Neil Young and Crazy Horse will attempt to do what other brave souls (me included) have failed at for years, define definitively Americana.
Of course I don’t think the upcoming album, Americana (6/5) by Young and the band, he began fronting in 1968 after his band Buffalo Springfield dissolved, will be doing anything of the sort. But I am intrigued by them covering late 19th century/early 20th century American folk songs, which include the classic murder ballad Tom Dooley, Woody Guthrie’s This Land is Your Land, Gallows Pole the classic folk song covered by Leadbelly and Led Zeppelin and forlorn American western ballad Clementine.
Young and Billy Talbot, Ralph Molina and Frank “Poncho†Sampedro, will redefine what people think of when when they associate the band with “Classic rock.”
The album was produced by Neil Young along with John Hanlon and Mark Humphreys. I saw the band in February for the Grammy MusiCares tribute to Paul McCartney where they covered the Beatles I Saw Her Standing There (all videos of that performance have been removed online as far as I can tell) and the band was in lean fighting form. There are no reports of a tour resulting from the album.
Americana Tracklist:
1 – Oh Susannah
2 – Clementine
3 – Tom Dooley
4 – Gallows Pole
5 – Get A Job
6 – Travel On
7 – High Flyin’ Bird
8 – She’ll Be Comin ’Round The Mountain
9 – This Land Is Your Land
10 – Wayfarin’ Stranger
11 – God Save The Queen
I recently heard that the Godfather of the Americana movement, T. Bone Burnett (O Brother, Where Art Thou, Raising Sand) , has produced the upcoming release from Lisa Marie Presley. The album, Storm and Grace, will be out May 15th. I was skeptical at fist but after reading this post on Rollingstone.com about how Presley was collaborating with songwriters like Richard Hawley, Ed Harcourt and Travis’ Fran Healy and wanted to regain her faith in music and “find her roots” I think this might be a pretty cool release.
Bodacious is a Southern/Southwestern portmanteau of bold and audacious. It’s meaning is remarkable, courageous, audacious, spirited and unmistakable.
Corpus Christi TX native Amy Francis uses this linguistic fusion and forms the title of her new release , Balladacious. Just as she reinterprets words Francis also uses this skill to give her own take on some of country music’s best-known classics.
The album opens with Francis beautiful voice powerfully breaking the silence with a vulnerable delivery of the Hank Cochran barroom lament Don’t Touch Me. Francis brings the longing and apprehension contained in the song to a palatable level and disarms you of all cynicism. A staple of country music is it’s unabashed sentiment and Francis’ heart is emblazoned boldly on this first song.
The spirits of Patsy Cline, Tammy Wynette and Brenda Lee are conjured with all their romantic weariness giving testament. Not just because Francis covers Sweet Dreams, Apartment #9 and Fool Number One respectively, but because she is a believer. She brings authenticity to these songs because she embodies them wholly not simply mimicking them like many Music City talen dipping a toe in traditionalism.
Her take on Bobbie Gentry’s Ode to Billy Joe reworks this dark song of small-town gossip and makes it swing with an acoustic guitar and strings accompaniment. Her covers of George Jone’s “Picture of Me Without You” and “I’ll Share My World With You” elevates them to the honky-tonk majesty they deserve and Vince Gill’s hit “When I Call Your Name” is covered with barrel-house piano and pedal steel accompaniment and achieves a forlornness that LeAnn Rimes’s cover never came close to. Ronnie Milsap’s “Stranger Things Have Happened” is given an equal turn with Francis’ voice soaring at heights while singing about the depths. The hope against hope and lessons contained in these testimonials of despair makes country music some of the greatest forms of contemporary tragedy. Francis approaches each with dignity and grace they deserve and strikingly nimble vocals that breath life into every barroom confession.
