Tag: Roots music

From Delta to Getaway Blues: Eden Brent’s Musical Evolution

Mississippi Blues pianist Eden Brent took her award-winning sound to London for first album in nearly a decade, Getaway Blues. Courtesy photo, used with permission.

Mississippi Delta native Eden Brent is a modern-day piano-pounding, juke-joint hollering powerhouse of American music. A legendary performer and southern songwriter, she spent the first two decades of her career under the tutelage of Abie “Boogaloo” Ames, before winning the Blues Foundation’s Blues Challenge and bouncing onto the international scene.

Since then she has accrued awards and accolades galore, including three Blues Music Award wins, a prestigious Mississippi Arts Commission Folk Arts Fellowship, a featured performance on NPR’s Weekend Edition, and a million streams for her classic-in-the-making original, “Better This Way.” Her new album Getaway Blues, a collaboration with her UK-born life and musical partner Bob Dowell, presents nine original songs recorded in London with a four-piece band and was released last week by Yellow Dog Records. (IV-PR, 2024)

“Well let’s make a record while we’re there,” thought Delta born-and-raised singer and pianist Eden Brent, while planning a trip to a party in London. Brent’s husband, British trombonist and bassist, Bob Dowell, then called on two of his finest studio musician friends to accompany Eden on what would become Getaway Blues. 

Getaway Blues continues Eden’s lifelong devotion to the Blues with a collection of originals that play to her many strengths: driving blues, double-entendre, and riffing piano, balanced by introspective ballads such as the heart-on-sleeve triumph “You on My Mind,” sung with the natural phrasing of a true Southerner. Produced and co-written by Dowell, Getaway Blues symbolizes the musical union that Eden and Bob have created.

The recording facility that Brent and Dowell found for the project, Fish Factory Studio, was suitably funky and led to some of the quickest tracking Eden has ever done. “They say cleanliness is next to Godliness,” says Eden. “And I’m no saint! Most of the studios that I’ve felt comfortable in were like Piety Street in New Orleans [where she made Ain’t Got No Troubles]. Real lived in. That’s the way this place was. It used to be a fish factory! It felt real cozy…We knocked it out in two days!” 

Back in the States, Grammy-winning engineer Matt Ross-Spang gave the record a Memphis mix, one as down to earth as the sessions. “We did something that you can easily take on the road,” says Eden with pride. “What you hear is what you’re gonna get.” 

Upcoming new album release: Every New Beginning – Kim Richey

Kim Richey’s new album Every New Beginning is due out May 24, 2024. Photo: Stacie Huckeba, used with permission.

From her critically acclaimed self-titled 1995 debut to Long Way Back… The Songs of Glimmer in 2020, Singer/songwriter Kim Richey has consistently impressed listeners, garnered accolades, and attracted famous fans with her deft songwriting and crystalline vocals, both of which have made her an in-demand collaborator. Her voice has graced scores of recordings, providing peerless harmonies, including Jason Isbell’s watershed Southeastern, Trisha Yearwood’s Everybody Knows, Heartbreaker by Ryan Adams, Reba McEntire’s Starting Over, and Has Been by Capt. Kirk himself, William Shatner. Richey hits the road in the US and Europe this spring in support of Every New Beginning, her new album due out May 24 on Yep Roc Records. (Kim Richey, 2024)

Over a pulsating rhythm section and moody guitar arpeggios, the widely-beloved voice of songwriter’s songwriter Kim Richey delivers the opening line to her first new music in four years: “So here we go, another day on the water / The sun is shining but we never dive in.” The song is “Floating On The Surface” and it’s the first single to be released from Every New Beginning. Featuring ten songs spanning from more recent writes to decade-old puzzle pieces, finally finding a home on Richey’s 10th studio album, Every New Beginning highlights not just the songs of a master tunesmith—some co-written with fellow greats like Aaron Lee Tasjan and Brian Wright—but a career-defining performance from the voice which Brandi Carlile has cited as formative in crafting her own style. 

Every New Beginning manages to continue the throughline of Richey’s nearly 30-year career while simultaneously adding a new chapter. The songs represent the full spectrum of the Ohio native’s gifts as both a revered songwriter who can leap from melancholy to mirthful in a single couplet and owner of one of music’s truly celestial voices.  

Fans can stream or purchase “Floating On The Surface” at this link and pre-order or pre-save Every New Beginning ahead of its May release here. Fans who pre-order the project on vinyl have the option of Clear Coke Bottle Vinyl or a Limited Edition (250 worldwide pressing!) Translucent Orange Vinyl that includes an autographed handwritten note from Richey. She hits the road again in March for West Coast and Midwest shows before heading across the Atlantic in May.

