Tag: premiere

LISTEN: Natalie Padilla, “Fireweed”

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Artist: Natalie Padilla
Hometown: Lyons, Colorado
Song: “Fireweed”
Album: Fireweed
Release Date: September 6, 2019

In Their Words: “As many of my songs do, this one started as a clawhammer banjo one-part melody. I was in Crested Butte, Colorado, with my band Masontown doing a few mountain town shows and had a bit of time to sit down with the tune on this great porch that backed right into the mountain. The pink fireweed was still blooming, but near the top of the plant which is a sign that winter is coming. This song is meant to symbolize the importance of all seasons life has to offer, even the dark ones.” — Natalie Padilla

Photo credit: Woody Meyer

LISTEN: The Rails, “Something Is Slipping My Mind”

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Artist: The Rails
Hometown: London, U.K.
Song: “Something Is Slipping My Mind”
Album: Cancel the Sun
Release Date: August 16, 2019
Label: Thirty Tigers/Psychonaut Sounds

In Their Words: “I think the reason we’ve cited the Kinks as such an important influence on this album is that they were so influenced by rock ‘n’ roll, but they distilled it in a very English way. That’s where that distillation image helps. Like something in a still. It’s a process. They were so confident about their Britishness and whatever they wanted to say even if it was off the wall. But it just made them so distinctively themselves.

“For Cancel the Sun we really wanted to stay home and work on our own schedule. We were quite involved in the last two records, and so for this one we really wanted to be produced so we could just play the music, so it was wonderful to get to work with Stephen [Street as producer] this time around. We tried not to listen to so much music while we were writing, to sort of shut down and not to be quite as as influenced by other sounds ourselves. Thus I think we sound more like ourselves than ever before. Like, ‘Close your ears and just do you.'” — Kami Thompson

Photo credit: Jill Furmanovsky

LISTEN: Seth James, “The Time I Love You the Most”

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Artist: Seth James
Hometown: Austin, Texas
Song: “The Time I Love You the Most”
Album: Good Life
Release Date: August 23, 2019
Label: Cherry Bomb Records

In Their Words: “Dobie Gray has always been one of my favorite singers of all time. When I was young I learned every song on the Drift Away album. ‘The Time I Love You the Most’ was the one that stuck with me after all of these years. In recording ‘The Time I Love You the Most,’ we really made an effort to stay true to the original while also leaving room for our stamp. We made sure to lean forward with the tempo to keep the same sense of urgency as the original. Between [drummer] Lynn Williams’ groove, Kevin McKendree’s driving piano and Bob Britt’s rhythm, the track had no choice but to move like a freight train. It is still one of my favorite songs to play live, especially when we add in the horn section.” — Seth James

Photo credit: Todd Purifoy

WATCH: Leigh Nash and Matt Lovell, “Dime Adiós”

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Artists: Leigh Nash and Matt Lovell
Hometown: New Braunfels, Texas and Nashville, Tennessee
Song: “Dime Adiós”

In Their Words: “‘Dime Adiós’ was born out of us wondering how to tell someone ‘goodbye’ in Spanish. We wrote it in Nashville one day in 2016 in the middle of a string of writes. We had a little help from some friends who are certifiably more fluent in Spanish than we are. It’s a goodbye song with a little sweetness and dignity to it, and it has been making us smile since the day we wrote it. We recorded it with the help of a band of friends, which included Leigh’s husband, the illustrious Stephen Wilson Jr. It was produced by Matt Odmark and tracked live. When we went up to the control room to listen back, we both grinned really big and threw our hands in the air. It was one of those rare moments when you catch something that is just right in one take. I’m sure we’ll be smiling about this one for a while.” — Leigh Nash and Matt Lovell

Photo credit: Jimmy Fisco

LISTEN: Mary Flower, “Crooked Rag”

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Artist: Mary Flower
Hometown: Portland, Oregon
Song: “Crooked Rag”
Album: Livin’ with the Blues Again
Release Date: August 17, 2019
Label: Little Village Foundation

In Their Words: “Most of my instrumentals start with finding a groove that piques my interest. ‘Crooked Rag’ was developed around a 12 bar form in G, but with a ragtime feel. It is basically variations in the key of G. While writing, I kept after it, working my way up the neck until I ran out of musical ideas! As is the case for many of my tunes, I don’t sit down to write something. I fool around with new ideas much like a puzzle that needs solving. I work on it until I feel it’s complete and decide if it’s worth saving!” — Mary Flower

WATCH: Foy Vance, “Wind Blows Chloe”

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Name: Foy Vance
Hometown: Bangor, County Down, Northern Ireland
Song: “Wind Blows Chloe” (Live from Sun Studios)
Album: To Memphis
Release Date: September 6, 2019
Label: Gingerbread Man Records/Elektra