I have an ambivalent relationship with Nashville Sound era country music. When Owen Bradley, with Chet Atkins and Bob Ferguson moved hillbilly music from the hollers and honky tonks to the supper clubs, by adding strings, backing vocals and other adornment better suited for crooners of the day, they laid the path toward the enormously lucrative but culturally superficial pop-country industry we’ve inherited. Like the great performers of the Nashville Sound era Francis charms me into putting aside bias by keeping the soul enact while stripping back just enough veneer to let you hear the heart break.
Athens GA-based Americana songstress Lera Lynn follows up her debut full length (Have You Met Lera Lynn?) with a seven inch, which includes a cover of June Carter Cash penned and Johnny Cash renowned Ring of Fire.
Lynn says of the cover “I always thought June Carter’s “Ring of Fire” was written as a dark song, maybe it’s just where I was when I heard it one dark day. It’s been a lot of fun to rearrange it, almost making it my own. I hope we’ve done it justice. I hope they [the Cash Family] would be proud.”
I never understand when people do cover songs, especially of iconic songs, and then don’t interpret them personally. Lynn does exactly that with her take smolders (heh) punctuated with discordant peaks in the chorus. Look for Lera Lynn on tour in Texas and up the East coast this March and April.
As a part of what Steve Earle called “Nashville’s great credibility scare of the mid ’80s.” Lyle Lovett, along with Earle, k.d. Lang, Dwight Yoakam and others took up the traditionalist Outlaw mantel of the 70’s and reinvigorated country music from it’s soft-rock and Urban Cowboy influence the times.
Lyle Lovett’s new album “Release me,” exhibits pun in name as well as aesthetic. The album is the last for the Curb Records, the label for his entire 26-year. 11-album, career. And in case you missed that the cover art depicts Lyle tied up head-to-ankle in a lariat.
Though Lovett continues a late career trend of including cover songs. But this adios to Curb raises the stakes as it contains only two Lovett originals among the album’s 14 tunes. You might conclude that this last release would be a weakened collection to meet contractual obligations. You would be wrong in that assessment.
Sure Lovett may not be the most prolific songwriter on the planet but he is one of the best interpreters of classic country. There is no one fit to polish Lovett’s boots when it comes close to serving as a diplomat for the eclectic music styles of the Lone Star State.
“Release me” wastes no time offering a burning interpretation of the classic instrumental breakdown of “Garfield’s Blackberry Blossom.” The number made popular in the 1930s by Fiddlin’ Arthur Smith sounds both timeless and spirited in the hands of Lovett and his band.
The title track became a hit for both Jimmy Heap and Ray Price, both in 1954. Here it’s done as a duet with Lovett and k.d. lang, who is so far down in themix her soaring vocals are lost. That quibble aside it’s a great tear-in-my-beer standard well done.
The cover of Michael Franks’ “White Boy Lost in the Blues” slinks in with the funky blues accentuated by Arnold McCuller harmony vocals.The gospel/R&B and Memphis horn-sound of “Isn’t That So” works to a rousing effect and will probably kill live.
Understand You channels beautifully the tender-hearted cowboy Lovett has portrayed many time in his career. The cover of Brown Eyed is looser that Chuck Berry’s original or the covers by covered by many including fellow Texans Buddy Holly and Waylon Jennings. But the song still carries the weight Berry intended after being inspired by witnessing a Hispanic man being arrested by a policeman.
The Ragtime-inspired “Keep It Clean” dares you not to cut a rug and William Moore’s One Way Gal is a fine-time front porch testament to a good woman.
“Dress of Laces” is an achingly lovely Daughter-Father twist on the classic murder ballad. White Freightliner Blues is one of the few up-tempo songs penned by the late, great Townes Van Zandt and Lovett plays it to it’s full open-road greatness.
The two originals Lovett contributes to the album, The first is “The Girl With the Holiday Smile” (also on his 2011 holiday EP “Songs For the Season;”) came from a real-life 1978 encounter young lady hiding out from the cops inside a Houston 7-11. This is my second favorite Christmas/hooker song (Tom Waits’ Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis being the first.) The second cut “Night’s Lullaby,” which features Nickel Creek’s Sara and Sean Watkins, was penned for a 2011 run in the Shakespeare Center Los Angeles’ production of “Much Ado About Nothing” that the three appeared in.
