Songwriter Lori Mckenna to perform at Railway Café12:00AM / Tuesday, December 02, 2003
 | | Lori McKenna will perform at the Railway Cafe in North Adams on December 13 |
American roots often take hold where you least expect it. While Nashville continues to churn out its homogenized brand of country music, singer-songwriters like Lori McKenna naturally and effortlessly find their way to the beautiful homespun sound of a strummed acoustic guitar, coupled with an honest voice with a touch of twang.
McKenna will perform at the Railway Cafe in North Adams on Saturday, December 13 at 8 p.m. Tickets are $12 in advance, $14 at the door, $10 for seniors & students.
McKenna, a 32 year-old mother of four whose love of music and performing had her taking the stage well into the last trimester of her most recent pregnancy, isn’t from South Carolina, southern Mississippi, or even southern California. No, McKenna was born and raised on the south shore of Massachusetts, just a stone’s throw from where she now lives, writes, and raises her four kids in Stoughton, Massachusetts.
In 1999, she was chosen to play on Lilith Fair, won a Boston Music Award, and appeared at the prestigious Newport Folk Festival. Perhaps it was her mother passing away when McKenna was six years old that propelled her in the direction of the expressive arts, or maybe it’s just another case of American roots taking hold in an off-the-beaten-path town or city.
Because, while McKenna grew up listening to the radio music of the day (The Cure’s “Just Like Heaven” remains one of her favorite songs to cover), the music she penned at her kitchen table, after the kids had been sent off to school, had Country Music International heralding her as “Just what you’d hope for in a new artist. . . she deserves to become one of the most sought after musical ingénues of the day.”
McKenna eventually sold over 9000 copies of her debut CD Paper Wings and Halo, mostly from the stage after her shows. But Paper Wings, with all its hard-won beauty and simplicity was just a beginning. Pieces of Me, her debut on Catalyst Disc, a Signature Sounds Recordings imprint, is where the promise of Paper Wings is realized.
McKenna, for the first time, fleshes out the arrangements with the production help of Crit Harmon (Martin Sexton, Mary Gauthier) and a seasoned group of players, including drummer Billy Beard (Patty Griffin, Kim Richey), bassist Mike Rivard (Morphine, Jonatha Brooke), guitarist David Goodrich (Rose Polenzani, Peter Mulvey), and friends and guests that includes Richard Shindell, Ellis Paul, Jennifer Kimball, Kris Delmhorst, and Meghan Toohey.
The disc marks the arrival of a powerful new American voice, a “harrowingly intimate” songwriter with the eye for detail of a Lucinda Williams or Roseanne Cash, and a singer who isn’t afraid to draw deeply from the well of the everyday life she’s continually immersed in. “Mars,” the disc’s gentle yet gutsy opening cut, finds her celebrating everything from the mundane (the hole wearing through the fabric of her couch) to the fantastic, as she ponders the reflection of Mars in her son’s eyes and listens to him promise that “I’m gonna get there some day.”
It’s the kind of soulfully captured moment that songwriters, filmmakers, and storytellers can only hope to stumble upon, but for McKenna it’s just another of dozens of striking images torn directly from the rich fabric of a life fully lived.
Lori is currently recording her next project, due to be released on Signature Sounds in the Spring of 2004. |
