, it’s an album of Americana music to its core. The album was released to all streaming platforms in August 2023.

The backstory or why it took so long for this album to get released

Brothers JP and Chris Reali, after completing a four-month musical residency at Holland Village, a theme park near Nagasaki, Japan in 1991, began to regularly perform as an acoustic duo in New York City at venues like CB’s Gallery, Fat Tuesdays (upstairs), the Eagle Tavern, Ludlow Street Café, Club Lauterbach and weekly shows at Jack Dempsey’s. With Chris on vocals, guitar, and bass, and JP on vocals, guitar, and resophonic guitar, their repertoire drew primarily from traditional/acoustic blues performed with an urban attitude and a few original songs. It was during this time, in the early-to-mid 1990s, that Chris wrote the songs that appear on Between the Late Night and the Early Make Believe. But the duo never had the opportunity to record their original material outside of a few four-track cassette demos. Eventually JP moved to Washington, D.C., and Chris headed west to Portland, OR. In the late 1990s, Chris moved back east, and the brothers performed sporadically in both DC and NY and occasionally with Tom over the next few years.

At some point in 2004, the idea to record an album was hatched. Chris had been playing in a band with Tom at that time, who also co-owned Blue Dot Studio. But the friendship and musical connection between JP and Tom dates back to their days in a rock band formed in high school. Tom served as the principal engineer on Between the Late Night and the Early Make Believe, but also played drums on a few of the tracks. The trio tracked the album over the course of a weekend, and Chris and Tom mixed the songs in the following weeks. A few years later, Chris moved to North Carolina to pursue other professional interests and Between the Late Night and the Early Make Believe remained in the vault, so to speak. Now, after 18 years, the album is finally seeing the light of day.