Hall of Famer Gretchen Peters to release 'Blackbirds' on 9 February 2015
Album release: 'Blackbirds' by Gretchen Peters
Release date: 9 February 2015
Label: Proper
Listen / more information: on official website
Fresh off her induction into the prestigious Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, Gretchen Peters has confirmed the 9th February release of her new album 'Blackbirds.' Co-produced with Doug Lancio and Barry Walsh and recorded in Nashville, the album features a who's who of modern American roots music: Jerry Douglas, Jason Isbell, Jimmy LaFave, Will Kimbrough, Kim Richey, Suzy Bogguss and more. But it's not the guests that make 'Blackbirds' the most poignant and moving album of the GRAMMY-nominee's storied career; it’s the impeccable craftsmanship, her ability to capture the kind of complex, conflicting, and overwhelming emotional moments we might otherwise try to hide and instead shine a light of truth and understanding onto them.
The eleven tracks on 'Blackbirds' face down death with a dark grit and delicate beauty. "During the summer of 2013 when I began writing songs for 'Blackbirds,' there was one week when I went to three memorial services and a wedding," remembers Peters. "It dawned on me that this is the way it goes as you get older - the memorial services start coming with alarming frequency and the weddings are infrequent and thus somehow more moving."
She found herself drawn to artists courageous enough to face their own aging and mortality in their work (Leonard Cohen, Paul Simon, Bruce Springsteen, Nick Lowe), but noticed all the material was coming from a male perspective. "As brave an artistic risk as it may be for a man, it’s much riskier for a woman to speak about it," says Peters, whose incredible catalogue of songs—including "Independence Day" and "On A Bus To St. Cloud"—have been recorded by everyone from Martina McBride and Neil Diamond to Etta James and Trisha Yearwood. "Aging seems to be a taboo subject for female singer-songwriters, in part because our value has depended so much on our youth and sexuality. I want to write about that stuff because it’s real, it’s there, and so few women seem to be talking about it."
In an atypical and unexpectedly rewarding move, Peters teamed with frequent tour-mate Ben Glover to co-write several tunes on the new album, which evokes the kind of 1970's folk rock of Neil Young, David Crosby, and Joni Mitchell that Peters grew up on, albeit with a more haunted, country-noir vibe simmering just below the surface.
Geographically, the album leaps around the country, with particularly heartrending stops in southern Louisiana at the scene of a crime ("Blackbirds"), Pelham, New York, where Peters probes the hidden darkness of the leafy suburbia in which she grew up ("The House On Auburn Street"), and the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, where a fisherman lays his wife to rest after losing everything in the BP oil spill ("Black Ribbons"). "When All You Got Is A Hammer" is the story of a veteran struggling to adjust to life at home after fighting overseas, while "The Cure For The Pain" takes place in the waning days of illness in a hospital, and "Nashville" brings us back to Peters' adopted hometown.
Despite the varied locations, the songs on 'Blackbirds' are all inextricably tied together through their characters, whom Peters paints with extraordinary empathy and vivid detail.
'Blackbirds' follows Peters' 2012 album 'Hello Cruel World,' which NPR called "the album of her career" and Uncut said "establishes her as the natural successor to Lucinda Williams." If anything, though, 'Blackbirds' truly establishes Peters as a one-of-a-kind singer and songwriter, one in possession of a fearless and endlessly creative voice.
'Blackbirds' Tracklisting
1. Blackbirds
2. Pretty Things
3. When All You Got Is A Hammer
4. Everything Falls Away
5. The House on Auburn Street
6. When You Comin’ Home
7. Jubilee
8. Black Ribbons
9. Nashville
10. The Cure For The Pain
11. Blackbirds (reprise)
Tour dates
For latest dates, please visit the Gretchen Peters website.