Tag: Song Premiere

LISTEN: The Grascals, “Drivin’ My Life Away”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: The Grascals
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Song: “Drivin’ My Life Away”
Album: Straighten the Curves
Release Date: August 30, 2019
Label: Mountain Home Music Company

In Their Words: “This is one of my favorite country songs from the 1980s. I always wanted to cut it in a bluegrass band because it lends itself well to that style. It’s upbeat, powerful, and tons of fun. ‘Drivin’ My Life Away’ has that funk and groove about it. It’s one of those songs that as soon as you start singing it, people know exactly what it is. It’s infectious.” — Singer and guitarist Chris Davis

Photo credit: Kim Lancaster Brantley

LISTEN: Hot Club of Cowtown, “My Candy”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Hot Club of Cowtown
Hometown: Austin, Texas
Song: “My Candy”
Album: Wild Kingdom
Release Date: September 27, 2019
Label: Gold Strike

In Their Words: “‘My Candy’ was inspired by a Coleman Hawkins chord progression that we adapted. I wrote a melody to it that was originally meant for a slower, more sentimental song idea. We cut a rough version and I realized we were not going to be thrilled to play it live, because it was too slow and I wanted something more upbeat. So we picked up the tempo and I wrote a twin part on it. We do it on guitar and violin live, but for the album I twinned it myself on fiddle.

“As for the words, I just assumed this song already existed — an expression of love and appreciation through a candy vocabulary. But in researching different vintage candies, I found that there in fact was no such song that I could find, which was a thrilling discovery. So the idea was to combine these vintage candies, bring them to life as distinct characters, and blend them into this Tin Pan Alley-style melody and changes.

“After I wrote the words I later found out later that ‘jelly bean’ is an actual term that, according to Wikipedia, in the United States “during the 1910s and early 1920s, a “Jellybean” or “Jelly-Bean” was a young man who dressed stylishly but had little else to recommend him, similar to the older terms dandy and fop. F. Scott Fitzgerald published a story about such a character, “The Jelly-Bean,” during 1920.’ Perfect!” — Elana James (singer/songwriter/fiddle player)

Photo credit: Ryan Saul

LISTEN: Justin Wade Tam, “Colors of My Mind”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Justin Wade Tam
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Song: “Colors of My Mind”
Album: A Place to Land (EP)
Release Date: October 25, 2019
Label: Tone Tree

In Their Words: “‘Colors of My Mind’ is in part about how a consistent space can foster creativity and peace. For me, that place is my living room, where I’ve been writing songs for nearly 13 years. It’s a quiet, contemplative room with natural light that shifts nicely throughout the seasons. I’ve written the better part of five albums within those four walls, so I wanted to capture it musically. My friend Jordan Lehning produced this song beautifully and insisted that we record it live. You can hear the reflections of the live studio in the recording, which to me sounds very reminiscent of my living room and the peace of simply sitting quietly and creating.” — Justin Wade Tam

Photo credit: Jacq Justice

LISTEN: Katie Dahl, “Oh Minnesota”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Katie Dahl
Hometown: Baileys Harbor, Wisconsin (Door County)
Song: “Oh Minnesota”
Album: Wildwood
Release Date: September 13, 2019
Label: Leaky Boat Records

In Their Words: “I live in Wisconsin now, but I grew up in Minnesota. And for me, the deep-down tug of Minnesota never really goes away, along with so many memories of elementary school and adolescence and family vacations and first loves. When I was a kid in Minnesota, you’d wear your boots on the school bus and bring your shoes along in your backpack, and if you forgot your shoes at home, you’d have to wear your clumpy boots all day, and the school halls would get all full of salt and mud. A lot of little details like that mysteriously found their way into this song.

“I started writing ‘Oh Minnesota’ a few days before I went to Nashville to record my new album, Wildwood, and I was surprised to find myself writing about Minnesota, because I thought this album was about Door County, Wisconsin, where I live now. And it is, in a way: I think ‘Oh Minnesota’ is exploring to what extent we can ever really leave where we came from.” — Katie Dahl

Photo credit: Kelly Avenson

LISTEN: Jason Tyler Burton, “Fires of ’88”

Posted on by Editor

Artist name: Jason Tyler Burton
Hometown: Pinedale, Wyoming
Song: “Fires of ’88”
Album: Kentuckian
Release Date: August 26, 2019

In Their Words: “I worked seasonal jobs for a while as a park ranger and climbing guide. I was living out of a minivan, and that transient lifestyle is appealing in so many ways. When you get tired of someplace or some job, you just go find the next one. So this song is about moving on, letting go, and welcoming change. It’s also about not running from your past or trying to reinvent yourself by moving away, because, in my experience, that doesn’t work.” — Jason Tyler Burton

Photo credit: Erica Chambers

LISTEN: Rachel Sumner, “Rocks & Gravel”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Rachel Sumner
Hometown: Boston, Massachusetts
Song: “Rocks & Gravel” (Kacy & Clayton cover)
Release Date: August 30, 2019
Label: Sad Luck Dame

In Their Words: “I was so enchanted the first time I saw Saskatchewan duo Kacy & Clayton, I wound up getting tickets to see them the next night as well. I explored their discography and was particularly struck by ‘Rocks & Gravel’ and the natural, timeless quality about it — I was certain it must have been a traditional tune. Nope. Turns out Kacy & Clayton are just that good at tapping into ages’ worth of sorrow and heartbreak and synthesizing it all into modern classics for us to weep along to. For the past few years, I have been performing my own arrangement of ‘Rocks & Gravel’ beside my originals and a handful of other select covers at shows. I recently recorded my version of this song and some of those other covers in my set list rotation and have been releasing them as digital singles throughout the summer. Though this may not be a traditional folk song, I have found from making it my own that it possesses the same durable beauty of tunes that have been passed down for centuries.” — Rachel Sumner

Photo credit: Louise Bichan

LISTEN: Callie McCullough, “Five Dollar Pearls”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Callie McCullough
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Song: “Five Dollar Pearls”
Album: After Midnight
Release Date: Late Fall/Early Winter

In Their Words: “The idea for this song came to me late one night after someone I was dating hesitated to introduce me to his parents… The melody and the second verse spilled out in a matter of seconds but when I sat down about a week later with my songwriting buddy Ryan Sorestad to bring it to life, it became deeper than that.

It’s that secret fear we have all felt; that some part of who you are or where you come from is not good enough, or won’t measure up in the world. I’ve always been the loud, bold girl with a bit of a wild streak and never the ingénue or the sweet, shy, perfect girl. It’s something I’ve struggled with in learning to be myself.

“I fell in love with the song immediately when it was finished and it became the first song I knew I wanted on this album, paving the way for the rest of this music to come alive. Producer Dustin Olyan and I built this song from the ground up in the studio ourselves, trying to stay true to that intimate, broken emotion that it represents, leaving it stripped-down and simple, focusing on that vulnerable feeling, and I’m so excited to send it out into the world.” — Callie McCullough

Photo credit: Chrissy Nix

LISTEN: Natalie Padilla, “Fireweed”

Posted on by Editor

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”

Posted on by Editor

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”

Posted on by Editor

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