Catch Kim Richey on tour:
March 22 – Bellingham, WA – Mount Baker Theatre
March 23 – Lake Oswego, OR – Parrott House Concerts
March 24 – Bremerton, WA – Concerts In The Woods
April 21 – Athens, OH – Templeton-Blackburn Alumni Memorial Auditorium
May 3 – Columbus, OH – Natalie’s Grandview Music Hall & Kitchen
May 4 – Peninsula, OH – GAR Hall

May 15 – Camden, UK – Green Note
May 16 – Swindon, UK – The Old Stables, Cricklade
May 18 – London, UK – Half Moon, Putney
May 19 – Bristol, UK – Bristol Folk House
May 20 – Aberdeen, UK – The Blue Lamp
May 23 – Glasgow, UK – Glad Cafe
May 24 – Newcastle upon Tyne, UK – The Cluny 2
May 25 – York, UK – Newbald Village Hall
May 26 – Birmingham, UK – Birmingham Kitchen Garden

June 13 – Auburn, AL – Sundilla Acoustic Concert Series
June 14 – Decatur, GA – Eddie’s Attic
June 15 – Charlotte, NC – The Evening Muse

Courtesy photo, used with permission
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New album release: From Here To Home – The South Austin Moonlighters

From Here To Home will be released June 30, 2023. Courtesy photo, used with permission.

Legendary, Saxon Pub-bred quartet The South Austin Moonlighters were riding high on the success of their 2019 opus Travel Light with top billing on the alt-country charts and festival appearances throughout the U.S. and Europe when the world came crashing to a screeching halt in 2020. Fortunately for the band and their fans alike, the Moonlighters are veterans of Austin’s scrappy, DIY music scene and were never going to let a little loss of momentum stop them. With the help of a wildly successful crowdfunding campaign, The South Austin Moonlighters—Lonnie Trevino Jr., Chris Beall, Daniel James, and Hunter St. Marie—took to the studio with producer Steve Berlin and got right back in the saddle, cutting ten tunes that would eventually become their brand new album, From Here To Home. (IV-PR, 2023)

At its core, From Here To Home is an album of rebirth and acknowledgement. It is a recognition of where The South Austin Moonlighters have been, and a peek at all of the exciting places they are going and want to head towards in the future. “From Here To Home is a journey back to rediscovering why we started doing this in the first place,” Trevino Jr. says, before his co-conspirator helps him complete the thought in a way only the closest of collaborators can: “Because that’s the only thing we want to do–make joyous music.”

The South Austin Moonlighters recently released their first single from From Here To Home, the bouncing, half-time groove of “Make A Livin’”; a deceptively deep, upbeat song about what it really means to make ends meet for a family. “What should we be providing?’’ asks Beall, who wrote the song with his good friend Rodney Black. He expands, “Surely ‘ourselves’ would be the most important thing, and yet there are multiple generations of parents working so much they rarely see their kids. Lots of folks have to work like that, unfortunately. But could there be a ‘line’ that gets crossed when too much is just ‘too much?’ The TV bill, the new car, the nicer house….maybe we should let go of a few of those things and not have to be shackled to the workplace to pay for them.” Packaged within textures of gritty guitars and vintage bass thump, “Make A Livin’” is one of those rare songs that makes listeners dance and think, and that quality is the Moonlighters’ party piece that runs from beginning to end of From Here To Home.

Fans can listen to “Make A Livin’” today at this link and pre-order or pre-save From Here To Home ahead of its June 30 release. The South Austin Moonlighters are back on the road; tour dates can be found below or online. 

From Here To Home track list:
Nashville
Make A Livin’
Long Time Coming
Box Of Memories
Faded Into Gray
Hearts In Parallel
From Here to Home
Then Away Farewell
It’s Only Money (That Makes The World Go ‘Round)
Delta Man

Catch The South Austin Moonlighters On Tour:
June 16 – Austin, TX – Waterloo Records In-Store Record Release
June 23 – Conroe, TX – Red Brick Tavern
June 24 – Austin TX – 3Ten – Album Release Show
July 1 – Houston, TX – McGonigel’s Mucky Duck
August 3 – Estes Park, CO – Listening at the Legion
August 4 – Telluride, CO – Mountain Village Summer Concert Series
August 5 – Silverton, CO – Columbine Roadhouse Gatorfest
August 11th – Dallas, TX – Morton Meyerson Symphony Center (Los Lobos support)

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