Tag: Folk music

Jaimee Harris announces new album Boomerang Town

Boomerang Town will be released February 17, 2023. ‘Missing Someone’ is the first single. Photo: Google

Songwriter and musician Jaimee Harris started writing “Missing Someone” as a silly little love song to her long-distance partner. “Instead of sending each other postcards or letters, we wrote each other love songs and sent voice memos to each other,” she recalls. The deeper she got into the writing process, the more the song morphed with her life experiences and her strengthening relationship with her partner, venerable folk songwriter Mary Gauthier. “Missing Someone” is the first single from Harris’ upcoming sophomore effort, Boomerang Town—out February 17 via Thirty Tigers. Boomerang Town marks a bold step forward for this country-folk-leaning singer-songwriter. It is an arresting, ambitious song-cycle that explores the generational arc of family, the stranglehold of addiction, and the fragile ties that bind us together as Americans. (Jaimee Harris, 2022)

Folk Alley premiered “Missing Someone,” writing, “Jaimee Harris has been making waves with her emotive, stirringly honest songwriting that walks the often thin line between folk and country. Whatever you want to call it, it rides on the smooth instrument of Harris’ vocals and her courageous storytelling lyricism.” The song’s accompanying video is part of a series of music videos for the entire Boomerang Town album—all made by fellow musicians. Neilson Hubbard and Joshua Britt directed the “Missing Someone” video. It features a lively cast of characters including the aforementioned Gauthier as an aerobic instructor and Harris sporting red, heart-shaped shades that fit the mood just right.

Fans can have their first taste of Boomerang Town by streaming or purchasing “Missing Someone” at this link, watch the music video here, and pre-order or pre-save Boomerang Town ahead of its February 17 release right here.

It was from the intersection of social, personal, and political currents that the new album was born. While much of the material on Boomerang Town was inspired by personal experience, the songs on this collection are far from autobiographical xeroxed copies. More than anything, they come from a place of emotional truth.

Catch Jaimee Harris on tour:
January 5 – Winter Haven, FL – Gram Parsons Derry Down*
January 6 – Sarasota, FL – Fogartyville Community Media Arts Center*
January 7 – Ft. Lauderdale, FL – Broward Center for the Performing Arts*
January 8 – Gainesville, FL – Heartwood Soundstage*
January 10 – St. Augustine, FL – Cafe Eleven*
January 11 – Tallahassee, FL – Purple House Concerts*
January 13-15 – Seaside, FL – 30A Songwriters Festival
January 18 – Mobile, AL – The People’s Room
January 20 – LaGrange, GA – Pure Life House of Music
January 26 – Little Rock, AR – White Water Tavern^
January 27 – Tulsa, OK – Mercury Lounge
January2 8 – McAlester, OK – Spaceship Earth Coffee
February 1-3 – Kansas City, MO – Folk Alliance International
February 19 – Santa Monica, CA – McCabe’s
February 23 – San Francisco, CA – KC Turner’s House Concert

* Supporting Mary Gauthier
^ With Bonnie Montgomery

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Stella Prince gracefully examines rejection on new single

Closing Doors is the eighteen year old songwriter’s new single. Courtesy photo, used with permission.

This has been a groundbreaking year for Stella Prince. Her first single that went to radio, Crying on a Saturday Night, charted on the Americana Singles Chart, was played on over one hundred radio stations internationally, and was the most added song on folk radio in March of 2022. Her debut music video for the song has received over 70,000 views on YouTube alone, and has received support from legendary outlets such as CMT, DittyTV, Heartland, The Country Network, and Discover Music Videos. She has been featured over fifty times in various articles by outlets such as Americana Highways, Country Music Views, Teen Look, Think Country, NY State Music, Cowgirl Magazine, and Music City Magazine, among others. Her debut EP was released on July 22 and charted on both the Alternative Country Charts, Americana Albums Chart, and the Official FAI Folk Charts. (Stella Prince, 2022)

“Facing rejection can be a constant huge hurdle,” says wise-beyond-her-eighteen-years songwriter Stella Prince. Her newest single, “Closing Doors” examines rejection and challenging times “like a door closing in your face.” Produced by Professor Louie at Woodstock Records in Hurley, New York, Closing Doors follows Prince’s recent output of country-inspired folk-pop music, her comforting voice a reassurance for listeners, no matter what door is closing at any given moment. 

“In these difficult and challenging times, it is hard to maintain a sense of hope and possibility,” says Prince. “I decided to write this song, ‘Closing Doors,’ because so many of us are struggling with loss or hardship. Like the lyrics in the song, ‘hope is the only thing that keeps me going/when all the fear of life’s commotions spins around and brings me down.’” Prince’s airy and enchanting vocal delivery reaffirms a true sense of authenticity and soul ever-present in her releases thus far; a characteristic that will surely have her beyond up-and-coming status in no time.

Girls’ Life Magazine premiered Closing Doors, calling her “the artist you *need* to stream this season.” Fans can listen to “Closing Doors” here.

Touring has been another breakthrough for Stella in 2022. She just finished her first international run in the UK, and will soon be embarking on an 18-city tour of the Southwest. She has already performed at some of the world’s most prestigious venues, such as London’s The Bedford and Spice of Life, New York’s The Bitter End and Arlene’s Grocery, and Nashville’s famed Bluebird Cafe. A full list of tour dates and ticket information is available online.

