Jonatha Brooke – Sweetest Angel, from her album The Works

Another of my favourite albums in recent years is 'The Works' by Jonatha Brooke. Jonatha's been one of my favourite singers for about 15 years, and in the last 5 or so has become a friend, after she and her husband spent 3 months here a while back, and I helped hook her up with a cool 'Bob Harris Presents' gig.

She told me about this album not long before she got to record it - the wishlist of players involved, the unparalleled access to the Woody Guthrie archive... it was dreamlike stuff, and not something she was talking about publicly as the chances of it all coming off were slim.

...But they did - the album is every bit as awesome as I imagined it to be from Jonatha's excitement about it. The band of Christian McBride, Steve Gadd and Joe Sample is pretty much unparalleled and they play SO sensitively on these tunes.

The whole album's awesome, but this is one of my favourite favourites :)


via last.fm

 

Ryan Scott – You Might Change Your Mind

Just experimenting with the possibilities for embedding tracks from Last.fm in Posterous, via the bookmarklet... Assuming it works, the one below is from my favourite new album of the last year - Ryan Scott's Smoke And Licorice. It's awesome, and I'll put some more tracks here if this works -
via last.fm
I bought the album from eMusic, but I assume it's also available on iTunes and Amazon. No bandcamp though, sadly...

 

Grace Pettis - The Gypsy's Code

This was a lovely surprise to read this morning - Grace Pettis won the Mountain Stage New Song Contest. Mountain Stage is a pretty big deal in the states, and they have a great track record of finding awesome singer/songwriters. 

I know Grace through her dad, Pierce Pettis - a truly awesome singer/songwriter himself - who has clearly passed on the 'being a ridiculously gifted singer/songwriter' genes to Grace. 

Last time I saw Grace, we were mucking about in a giant Walmart in rural Alabama, trying to buy guns and camouflage gear, just to see if it was possible... that was just after her slightly absent minded dad had nearly shot Evil Harv with some tiny fireworks... a weekend full of WIN! 

Anyway, here's one of her songs - 

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more coming soon. Please spread the word about her - she's amazing.