LINDA
McRAE
Shadow
Trails
Borealis
Records
Last year, Linda McRae released Fifty
Shades of Red, an excellent compilation of songs drawn from the four solo
albums she’d recorded since leaving Spirit
of the West, circa 1997. She returns with Shadow Trails, a genre blending new album that includes some of her
best work.
Linda wrote or co-wrote all but one of the
12 songs on Shadow Trails. Among the
highlights are “Charlie Parr,” co-written with producer Steve Dawson, a tribute to a fellow musician whose performance of
traditional blues songs moved her at a music festival; “Flowers of Appalachia,”
Linda’s old-time sounding setting of lyrics by Ken Blackburn, an inmate at New Folsom Prison in California who she
met while conducting a songwriting workshop there; “Singing River,” inspired by
the story of Te-lah-nay, a member of
the Native American Yuchi tribe which was forcefully relocated from Alabama to
Oklahoma in the 1830s, who escaped the relocation and spent five years walking
home; and “Jesus or Jail,” co-written by James
Whitmire and M.C. Hansen, and sung from the perspective of a person on the edge who needs to
make a choice about which way to turn in their life.
But, despite all the fine original
material, my absolute favorite on the album is the one song she didn’t write or
co-write. “When Love is a Game,” a previously unreleased song by my late friend
Willie P. Bennett, is a beautiful and
wise commentary about treating love frivolously that sounds like it could have
been a hit for Patsy Cline back in
the day. Along with Linda’s heartbreaking vocals, the arrangement features some
gorgeous pedal steel work by Steve Dawson and the equally gorgeous harmonica
playing of Ray Bonneville.
Linda will be launching Shadow Trails with concerts on Friday, October 23, 8 pm, at the Westboro Masonic Hall (Spirit of Rasputin’s) in Ottawa, and on Sunday, October 25, 8 pm,at Petit Campus (Wintergreen Concert Series/Hello Darlin’ Productions) in
Montreal.
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--Mike
Regenstreif