In Their Words: “It was Matt Ross-Spang, the co-producer on To Memphis, that first mentioned recording at Sam Phillips Recording Studios and I immediately knew it was the right move. Walking into the space confirmed that… it has hardly changed since the heyday. We had a fun couple of days recording there, but few songs were as fun to record as ‘Wind Blows Chloe.’ I wrote that for my manager’s daughter as a bit of fun. I’m looking forward to the world hearing it.” — Foy Vance

Photo credit: Gregg Houston

LISTEN: Will Payne Harrison, “Anne Marie”

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Artist: Will Payne Harrison
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Song: “Anne Marie”
Album: Living With Ghosts
Release Date: September 6, 2019

In Their Words: “This song is about a relationship I had with a girl from northern Kentucky who loved me, but kept her distance because she didn’t want to leave her hometown. She’s a Catholic girl, hence the line about Saint Anthony, the patron saint of lost things. I initially wrote the song just for her to hear and it was never meant to be on the album, but my producer Brett Stewart heard it and decided that we were definitely recording it.

We were at the end of the vocal session when we decided to get the gang vocals on the last chorus and I ended up absolutely loving that part. Meredith Krygowski from Adrian + Meredith came in and tracked the entire string session in a couple of hours, really helping the last chorus explode with the emotional turmoil the song needed. The backing band on this track are my good friends and Nouveau Electric Records recording artists The Rayo Brothers along with Jim McGee on guitar.” — Will Payne Harrison

Photo credit: Joelle Grace Photography

LISTEN: Kat Wallace and David Sasso, “Farewell to Trion”

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Artist: Kat Wallace and David Sasso
Hometown: New Haven, Connecticut
Song: “Farewell to Trion”
Album: Stuff of Stars
Release Date: August 16, 2019

In Their Words: “We worked up our arrangement of this Alabama fiddle tune after David learned it from late fiddler Stacy Phillips at a local old-time jam just a week before his untimely passing. We took inspiration from the fiddle and mandocello recordings of Darol Anger and Mike Marshall while pulling from our own classical roots. We enjoyed playing around with classical form and phrasing while keeping that good old-time groove. The arrangement builds to a climax where fiddle and mandocello trade the C [third] part hook just before a reharmonized outro. This track is one of two instrumentals on our debut album, which leans on our shared love of folk and bluegrass and showcases our original songwriting.” — Kat Wallace and David Sasso

Photo credit: Naomi Libby

LISTEN: Ward Hayden & the Outliers, “Hackensack”

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Artist: Ward Hayden & the Outliers
Hometown: Boston, Massachusetts
Song: “Hackensack”
Album: Can’t Judge a Book
Release Date: August 24, 2019

In Their Words: “‘Hackensack’ almost didn’t make it on the album, but it’s ended up being one of my favorite recordings. In the early 2000s Fountains of Wayne had a huge hit with ‘Stacy’s Mom.’ I wasn’t wild about ‘Stacy’s Mom’ but I always loved when that CD got put on because the song right after it, ‘Hackensack,’ was such an aching love song with such a catchy and pretty chorus. All while telling the story of a guy who never left his hometown, who’s waiting around for the girl of his dreams to come back home. Meanwhile she’s out pursuing her dreams and might not ever know he exists.

“‘Hackensack’ has a lot of those elements that have always drawn me to good country music, and Fountains of Wayne wrote it in a pop-rock format. Our drummer Josh Kiggans really pushed for this song to get recorded with our own approach and I’m thankful he did. We made some changes to the arrangement and put in elements like Cody’s weeping pedal steel part, the low brooding baritone guitar lines, and Paul put down a more driving bass line.

“I once even had one of Boston’s best-known songwriters come up after we played it and say, ‘That song’s gonna make you famous,’ but they walked away before I had the chance to say it was actually someone else’s song we were covering. We did our best to do it justice and draw out the emotion and honesty of the lyrics, and we hope it connects with a lot of other people the way it connected with us.” — Ward Hayden

Photo credit: Niclas Bågerheim

LISTEN: Anna Vogelzang, “Icarus”

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Artist: Anna Vogelzang
Hometown: Los Angeles, California
Song: “Icarus”
Album: Beacon
Release Date: August 9, 2019; Beacon releases October 4, 2019
Label: Paper Anchor Music

In Their Words: “‘Icarus’ came from a place of reveling in self-acceptance. We can spend so much of our lives looking outward — at something we want that we can’t have, at someone who seems to be doing better than we are, or even at a hypothetical future when things will be better, or maybe just different. The first line of the song hit me all at once — and seemed like the perfect way to practice presence. This song felt like it was showing up as a celebration of acceptance, an anthem about being ok with where you’re at.

We are saturated in a deep culture of wanting what others have — but if you stop to assess, is that something that you want for yourself? Did you even really want it in the first place? I feel like more than half of the time I didn’t. I’d just convinced myself that I did. I feel like the day I wrote this, the universe was telling me, “This is where you’re at. This is it, right now — why not celebrate it?” — Anna Vogelzang

Photo credit: Carla Coffing