I look forward to the work Lovett is free to explore in his new world as a free agent and am thankful he has left us with something this great to tide us over until the nest batch of surprises comes along.
The Great American Music Hall is a post-earthquake 105 year-old 5,000-square-foot, guilded French motif performance hall that has
been a restaurant, a bordello and a host to fan dancers and a stage for golden Jazz era greats like Duke Ellington, Sarah Vaughan and Count Basie and relative newcomers Van Morrison and the Grateful Dead.
But on this night the back stage of the great American is more like a living room at a friends or relatives’ house. I came to meet Jake Smith, who performs solo and with a band under the moniker The White Buffalo. There in the dimly lit room Smith along with Matt Lynott (drums) and Tommy Andrews (bass) offer smiles, handshakes and beverages. After the hellos and intros the talk moves to influences. I tell Smith about a video I saw on You Tube of him covering the Highwaymen’s theme of world adventure  “Highwayman.” “Oh yeah.” Smith cracks a smile “Waylon, Willie, Kristofferson and Cash. You can’t do any better than those guys.” He then tells me about the music of his Southern California childhood. “We listened to a lot of things. Country, like Loretta, classic rock I guess they call it now. Blues. Gospel.”
The influences show on Smith’s songs if you look for them. Like the best craftsman of songs he makes them sound easy. Effortless. Like they couldn’t be any other way then the way he’s spinning them out. Then I bait him with the question most musicians hate to answer, “How would you label your music.” “I don’t” he says straight. “I spend my time writing them and that’s hard enough. If I spend time on “Is this country” or “if the Americana” I think the song will suffer.”
Smith and the band then starts to list up the night’s songs. Three musicians, three clean, white sheets of paper. One sharpie. then the discussion begins. “What about the Pilot?” “How about Darkside of Town?” “Might be too slow and bring things down.” “How about Love Song #2.” “Okay but you’ll need to sing backup in my mic.” The process is reminiscent of charting an emotional course of stage logistics,crowd physiology and sonic dynamics. What will take them where we want them to go?
The moniker came about through need and happenstance. Smith once wore a sweat shirt that had the title emblazoned on it and some his friends recalled it when he emailed them ideas for a name. White buffalo are extremely rare. The National Bison Association (yes, there is such a thing) has estimated that a White buffalo only occur in approximately one out of every 10 million births. Smith is a living testament to his moniker standing around 6′ 2″ , solid as a wall and stylistically embodying a rare mix of grit and nuance that you couldn’t squeeze out of a dozen neo-folk acts.
Born in Oregon and raised in Southern California, he moved to the Bay area from Huntington Beach to pursue college on an athletic scholarship. He then made his way to L.A. where he now calls home. Because of his local Smith has had his songs crop up in movies and T.V. A bootleg tape of his music made it into the hands of pro surfer Chris Malloy, and his song, “Wrong,†was featured in his surf movie, Shelter. That led to further film scoring and composing work, with three of his songs featured in FX’s Sons of Anarchy and HBO’s Californication.
With 3 EPs and one fill-length out and one more , Once Upon a Time in the West , set to release February 28th Smith has seen thousands of miles over the last few years opening for acts like Ziggy Marley, and Grace Potter and the Nocturnals, and tonight the Texas blues man Gary Clark Jr. His brooding songs of America’s topological and emotional landscape, “mini-movies” he calls them, transforms on the stage. The darkness, whiskey and gunpowder is still there in narrative but the sound shifts to urgency and electricity. Lynott and Andrews expand the dynamics and work off Smith like a fright train veering off the tracks. They are one of the best rhythm sections I’ve seen live.
Over a beer after the show I ask Smith about his fans and whether online piracy worries a working man with a wife and two kids. “People are buying ticket and I’m selling merch. I can’t do anything about the new world I am working in. I have to trust people.”
