 |
[view
cart]
Amy
Ray's latest solo release,
Didn't It Feel Kinder,
available now!
FALL
2008 TOUR DATES
Click here
to see the schedule.
*******NEW
INTERVIEWS*******
Click below for new interviews!
Listen
In
Port
Folio Weekly
Sound
Opinions
(airing the weekend of 12/05)
EXCLUSIVE
DOWNLOADS
Click here
to download tour posters
and computer desktop.
NEW
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH AMY RAY
Preview Didn't It Feel Kinder now!
 
Download
new tracks and
alternate versions exclusively at
iTunes,
Amazon,
eMusic
and Napster!
Hey baby my baby sweet baby
I'm on the bus tour bus bunk
I got my headphones on and I'm listening to
Elliott rock rock rock rock
Rock me to sleep
I got my phone on vibrate in case you call me
Rock me to sleep...
- Bus Bus
|
"I wanted to explore new territory, and I wanted to use
a different part of my voice."
In "Didn't It Feel Kinder," Amy Ray's third solo
recording and most ambitious independent effort to date, the
singer-songwriter's style and lyricism reflects her many musical
influences, breaking new ground for avid Indigo Girls followers
and her solo career fans alike. New listeners will follow
Ray far through a rich musical landscape that is both intimate
and grand, like sneaking in on sound check at the Knitting
Factory.
Independent to the core, Ray began designing the album while
on tour with the Indigo Girls in the UK. "I was huddled
over my computer with my Garage Band turned on in some cold
backstage area. The opening band went on and the music was
pounding through the walls, creating this montage of sounds
and bass beats. I started playing the most strident thing
I could to cut through it all and get my thoughts down and
it all started merging into 'Bus Bus'." Together with
former Butchies Kaia Wilson and Melissa York, and Greg Griffith
on bass, Ray molded a danceable rhythm that is at once pop,
punk rock and hip hop.
|
Didn't
It Feel Kinder marks Ray's first solo effort utilizing
a producer. Greg Griffith (The Butchies, Le Tigre, Loudspeaker,
Vitapup), a fearless listener and multi-talented musician,
worked with Ray to incorporate a variety of sounds and
influences as diverse as Al Green, The Pretenders, OutKast,
and Violent Femmes, to create her unique and evolving
voice throughout this record. Ray rose to the challenge
to redesign the halls of rock and folk that have housed
her for so long: "I just thought I wouldn't break
new ground unless someone was making me do it." The
two took Ray's back-of-the-napkin GarageBand maps to structure
every song - another first for Ray's solo work, because
she normally has arranged her music and harmonies in a
live setting. Overall, the album teems with the Clash-esq
energy that drives so much of Ray's solo work, bouncing
and begging the listener to shout along. But as it rocks
out, it starts to groove, and then waxes poetic in a well-balanced
sequence of intensity, beauty, and fun.
|
|
Great
art, and perhaps music in particular, cannot exist in a
vacuum, and Ray is the first to sing the praises of everyone
who collaborated on Didn't It Feel Kinder. Wilson, York,
and Griffith supported the musical strides that Ray took,
but every musician extended Ray's reach. Guitarist Tomi
Martin - who with Trina Meade is half of the ascendant Three5Human
(and who has played with the likes of Madonna and TLC),
filled in parts that Ray says forms the spine of many songs
such as "Birds of a Feather" and "She's Got
to Be." Ray calls shooting star singer-songwriter Brandi
Carlile, whom she met through her work with Indigo Girls,
and whose voice adds ethereal power to the record, "the
glue" throughout the CD, a glue that is heard clearly
on the song “Stand and Deliver”.
|
|
|
Indie
favorites Arizona lend their sound to the mix as well. The
group recorded "Out on the Farm" and "Rabbit
Foot" with Amy at Echo Mountain Recording Studio in
Asheville, NC. Ray met the band after one of their members
interned at her indie label, Daemon Records. She sites them
as a major musical influence and wrote “Out on the
Farm” specifically with them in mind as collaborators.
On “Rabbit Foot”, brilliantly engineered by
Danny Kadar, Ray’s lonely guitar is joined by Arizona’s
tender and raw playing along with uplifting high harmonies
creating a lovesong, with the emotional intensity of a hymn.
