John Gorka - So Dark You See

"this is the real deal" - All Music Guide

"Nobody turns a phrase like John Gorka...engaging melodies...captivating lyrics." - CMT.com

"I think of this record as a little folk festival with many voices and more than one style of music." - John Gorka


The album looks back to his roots in traditional folk music with a contemporary feel. As one of the premier songwriters in music, this album shines light on timeless stories of love and war with catchy melodies and soulful vocals.

Godfrey Daniels is one of the oldest and most venerable music institutions in eastern Pennsylvania. A small neighborhood coffeehouse and listening room, it has long been a hangout for music lovers and aspiring musicians, and, in the late 1970s, one of these was a young Moravian College student named John Gorka. Though his academic course work lay in Philosophy and History, music began to offer paramount enticements. Soon he found himself living in the club’s basement and acting as resident M.C. and soundman, encountering legendary folk troubadours like Canadian singer/songwriter Stan Rogers, Eric Andersen, Tom Paxton and Claudia Schmidt. Their brand of folk-inspired acoustic music inspired him, and before long he was performing his own songs - mostly as an opener for visiting acts. Soon he started traveling to New York City, where Jack Hardy’s legendary Fast Folk circle (a breeding ground for many a major singer/songwriter) became a powerful source of education and encouragement. Folk meccas like Texas’ Kerrville Folk Festival (where he won the New Folk Award in 1984) and Boston followed, and his stunningly soulful baritone voice and emerging songwriting began turning heads. Those who had at one time inspired him - Suzanne Vega, Bill Morrissey, Nanci Griffith, Christine Lavin, Shawn Colvin - had become his peers.

In 1987, the young Minnesota-based Red House Records caught wind of John’s talents and released his first album, I Know, to popular and critical acclaim. With unusual drive and focus, John hit the ground running and, when an offer came from Windham Hill’s Will Ackerman in 1989, he signed with that label’s imprint, High Street Records. He proceeded to record five albums with High Street over the next seven years: Land of the Bottom Line, Jack’s Crows, Temporary Road, Out of the Valley and Between Five and Seven. His albums and his touring (over 150 nights a year at times) brought new accolades for his craft. Rolling Stone called him “the preeminent male singer/songwriter of the new folk movement.” His rich multi-faceted songs full of depth, beauty and emotion gained increasing attention from critics and audiences across the country, as well as in Europe where his tours led him through Italy, Belgium, Scotland, Ireland, Holland, Switzerland and Germany.

Many well known artists have recorded and/or performed John Gorka songs, including Mary Chapin Carpenter, Nanci Griffith, Mary Black and Maura O’Connell. He also started sharing tours with many notable friends—Nanci Griffith and Mary Chapin Carpenter among them. All this has brought his music to an ever-widening audience. His video for the single “When She Kisses Me” found a long-term rotation on VH-1’s “Current Country,” as well as on CMT and the Nashville Network. John also graced the stage of Austin City Limits, appeared on CNN, and has been the subject of other national programming.

In 1998, after five successful recordings and seven years at Windham Hill/High Street, John felt the need for a change and decided to return to his musical roots at Red House Records. The choice was driven, in part, by the artistic integrity that the label represents in an industry where the business of music too often takes precedence. His 1998 release After Yesterday marked a decidedly different attitude towards making music for John, and his next release The Company You Keep held fast to John’s tradition of fine songwriting, yet moved forward down new avenues. Its fourteen songs displayed John’s creative use of lyrics and attention to detail. Andy Stochansky played drums and shared production credits with John and Rob Genadek. Ani DiFranco, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Lucy Kaplansky and Patty Larkin contributed stellar guitar work and vocals to this fan favorite. Old Futures Gone was informed by his life as husband and father of two young children and also contained the colorful experience of many hard years on the road. Writing in the Margins followed and was an engaging collection of sweet and serious songs that spanned many musical genres—folk, pop, country and soul— and featured guest vocalists Nanci Griffith, Lucy Kaplansky and Alice Peacock.