In true DIY fashion they set their own gear on stage, sell their own merchandise and pack it all up in a van at the end of the night. Off to the nest show miles away across the dark night of America.
I didn’t take, nor did I find, clips from this show. But I couldn’t post without a taste of what I saw. Here The White Buffalo at Bonaroo.
I became aware of Gretchen Peters when I heard One to the Heart, One to the Head , a covers album she released with one of my favorite singer/songwriters Tom Russell. I was impressed by their take on many great country-folk songs, from Bob Dylan to Townes Van Zandt, and Peters’ smoky vocals contrasting with Russell’s dusty growl.
While reviewing the album I became aware of Peters’ past life as a New York-born, Nashville-based songwriter for Music City country, pop and soul. Martina McBride, Trisha Yearwood, Patty Loveless, George Strait, Neil Diamond and the late Etta James She also won the 1995 Country Music Association Song Of The Year award and turned some heads with her unflinching view of a woman’s domestic abuse with McBride’s Independence Day.
These song-craft skills, and the courage that maturity affords you to speak fearlessly, have resulted in Gretchen Peters’New release of darkly engaging Americana-pop Hello Cruel World. Recent trials and revelations in her life provide fertile soil for an collection of songs that look into the abyss and dares to laugh. Dares to love. What could have been a very bleak album transforms brutality, indifference and the absurdity of life into jagged gems that makes you want to sing along and occasionally tap a toe. Peters co-produces along with husband Barry Walsh and Doug Lancio. they use sparse arrangements and atmosphere that made One to the Heart, One to the Head such a pleasure.
The self-titled opener is a moody study of contrast and personal perseverance. “I’m not dead but I’m damaged goods, and it’s getting late.†Followed by a chorus of “I’m a very lucky girl†sung with beautifully weary resignation backed by minor-chord strings. St. Francis was  inspired by the Gulf oil spill and co-written by Tom Russell, who often employs Catholic symbols and analogies to make corporeal points. The song engages St. Francis of Assisi to show how the divine is often overlooked or, when recognized, taken for granted.
Torn allegiances dominate The Matador as the thrill and drama of a bull ring serves as a metaphor for passion and conflict. Ordained minister Rodney Corwell performed the matrimonial ceremony for Peters’ and Walsh in 2010, on Dark Angel, Corwell plays the foil of love in a tale of dangerous attraction and certain demise. Camille shares co-writing credits with Peters’ “Wine, Women, and Song†members Matraca Berg and Suzy Bogguss, is smoky loneliness and sweet despair shepherded by trumpet and barroom piano. Paradise Found has a hot summer day simmer that references Steinbeck and a play on Milton where the song derives it’s title.
From the Stevie Nicks-like album cover Peters stares at you from the dusky cool-colored cover with an orb that looks like a globe or a crystal ball. It serves as both metaphors here. These are adult songs about adult situations that in lesser hands would result in a very dull listening. In Peter’s hands poetry and the profane is balanced in a way that reminds us we are not alone and that beauty and hope, as well as songwriting that engages instead of panders, still exists.
It’s only been 6 years since the release of his Bloodshot Records debut, Yuma, but in the brief time Justin Townes Earle has stepped outside the formidable, shadows of his Father , Steve Earle, and his namesake, Townes Van Zandt, to carve out his own path as a torchbearer for the Americana movement.
Earle’s new release for Bloodshot Records Nothing’s Gonna Change the Way You Feel About Me Now, his follow-up to 2010’s Harlem River Blues, will be released on March 27th.
The video below by Joshua Black Wilkins was filmed during the recording process at the converted church studio of Echo Mountain Studios in Asheville NC. The video shows a live feel of the recording (with Justin making changes on the fly) and features Amanda Shires. The 10-track album was recorded with no overdubs over the course of just 4 days
Describing the the new album Justin describes the sounds as “1960s-era Muscle Shoals sound accompanied by lots of brass.â€Â and that it’s “completely different†than last year’s Harlem River Blues. “This time I’ve gone in a Memphis-soul direction.â€
Download the title track in trade for your email address from the song title link below.
