Kelly Willis & Bruce Robison - Our Year

Styles: Vocal And Guitar Jazz
Year: 2014
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 31:32
Size: 73,2 MB
Art: Front

(3:36)  1. Departing Louisiana
(2:50)  2. Motor City Man
(3:22)  3. Carousel
(2:56)  4. Lonely for You
(2:51)  5. A Hangin On
(3:33)  6. Shake Yourself Loose
(3:45)  7. Harper Valley PTA
(3:10)  8. Anywhere But Here
(3:03)  9. I'll Go To My Grave Loving You
(2:22) 10. This Will Be Our Year

As the adage goes, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." Husband-and-wife team Bruce Robison and Kelly Willis follow up 2013's successful duet album Cheater's Game with Our Year. Once more enlisting Brad Jones as producer, this collection of originals and covers goes right to the heart of what made Cheater's Game special: the pairing of these voices in a decidedly Texas take on traditional country music. Their approach is as timeless as the pairing of Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris. Robison's and Willis' songs stack up with the legendary tunes they've cut here. On Walter Hyatt's rambling four/four country rocker "Motor City Man," Willis' lead vocal digs deep into the swinging groove with Robison picking up the slack in harmony as Robison's bluesy harmonica fills the tags. The deep roots reading of Tom T. Hall's "Harper Valley P.T.A." made a honky tonk classic by Jeannie C. Riley finds Willis' lead vocal earthier, less sassy, and more authoritative, underscored by Robison's more plaintive support. Additionally, Willis is backed by acoustic instrumentation mandolins, dobro, acoustic guitars, and upright bass. The duet approach on Don Reid's "I'll Go to My Grave Loving You" builds to a skittering strut on the verse led by Robison as Willis digs in for more dimension underneath: fiddle, pedal steel, brushed drums, and acoustic guitars frame the pair. Robyn Ludwick, Robison's younger sister and a hell of a songwriter, penned set-opener "Departing Louisiana." Robison's lead vocal captures the sense of desperation and long-suffering in the lyric as Willis highlights the longing in her harmony, accompanied by dobro, mandolin, and a harmonium. Willis' and Paul Kennerley's "Lonely for You" is bursting with barroom swagger and country blues. Robison's and Darden Smith's "Carousel," and "Anywhere But Here" with Monte Warden, are ballads in the lineage traditions of Lefty Frizzell and Robert Earle Keen, respectively. The closer "This Will Be Our Year," by Chris White, highlights everything that makes these two voices resonate: both are understated; able to make emotional depth come forth without acrobatics or added drama. Their individual and shared timbres highlight the subtle graces and truths in the best country songs. And while both are strong singers individually, as a duet, they are a powerhouse. Get this one. ~ Thom Jurek https://www.allmusic.com/album/our-year-mw0002656629

Our Year

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Kelly Willis - Back Being Blue

Styles: Vocal
Year: 2018
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 31:33
Size: 74,1 MB
Art: Front

(3:48)  1. Back Being Blue
(2:38)  2. Only You
(3:19)  3. Fool's Paradise
(2:27)  4. Modern World
(2:41)  5. Freewheeling
(3:17)  6. Afternoon's Gone Blind
(2:42)  7. What the Heart Doesn't Know
(3:03)  8. I'm a Lover (not a Fighter)
(3:12)  9. We'll Do It for Love Next Time
(4:22) 10. Don't Step Away

Kelly Willis is Back Being Blue, to take a color-coded cue from the title of her seventh album. It’s a shade she wears well, though long-patient fans might just say: You had us at back. They’ll take a new Willis record in whatever hue it comes, now that it’s been 11 years since her last solo release, 2007’s Translated from Love. The Austin-based singer/songwriter has hardly been MIA in the intervening years, having recorded and toured as part of a duo with Bruce Robison. But she’s setting the duet Mm.Oo. aside for do it-alone mode, at least as far as the spotlight is concerned.  (Robison hovers just outside it this time, as producer.). Hers is a solo voice again, but it’s not necessarily sotto voce: This is an album of songs about lonesomeness that also happens to be a cracklingly good time. Willis wrote six of the 10 tracks on Back Being Blue by herself, the first time she’s penned that big a portion of one of her albums without outside assists. That doesn’t mean she’s gone into deeply confessional territory for her “Blue” period. Lyrically, “it’s not an extremely personal record,” she says, downright cheerfully. There may be profundity within, but what Willis was really after was a sense of playfulness. “I wanted to make a fun, interesting record that leans on the influences that first inspired me to make music,” she says. “I don’t think of it as even being so much about my vocals as an album about vibe.” Explaining, “The important thing to me was to take these songs and to get them just right musically. And in my mind, I was thinking of where maybe Skeeter Davis meets Rockpile, or Marshall Crenshaw meets the Louvin Brothers.”Who wouldn’t want to hang out at either of those intersections? Not ignoring the fact that in Willis’ world, as the album title might augur, high times and heartache are inextricably tied, “I guess the songs I write can be more sad than I think they are,” she admits with a laugh. “The lyrics are always sad in country music. I mean, we sometimes wonder why people hire us to do weddings. We’re like, ‘Really? You wanted this? Well, okay!’ But the music, more than ever, I think, is very fun.”

The title song, which brings a slight R&B vibe to her trademark country, was key in setting the tone. “When I wrote ‘Back Being Blue,’ I felt like I made a discovery,” she says. “Up until writing that song, my songs were all feeling a little bit wordy and complicated and personal, and they just weren’t clicking. Then I wrote that one, I just felt like, oh!­ what I need to do is try to simplify, and write these stories in a way that feels like you’re not quite sure what era they were written in.” She makes it sound like a fresh epiphany, but some might say that sending the hands of the clock spinning –in a word: timelessness has always been a hallmark of her career. As the New York Times wrote, “Kelly Willis looks back to country music before Nashville embraced power ballads and cute happily-ever-after songs. She has an old-fashioned country voice with a twang, a breathy quaver, a break or a throaty sob whenever she needs one… Whether she was wishing for comfort, admitting to a bruised heart, yielding to illicit romance or trying to say goodbye, her voice was modest and true, illuminating the delicate tension and pain in every line.” No Depression noted that her music transcends throwback appeal: 

“There’s no point in being nostalgic for the generic delineations of the past. We are in the present. That’s where Kelly Willis lives. And it’s there that she sings, as keenly and movingly as any singer in the country or pop or rock present.” Rolling Stone zeroed in on the eternality of her tone: “Willis’ Okie soprano still crackles like no other, and her control and phrasing make it more devastating than ever.”The native Okie-ness Rolling Stone noticed in her honeyed voice is tempered by a whole lot of Texas. Romance and music brought her to Austin while she was in her late teens, fronting a celebrated but short-lived rockabilly band, Radio Ranch. Famed singer/songwriter Nancy Griffith took a shine to her voice and recommended Willis to producer Tony Brown, one of the titans of Nashville country, who signed her to a deal with MCA. Her three major -label albums yielded plenty of critical acclaim, with enough media attention that she even found herself representing for Texas on People magazine’s annual “50 most beautiful people” list. But, not for the first or last time, mainstream radio didn’t quite know what to make of a youthful neo-traditionalist who appeared to have been transported from a less trendy era. More...https://www.kellywillis.com/bio/

Back Being Blue

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