Now with this, his 11th studio album, he returns to his roots with So Dark You See, his most compelling and traditional album to date. In addition to his 11 critically acclaimed albums, John released a collector’s edition box featuring a hi-definition DVD and companion CD called The Gypsy Life. Windham Hill has also recently released a collection of John’s greatest hits from the label called Pure John Gorka. Many well known artists have recorded and/or performed John Gorka songs, including Mary Chapin Carpenter, Nanci Griffith, Mary Black and Maura O’Connell. John has graced the stage of Austin City Limits, Mountain Stage, etown and has appeared on CNN. His new song “Where No Monument Stands” is featured in the upcoming documentary Every War Has Two Losers, about activist Oregon Poet Laureate William Stafford (1914-1993).

Kris Kristofferson - Closer To The Bone

Kris Kristofferson returns to the essentials of his finely honed craft on his New West album Closer to the Bone. Like the master singer-songwriter’s 2006 New West bow This Old Road, the new album is produced by Grammy Award winner Don Was. The previous collection – Kristofferson’s first recording in almost a dozen years – was hailed by critics as “one of the finest albums of his storied career” (Rolling Stone), “a stripped-down stunner” (Esquire), and “a return to his best work” (Q).

Kristofferson says, “I like the intimacy of the new album. It has a general mood of reflecting on where we all are at this end of life.”

Much like its predecessor, Closer to the Bone is a deftly observed, honestly executed work about love, separation, loss, and mortality. The subject matter ranges from the musician’s family (“From Here to Forever,” “The Wonder”) to Kristofferson’s late friend Johnny Cash (“Good Morning John”). Was views the new album as a sort of sequel to its much-acclaimed predecessor: “The recording conditions were a little more controlled, but it’s based around Kris singing and playing guitar, and nothing was to get in the way of that. If anything got in the way of it, we pulled it out. I think the two albums are completely of a piece. I love This Old Road. There’s something really immediate about it, and really profound. I personally think this is a better record, overall. It’s the songs.”

Some of the album’s songs were penned relatively recently, while others Kristofferson had never managed to successfully record. He laughs when he recalls a previous attempt to cut “Good Morning John” with Willie Nelson – like Cash and Kristofferson a member of the country supergroup the Highwaymen -- on harmony vocals: “I got to that line where I say, ‘I love you, John,’ and Willie sang, ‘He loves you, John.’ I said, ‘C’mon, Willie, you can say, ‘I love you, John.’ I guess it embarrassed him. Anyway, we ended up not putting it out then.” While the recording of Closer to the Bone doesn’t entirely replicate the off-the-cuff methodology of This Old Road – which was tracked with surround-sound equipment in a single session in the lounge of a Hollywood studio – the new album, made at the Village Recorder in West Los Angeles, aimed for the same earthy simplicity.

Most of the tracks were recorded live in the studio. Was says, “We tried to keep it as spontaneous as possible. There is some overdubbing on it, but for most of it we thought we’d try it with everybody playing.”

Was, who played bass on the sessions (as he had on the preceding album), once again drafted the other musicians who supported Kristofferson on This Old Road and a round of tour dates that followed its release: guitarist and backup vocalist Stephen Bruton (who also co-wrote the Closer to the Bone tracks “From Here to Forever” and “Let the Walls Come Down”) and drummer Jim Keltner. Rami Jaffee of the Wallflowers contributed piano and accordion overdubs.

Such searing, contemplative songs as “Closer to the Bone” and “Hall of Angels” gained a melancholy resonance in the days following the completion of sessions for the album. On May 9, 2009, Bruton – one of Kristofferson’s closest friends and musical associates for four decades – died in Los Angeles at the age of 60 after a long battle with throat cancer. The album is dedicated to his memory. “He was there while I was recording, and he was in great spirits at the time,” Kristofferson says of Bruton, who replaced Billy Swan in his band at the age of 20. “Stephen was more like a brother than a guy that worked with me. We went through a lot of years, a lot of laughter, a lot of heartache. I really felt close to Stephen. His spirit’s on the album.”

Was says of Bruton’s unique contributions to Kristofferson’s sound, “He and Kris just had a lock that Kris is never going to be able to get with anybody. It’s what comes from 40 years of playing together. They just had a way of weaving together.”