Nothing’s Gonna Change the Way You Feel About Me Now track list
01. “Am I That Lonely Tonight?â€
02. “Look the Other Wayâ€
03. “Nothing’s Gonna Change the Way You Feel About Me Nowâ€
04. “Baby’s Got a Bad Ideaâ€
05. “Mariaâ€
06. “Down on the Lower East Sideâ€
07. “Won’t Be the Last Timeâ€
08. “Memphis in the Rainâ€
09. “Unfortunately, Annaâ€
10. “Movin’ Onâ€
The GRAMMY nominees categories that I cover does not come with choreographed dancers or share the stage with Rihanna. They appear further down on the list near Best World Music Album and Best Spoken Word Album -Â the Americana/folk/bluegrass and the speck of trad country that might find its way into a movie soundtrack or liner note nods. This is the the pre-telecast posse, the back of the bus and behind the gym crowd. This is where the cool kids hang out. Where Lou Reed can sit between a nominee for Best Opera Recording and Best Comedy Album. These are the rough and rowdy mongrels of music.
I watch the nominee concert dutifully but it’s nothing to do with me or my readers. I am waiting for the full list to be posted online. Then I run my eye over it. downward to the Best Folk Album, some nice surprises with The Civil Wars and Eddie Vedder. Best Bluegrass Album, great to see the old guard Del McCoury and Ralph Stanley in the mix with Steve Martin and Jim Lauderdale. Next the big enchilada – Best Americana Album. Ry Cooder, Emmylou Harris, Levon Helm, Lucinda Williams legends all…wait…who’s this? Who is Linda Chorney?
I’m a frikkin “Influencer” for krips sake (or so Klout tells me), how is it I don’t know this person? Where did she come from and how, after 6 albums, is it that I haven’t heard of her until now? i like a to be surprised as much as the next music blogger, but sometimes there is this feeling that if you missed this artist how many others are sliding past your gaze. I needed to atone and find out who this person is.
So i did what any red-blooded Americana blogger would do – I Googled her. First off a video that appears to be centered on scuba diving in some tropical locale. She’s easy on the eyes, but how does she sound? First impression is Aimee Mann, Chrissie Hynde and Michelle Shocked on a serious Meet The Beatles! bender. I emailed her directly from her site. She can’t already have a layer of people to sift through for a conversation. I’m the the official GRAMMY folk/Americana blogger guy. I figure that that should account for something!
Maybe it did. Maybe I caught her at a vulnerable time in the wake of her nomination. Maybe she confused with with her friend Bryan Lang. Whatever…i had an interview set.
I hope the below exchange let’s you get to know Linda Chorney and you find her as charming and talented as I did. enjoy…
Twang Nation – So, how are you feeling?
Linda Chorney – I’m still a little but in shock but I feel great. When I told my mom and dad (about the Best Americana Album Grammy nomination) and my mom said this is one of her greatest moments since your birth for me.
TN – Wow, you can’t buy fans like that.
LC -Â (laughs) When I was younger they paid for my demo tapes and have been coming to biker bars that I’ve played throughout my life. They’ve waited for me to get my big break and now it’s kind of come.
TN – Tell me a little about how you got here.
LC – I once broke the top 40 in the adult contemporary on the Friday Morning Quarterback (music industry news publication) with my song Living Alone. We thought then that something was going to happen. Then the day we had some deals on the table was on September 11th (2001) and everything sort of got put on hold. I said to myself that I didn’t die that day, and nobody I know died. How important is another song? So I didn’t take (the deals falling through) that hard. Though I took the the events of September 11th very hard and wrote a song about it on my third album.
TN – I’ve been blogging about this genre for several years and lived in New York City for 5 years, how is it I’m just now hearing about a Grammy nominated Americana artists based from New Jersey?
