Nocona begins with the husband/wife team of Adrienne and Chris Isom. Chris previously played with Mooney Suzuki as a guitarist, and played and toured with Adam Green. Adrienne, along with playing bass,is a founding member of the all-female music production team, Rebelle Road. The Isoms – who played in New York, Austin, and Toronto before finally relocating to Los Angeles — founded Nocona as a successor to their previous L.A. group, Paladino, with former Old Californio drummer Justin Smith, who like them worked regularly at the Grand Ole Echo, the city’s Sunday roots music showcase. “Justin and I hit it off really well,” Chris says, “because we have the same garage rock backgrounds, but we also like a lot of the Americana stuff. He’s really a much more encyclopedic store of music than I am.”

The core members have found simpatico players in harmonica ace Elan Glasser, steel guitarist Dan Wistrom, and fiddler Xander Hitzig. “I can’t give Xander and Dan enough credit for what they brought to the table,” says Isom. “Xander plays in a great band called the Hitzig Brothers – he’s a polymath, an amazing banjo player, an amazing mandolin player, guitar player. Dan’s the man. He approaches the pedal steel in an unorthodox way. He’s ready to go out in a crazy, psychedelic place that a lot of pedal steel players won’t go – it’s not their comfort zone if you want them to do super-weird stuff.”