New album release: Jack Schneider’s Best Be On My Way

Jack Schneider announces debut album with first single ‘Josephine.” Best Be On My Way will be out November 11, 2022. Courtesy photo, used with permission.

Americana newcomer Jack Schneider has a laundry list of eclectic descriptors fitting to precede his name—record producer, songwriter, tape machine enthusiast, Vince Gill’s rhythm guitarist, and NYU grad, to name a few—but on November 11, Schneider will be adding “recording artist” to that list with the release of his debut LP Best Be On My Way. Recorded live to tape in Nashville with some of the city’s biggest names—the aforementioned Gill, David Rawlings, Stuart Duncan, and Dennis Crouch—Schneider’s inaugural record is a testament to tradition, timelessness, the modern relevance of old ways, and above all, the necessity of looking at the past in order to know just where you are headed. Riddled with raw truths, compelling stories, and unforgettable sonic motifs, Best Be On My Way is necessary listening for life’s long road ahead. (Jack Schneider, 2022)

Holler premiered Best Be On My Way’s first single, the album-opening “Josephine.” Showing their highest praise for the opening track they stated, “If listening to Jack Schneider feels like traveling back in time then maybe that’s because in some ways you are. Records are capable of taking you places and Jack Schneider and his band have every intention of setting you on a journey back through the years to a time when everything felt a little more real somehow.” The song finds Schneider strumming his beloved 1956 Martin D-28 guitar, “Big Jim,” in front of an all-star band of acoustic musicians. A delicate blend of love and longing, “Josephine” will be a shoo-in for fans of The Band, Bob Dylan, or James Taylor—and contemporary favorites like Gillian Welch, Watchhouse, or The Avett Brothers. Fans can hear “Josephine” right now and pre-order or pre-save Best Be On My Way ahead of its November 11 release.

Best Be On My Way was recorded on a hot day in June at Nashville’s Sound Emporium. Inside the air-conditioned studio, there was a slight quiver in the air—the hum of a tape machine, the impression that the atmosphere was churning inside a black-and-white photograph. The session felt as though it were a real-life culmination of a long and tenuous journey on Schneider’s part, in which he had collected friends and strangers along the way and gathered them together for the odyssey’s retelling. From childhood friends to recent mentors, the motley crew of musicians sat in a wide circle in the live room as around a campfire, much to the contemporarily trained Engineers’ dismay. The players themselves are evidence of a gap Schneider is bridging between musical generations: Grammy award-winning artists Vince Gill and David Rawlings played alongside both Stuart Duncan and Dennis Crouch—longtime Nashville session musicians—and Liv Greene and Griffin Photoglou, two twenty-something artists fresh out of college.

Throughout the long months of quarantine, Schneider began working intensively with former Gruhn Guitars colleague and frequent collaborator, Wes Langlois. Shut up in the studio together for weeks, the two wrote, recorded, and released what they referred to as “vanishing albums:” full-length records accessible for a week at a time each during the pandemic, after which they were removed from streaming services and unavailable for physical purchase. It was from these ephemeral collections of songs that the seed for Schneider’s (permanent) debut record was born.

Best Be On My Way track list:
Josephine
Farewell Carolina
Marietta
Tennessee
Best Be On My Way
Don’t Look Down
Slow Things Down
Nothing Left To Show
In The Morning
Del Rio Blues

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Jeremy Squires announces new album Hymnal

Jeremy Squires’ new album Hymnal will be out October 14, 2022 via Blackbird Record Label. Photo: Jeremy Squires

North Carolina songwriter Jeremy Squires’ new upcoming full length album Hymnal will be out October 14 via Blackbird Record Label. The music video for the single “Into The Fog” is out now. Hymnal is an album with a tender and life-affirming quality, where Squires’ warm singing voice, shimmery guitars, sparkling ukulele voicings, and Brand’s vocal harmonies and heartfelt violin melodies stand out just as much as the poignant lyrics. Squires handled almost all the aspects of the album’s making, including the recording of his vocals and string instrument parts, production, and mixing. (Jeremy Squires, 2022)

“These songs are true stories that I wanted to tell without any clutter. I didn’t add any overdubs of instruments. I recorded my parts here at my house live and then sent the album to Autumn Rose Brand, a fantastic violinist and singer who lives here in North Carolina, who played and sang her parts and sent them back to me.” – Jeremy Squires

What sounds like a simple process, though, is anything but. The events, trials, and tribulations that led up to Hymnal center around his dissolving marriage, and the music, reflecting the subject matter, is scaled back compared to his previous full-length efforts. The Alternative shared the music video for “Into the Fog” off of Hymnal, a tenderly strummed song about, in Jeremy’s words, “realizing that you can’t save someone—no matter how hard you try—if they won’t put forth the effort to truly help themselves. It’s about delusions, dreams, and eventually, reality shining through like rays of light at the end.” Brand’s violin highlights the song’s ending refrain: “Oh, I won’t see you in the morning.”

Fans can watch the “Into the Fog” video now and pre-order or pre-save Hymnal ahead of its October 14 release with Blackbird Record Label.

Hymnal track list:
1. Don’t You Cry
2. Lament
3. Moon Coin
4. Hymnal
5. Juniper
6. To the Moon and Back
7. Balancing
8. Into the Fog
9. Echo Roads
10. Nightingale

Catch Jeremy Squires on tour:
September 15 – Nashville, TN – ACME Feed & Seed
September 16 – Nashville, TN – Brown’s Diner

Hymnal, due out October 14, 2022. Courtesy photo, used with permission.
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