LC – Probably because I’ve been bopping around the whole world. I played on Bleecker Street for years, at Red Line and the Back Fence and a few other clubs. I’ve played the Hamptons. I like to travel! I’ve bartered my way around the world. I’m an avid scuba diver but diving costs a lot of money so when I travel I will write a few dive places and say “Hey I’m a singer/songwriter and will perform for your crew aboard or your place in exchange for scuba diving. Diving can easily can run you a couple of hundred bucks a day. One place that responded was the Bottom Time Bar in Palau Micronesia and that where I shot my video for my song Sink or Swim (see below) I played a weekend and was able to dive for two weeks for free.
TN – Not a bad gig.
LC – it was awesome! I also went to Mount Everest where I sang at 17,000 feet – I’ve sung below sea-level and sung 17,000 feet above sea-level.
TN – Did you know you were in the running for a Grammy nomination?
LC – From the feedback I was getting from Grammy 365 people. I said to my executive producer, “Jonathan is all the people that say I’m great and are voting for me actually do vote for me I think we might have a shot.” I had no idea what I was doing. This is my first time with the whole Grammy process, two weeks before the ballets were due I had zero contacts. My husband and I stayed up 20 hours a day and we wrote every single person we could on the Grammy 365 site to ask for their contact information. Out of the roughly 6000 emails we personally wrote – we didn’t have a staff it was just me and him – then around 2000 people responded and I asked them to consider my stuff. I was overwhelmed with responses. One guy was the historian on (Martin) Scorsese’s George Harrison documentary, he said very nice things about my stuff, he said it touched him and that he was going to talk to other people about me and get them to consider my music – this happened several time with others -Â I was just blown away!
TN – Tell me the story about your executive producer and how y’all met.
LC – I was in Colorado playing a ski resorts, because the moneys good and I sell a lot of merch and get to keep all the money, and I would ski to my gig every day with my guitar on my back to perform at 10.000 feet. At one gig this quirky guy comes up to me after buying all my CDs I had for sale and said “You have something special here. I’m a doctor but I wanted to be a musician, so I know how hard it can be. I’d lie to send you something.” I had no idea who this guy was or if he was hitting on me so I gave him a P.O. Box address and sure enough a few weeks later a chord-less mic and guitar pickup showed up in the mail and it contained a note that read “This is for you kid, way to go.” Over the years I got to know his family, and we became really good friends. Last year he approaches me and says “Linda, I want you to make the album you’ve never been able to make before, and I’ll pay for it.”
Every other album I’ve done has been out of my own pocket and I was always watching the clock , I didn’t have the money for live drums or more time for the engineer, I knew how to make a great album but I never had the resources. Jonathan says “I want you to do this album without compromise Linda. I’m going to give you the money for this album and I don’t want anything in return. I just want you to make the greatest album that you can and I want to be part of the process.” I was so touched by this! Jonathan also knows some musicians like Jeff Pevar (CPR) and Leon Pendarvis (band leader for the Saturday Night Live band) who is a great keyboard player. So he got them involved in the project. I knew Lisa Fischer (singer and background vocalist for the Rolling Stones, Luther Vandross, and others) because she sang background on my adult contemporary charting song Living Alone. And I knew bass player Will Lee (The Late Show with David Letterman, B.B. King, Cat Stevens, Ringo Starr, James Brown and many others), then I knew people here in my neighborhood (Asbury Park, NJ) who should be famous , like Arlan Feiles, who has his own album coming out soon and to me is like Bob Dylan with a prettier voice. I had him sing a duet with me called Finally on the album and then I have a song on the album called Do It While You Can, with a kind of a Satchmo vocal vibe to it and Richie Blackwell (Bruce Springsteen) helped with that. So this whole thing is a passion project. There was no thought to “Let’s make this song four minutes so we can get radio airplay.”
The second CD (on Emotional Jukebox) has a symphony I fantasized about making (Mother Natures Symphony.) The 15 minute piece begins with classical to Bluegrass to folk then back to classical and then ends with a Beatles ending.
