Archives for 2021

Sit in a room when Mercy Bell is singing, and you know you’re experiencing something special. Bell’s songs are deeply intimate, asking us to bear witness to her lowest lows and soaring heights. So it makes sense that for her new album, Golden Child, which is out tomorrow, Bell is turning the focus away from herself and creating character sketches — a la ’90s country. With J.R. Bohannon at the helm for this one, Bell’s pulling out all the big guns to make sure these erstwhile characters have the musical firepower that’s their due.

In this interview, Mercy fills us in on the album and some the greatest honor of her life.

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Indie folk troubadour Shay Martin Lovette shared his evocative sophomore effort, Scatter & Gather, this May, establishing himself in the same raw Americana lane as Jason Isbell, Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska, or Townes Van Zandt. Alongside production from Joseph Terrell of Mipso, Lovette delved into story and character portraits, one of the most moving of which was album highlight “For Rose Marie.” Now Lovette is back with a new animated video for the track, premiering with Under the Radar.

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With a resounding twang and a venerable gravitas, Elijah Ocean evokes the sounds of honky-tonk bars masked with a singer-songwriter flair. The talented storyteller has opened for legends like Dale Watson and emerging stars such as Charlie Crockett and backed up like-minded talents Zephaniah OHora and Michaela Anne. He’s played to packed houses from the Mercury Lounge to the Troubadour and is a regular at festivals like Stagecoach, Americanafest, and SXSW. And with a name like Elijah Ocean who wouldn’t believe his voice is almost biblical.

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With its Alan Jackson guitar twang and some dreamy pedal steel, Elijah Ocean’s new song “Thirty-Five” is straight out of a Nineties jukebox. The rambling singer-songwriter and Maine native, who landed in Nashville after detours in Brooklyn and L.A., released the song on Monday as the first taste of his upcoming album Born Blue.

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On the title track of Shay Martin Lovette’s second LP, Scatter & Gather, he muses on the magnetism of certain people in our lives. Whether it’s a partner, family member, or friend, there is a person, or people, who, no matter how far you roam, you will find again and again. The Boone, North Carolina-based singer-songwriter summarizes this enduring connection best when he sings: “When where we’ve been wears us thin, we scatter and gather again.”

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“Over the last few years I’ve been obsessing over story songs and short stories, in general,” says Americana musician Shay Martin Lovette. “In my opinion, they are the hardest songs to write because you have to compress a story that would fill up a notebook into just a few minutes of melody and rhyme.”

Such a new-found fascination fuels his latest song called “For Rose Marie,” in which he unravels “the story of a troubled woman who has led an arduous life but has somehow managed to maintain a sense of optimism throughout,” Lovette tells American Songwriter. Rose Marie is “a wild spirit with a knack for party tricks, storytelling, and making close friends out of strangers. At the end of the song, she mysteriously vanishes, leaving the town to wonder if she’s found what she’s been seeking: the meaning of life and what comes after.”

Musically, Lovette turned to Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska album, as well as the work of Willis Alan Ramsey and Townes Van Zandt, for inspiration─all the while digging deeper into author Ron Rash’s vast collection of short stories. “I aimed to capture the darkness and beauty of [the song] and wanted every word to carry the weight of her story,” he says.

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