Kristofferson’s New West albums mark the culmination of a distinguished career that has encompassed the authorship of such classic American songs as “Me and Bobby McGee,” “Sunday Morning Coming Down,” and “Help Me Make It Through the Night”; stardom in such feature films as Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid and A Star is Born; honors including three Grammy Awards and a Golden Globe Award; and years of outspoken political and social activism. This November, he will be feted as a BMI Icon at the performing rights organization’s Country Awards.

In the wake of the rave reviews accorded This Old Road, the now 73-year-old performer has undertaken a vigorous schedule of international solo appearances.
Kristofferson says, “I was overseas doing a film when I got the opportunity to work in Ireland, and I didn’t have time to martial the troops. So I went out by myself, and it worked. I’ve been really surprised at selling out the shows everywhere. People are filling up the houses.

“Something was making a direct communication with the audience,” he adds, “and I guess it must be down to the essence of the songs. Because God knows, there’s better guitar players and singers. But it seems to be working with my material -- just me and the song.”

Tom Ovans - Get On Board

>"a pessimistic prophet whose music is mostly stark, whose lyrics are fragmentary and poetic… the rough-hewn ballads carry a bleak beauty"
Paul Du Noyer The Word

From the industrial side of east Austin, recorded at a primitive analogue studio which shares a warehouse space with a concrete fabrication shop, comes Tom Ovans 12th album Get On Board (FW 036).

‘It's hard to find an edgy studio anymore’ says Ovans, yet the Sweat Box, owned and operated by Mike Vasquez for 16 years, fitted the bill. Walking around work benches, power tools, cement mixers and cables to get to the studio, Tom recorded the album live in 2 days with Larry Chaney (electric guitar) and Vicente Rodriguez (drums) returning from the Party Girl (2007) sessions.

They were joined by newcomer Phil Ajjarapu on bass. Additional sessions were used to record vocals by Lou Ann Bardash, a horn part by DD Dagger and Mike Vasquez, and a piano part by Jesse Hester.

The album closes with ‘Too Late Now’, one of the longest and most ambitious songs that Tom has ever recorded, a story that begins and ends at a fenced-in basketball court down in Greenwich Village on the corner of West 4th and 6th Ave known as ‘The Cage’.

BIOGRAPHY

Itinerant songman Tom Ovans has long been an outsider, a restless traveler on the spin. Born just outside of Boston, Massachusetts in 1953, he’s lived a life on the margins. If music has been his one constant, still he has always faced what had to be faced, done what had to be done – whether that be carpentry, painting or roofing, working in construction, factories or warehouses. Prissy, overwrought singer-songwriters everywhere, today as always, can talk the big talk, but craftsmen think with their hearts and work with their hands.

As a chronicler and troubadour, Ovans has trod a rough and ragged musical path across the States. In the early ’70s in New York City he walked the walk with a junked-out Tim Hardin and knocked-out loaded Phil Ochs. Over the years he has drifted, been homeless, stood proud, lain low, dug deep but always moved on. Following stints on the east coast, west coast, a short spell in New Orleans and 18 long years in Nashville, Tom Ovans landed in Austin, Texas, six years ago with his painter wife Lou Ann Bardash. Together, they continue to live on the edge, away from the spotlight, fame or glare. He only rarely gigs or tours.

A self-taught musician, Ovans released his first album, ‘Industrial Days’, in 1991. Attracting increasingly widespread respect and acclaim, an impressive series of raw and gritty, moving and inspired albums followed. ‘Dead South’ in 1997 was his first masterpiece, 1999’s ‘The Beat Trade’ was even better. ‘Tombstone Boys, Graveyard Girls’ in 2003 probably topped the lot. For Ovans, integrity counts over success. He don’t wave no flags for no-one, doesn’t preach to the choir, and never chooses easy, Sprawled across two CDs, and drawing hard on a long life lived in the shadow of the American Dream, 2005’s ‘Honest Abe and the Assassins’ is a fiercely personal and doggedly independent work. Tough and honest, bruised and bleeding, it reaches in and reaches out, hits hard and lingers long. It is Tom Ovans’ tenth album, and his best to date.