TN – Wow, you’re not one to walk the genre straight and narrow are you. You also cover Led Zeppelin’s Going to California on Emotional Jukebox.
LC – I do! I had to fight to have that on because I jammed it in the end with a Flamenco solo by this guy Hernan Romero (Al Di Meola) who this amazing player that was just in the Latin GRAMMYs who I met in Boston who’s been on a couple of my albums. I had this idea of the song that ended up being 7 minutes long and we still got airplay. They don’t make songs like that anymore. I like solos. On my song I’m Only Sleeping I put a whirly solo it it. I like music!
TN – Where was the album recorded?
LC – We recorded at Sear Sound in New York and Lupos Studio with Frank Wolf, who I’ve worked with in the past, engineering the project. He’s an amazing talent. I spent the most time on the album than anybody. I did all the editing and arranging myself on my Pro Tools at home at night with the master and poured over every single bar on the album to make sure I had all the instrumentation in all the right places so it was tasty, clean and interesting to me. that was my goal. I probably spent over 2000 hours on it.
TN – well your hard work is being recognized. When did you find out about your nomination?
LC – We were having a party that night and somebody gave me a mock GRAMMY because we all conceded to the fact that I didn’t stand a chance against these amazing and well-known artists – John Hiatt, Jeff Bridges, Steve Earle, Emmylou Harris, Ry Cooder – who is one of my heros – there was just no slot open for an unknown. So all the people went home from the party and then I started getting all these emails saying “Congratulations.” “You have my support.” “I’ll see you in L.A.” I thought this has to be a mistake. This must be a chain email that I’m on and somebody else was nominated. Then I had a hard time finding the list of nominees online. Then we found the list of nominees on GRAMMY.com and there in Americana Album of the year was my name first on the list. I had to wake up my executive producer, Jonathan, at midnight to tell him about it. We freaked out. He believed in me and my music and he’s such an amazing person.
TN – I love that you are on the nominee list, and that the GRAMMY Americana category appears to be a big tent where talent is rewarded no matter how what your profile.
LC – Early in the process I did put my album up for a lot of categories – best Album, and all of that. In retrospect i should have concentrated on the one category. I submitted for 8 but but as I was getting up to speed submitting my work it occurred to me that I might have been spreading myself too thin and that might not be in my best interest. So then I started concentrating on the Americana music category.
TN – Have you got your speech ready?
LC – (laughs) Not yet.I think I might have a mock one ready for You Tube and to post on my blog (lindachorney.wordpress.com) to thank the people that helped me.
Singer/Songwriter Kathleen Edwards will release her new album, Voyageur, January 17th 2012 on Zoë/Rounder Records. Produced by Edwards and Justin Vernon (who provides backing vocals and plays guitar, piano, organ, bass, banjo and xylophone), the ten-track album includes hilariously titled Change the Sheets, which was featured on Edwards’ recent 7†Wapusk (video below)
The album was recorded between August 2010 and May 2011 in Fall Creek, Wisconsin and Toronto, Canada. In addition to Vernon , the album includes guest appearances by Francis and the Lights, Norah Jones, Stornoway, John Roderick, Phil Cook (Megafaun), Sean Carey (Bon Iver), Afie Jurvanen (Bahamas) and Brian Moen (Peter Wolf Crier). Also featured is Edwards’ touring band— Gord Tough (guitar), John Dinsmore (bass), Lyle Molzan (drums) and her longtime friend and collaborator, Jim Bryson (guitars, keys).†Of making the record, Edwards comments, “I knew laying the foundation for this record would start with the songs. For the first time I was open to the idea of co-writing, and what had previously been an intensely private process became a challenge to see what would happen with an open mind to a different approach.â€
Voyageur is Edwards’ first full-length album since 2008’s acclaimed release, Asking For Flowers.
Neil Young and Crazy Horse will attempt to do what other brave souls (me included) have failed at for years, define definitively Americana.
