FEATURE
Laura Cantrell
with special guest Doug Levitt
Sun 9th. July 2023
Hen and Chicken, Southville, Bristol
Doors at 7.30pm
“I finally realized that what mattered to me more than a career in music, is a life in music. All the disparate things I do have added up to a rich life in music that I’m very grateful for.”
Country singer Laura Cantrell has balanced different aspects of her music life over the course of a 20-plus years career, whether as a recording artist, radio host, writer, or working parent of a high-school aged musician. Well-known as a recording artist with a devoted following in the US and UK, Laura has expressed her passion for country music through various platforms. This June she returns with "Just Like A Rose: The Anniversary Sessions," an album of original music celebrating her first 20 years of striking this balance. "Just Like A Rose" is a buoyant collection showcasing her songcraft, sense of history, and conviction as a modern woman singing country music.
Opening the show is acclaimed singer songwriter Doug Levett, whose debut album Edge of Everywhere is produced by multiple Grammy Award-winner Trina Shoemaker, the producer/engineer behind albums by Brandi Carlile, Josh Ritter, Sheryl Crow and Emmylou Harris, the album is drawn from Levitt’s travels by Greyhound bus and tells the tales of the folks he met along the way. “Our stories are where we meet.” Levitt says, “They are the crossroads of human experience"
Since 2000, she has released "Not The Tremblin' Kind," "When The Roses Bloom Again," "Humming By The Flowered Vine," "Kitty Wells Dresses: Songs of the Queen of Country Music," "No Way There From Here," and "The BBC Sessions." She has toured extensively in the US, UK and Ireland, and was a favorite of John Peel, who called her first album, "Not The Tremblin' Kind," "my favorite record of the last ten years, and possibly my life." Cantrell recorded several Peel Sessions for the BBC from 2000-2004 and appeared on the first Peel Day program on Radio One commemorating the first anniversary of Peel's death.
Her music has been celebrated in the press, with coverage in the New York Times, "O" Magazine, Elle, the Wall Street Journal, The Sunday Times of London, and Maverick Magazine and she has been featured on NPR's "All Things Considered," "On Point" , "Weekend Edition" and the BBC's "Women's Hour" and The Andrew Marr Show.
"Just Like A Rose" features songs Laura wrote in Nashville with acclaimed cowriters Gary Burr, Fred Wilhelm, and Mark Winchester, and with longtime collaborator and guitarist Mark Spencer, as well as tunes written by Amy Rigby and Joe Flood, artists she knew from the roots music scene in New York in the 1990s. The material spans her most recent songwriting and songs she's been humming to herself since before she'd had her own band or played her own shows. "It is interesting maturing into your musical worldview, you still have songs that hit you like you're a teenager with your first crush, and others that reflect more experience and nuance, or frustration with tough realities, and then those you just love purely as music – there's a bit of it all on this album."