Rachel Brooke – The Loneliness in Me

Currently getting lotsa spins on WDVX is the title track from Rachel Brooke’s latest album The Loneliness in Me. Here’s what Saving Country Music has to say about it –
“Apparently not enough hearts have been broken, not enough tears cried, not enough minds sent swooning, and not enough sorrow sown. If you want something done right, you often have to do it yourself, and the Queen of Underground Country is back to show all you whipper snappers how instilling pain and heartbreak in a country song is done.

If you’re one of those souls who gets to feeling happy through sad songs, you’ve just stumbled onto the mother lode. Rachel Brooke shows no mercy to the meek and weary, with a voice filled with so much natural pain, it tightens the screws down on your emotional receptors like a vice, and with a sound so unique, it deserves its own subgenre.

Rachel Brooke’s been defining the dark side of country before we knew there was one. Mixing her influences of classic country, old-school 50’s rock, and adding a pinch of punk panache to the approach, she serves up a witches brew of songs full of reverberating regret and despair on her new album The Loneliness In Me.

But don’t worry, she’s doesn’t go full goth like she’s done with some of her songs and side projects from the past, where it’s sometimes more about the artistic expression than the infectious appeal. In fact this record might be Rachel’s most accessible to date and a great entry point into her catalog, while also remaining very classic, very country, and very well-written and performed. The Loneliness In Me might also be her best overall yet.” Read more here

Sierra Ferrell – “Jeremiah”

Also getting some serious airtime on WDVX is “Jeremiah,” one song of the two-song single, released by Sierra Ferrell in October of this year. Here’s what her label, Rounder Records has to say about the release –

October 23, 2020 – Today, West Virginia-bred, Nashville-based singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Sierra Ferrell releases a two-song single that marks her debut recording for Rounder. “Jeremiah” and “Why’d Ya Do It” will appear on Ferrell’s full-length album, slated for release in spring of 2021.

Produced by 10-time GRAMMY award-winning producer and engineer Gary Paczosa and Stu Hibberd, the single features a stellar lineup of musicians, including country royalty like Chris Scruggs and Ferrell’s longtime collaborator Nathan Leath. Sprung from her self-described “country heart but a jazz mind,” “Why’d Ya Do It” is a beguiling and bittersweet lament partly inspired by Ferrell’s fascination with calypso and tango music. And with its galloping rhythm and classic bluegrass storytelling-as well as a guest appearance from GRAMMY Award-winner Sarah Jarosz on background vocals-“Jeremiah” sweetly delivers what Ferrell dubs “a broken song, with a gleam of hope at the end.”

Writing in No Depression last year, Amos Perrine said, “Singular is too inadequate a word to describe Ferrell. Her mixture of tempo, melody, and imagery – each often changed multiple times within a single song – would be enough to make even the most traveled purveyor of singer-songwriters sit up and take notice.”……

Now at work on her full-length debut for Rounder, Ferrell delights in defying all convention in everything she creates. “I want my music to be like my mind is-all over the place,” she says. “I listen to everything from bluegrass to techno to goth metal, and it all inspires me in different ways that I try to incorporate into my songs and make people really feel something.”