Ray’s experience recording with Arizona at Echo Mountain
Studio in Asheville convinced her it was the place to record
the majority of her record. The rest of the time she spent
between Greensboro, N.C. and her home in Georgia. “I
spent a lot of time driving in the North Georgia mountains
between studios, getting tracks done during down time from
the Indigo Girls. These late night, rural excursions informed
the recording process for sure.”
This relationship to the environment - whether musical,
natural, geographical, or political - is one of the main
themes running through the album. "I use a lot of nature
or pastoral images - I always have - to describe things
that aren't about nature exactly, it's a lens I see through.”
Like in the song “Bus Bus”:
|
|
Snow
In March spring in May
Do you remember younger days?
Before the artic was turning to sea
Before the polar bear was drifting helplessly
|
|
I
really measure my life by the seasons and the weather and
how much it changes over time, over years of touring. I
realize that sometimes these days, I feel a lot like that
lonely polar bear stuck on a melting glacier, sort of bewildered,
but compelled to be there cause it’s all I know and
it’s instinctual for me.”
Ray's
writing is characterized by an emotional complexity which
she expertly expresses together with a verbal poetry that
dovetails with the music. On the grand opening cut, "Birds
of a Feather," Martin's electric guitar elevates the
spare lyrics and sparse snare drum allowing the surprising
vocal performance to take flight. "Part of what breaks
the mold for me this time is in the songwriting, and the
other part is the production. For ‘She's Got To Be,’
I was experimenting with using my head voice, my falsetto,
and so I wrote in a different direction, too." On this
track, voice underscores meaning as Ray breathes through
the verses:
She's
got to be with me always
to make sense of the skin I'm in
Sometimes it gets dangerous
and lonely to defend
Marking time with every change
it's hard to love this woman in me
|
|
A bass-heavy rhythm section picks up to float dense lyrics
that negotiate gender, relationships, and self-love, rendering
the song both thoughtful and groovy. It was a calculated
musical risk, unlike any track in Ray's repertoire. "I
sang in that high voice to reference the struggle to be
who you are. The way soul music was about a struggle, but
with a groove - it's so simple with the rhythm that it gives
you room to be thinking and also letting your heart hear
what's going on."
"Hearing
with the heart" is one of the record's other main themes,
and is expressed lyrically in many ways. If the musicality
of Didn't It Feel Kinder is wide-ranging, so too is the
songwriting, which covers community, politics, gender and
sexuality, religion, the environment, the war, and the sometimes
strong, sometimes tenuous lines of love that connect Ray
and the listener to it all.
In
the musically-playful "Who Sold the Gun" she connects
a boy gone mad at Virginia Tech to a society losing its
humanity in a never-ending war.
|
See
you're just one in a long line
You're not so lonely after all
And I guess we made you famous
Cause we're just as fucked up, yeah
- Who Sold the Gun |
|
The
lo-fi fairground feel of "SLC Radio" describes
a tour stop in Salt Lake City to support a radio station
in an overwhelmingly religious-conservative community:
I'm sending love to all the Mormons
...I said keep the good things and throw out the bad things
you gotta pull the reins on a whole lot of suffering
No
bleeding heart polemics here, but rather an example of reaching
out - out of your comfort zone, out of your self and your
community - that Ray lives and articulates with her music.
"What
ties the record together for me is this human yearning to
be understood and the yearning to become empathetic with
other people - how to love each other and be kind even when
we're brutally angry." Or, as the final words of this
album ask:
Didn't
you feel stronger
when you let love grow?
Didn't it open you up inside?
Hey let love abide
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
**NEW**
We
have launched several new websites to celebrate the August
5 release
of Amy Ray's new cd, Didn't It Feel Kinder.
Click
here
to see the other sites!
Join the Amy Ray Street Team
http://www.myspace.com/amyraystreetteam
Click
here
for video from the "Live From Home with Amy Ray"
show on
August 6, 2008 at Housingworks Bookstore Cafe in New York
City.
|
|
Amy
Ray - Didn't It Feel Kinder
- Birds
of a Feather
- She's
Got To Be
- Bus
Bus
- Cold
Shoulder
- Who
Sold The Gun
- Out
On The Farm
- SLC
Radio
- Blame
Is A Killer
- Stand
and Deliver
- Rabbit
Foot
|
|
Amy
Ray - Didn't It Feel Kinder LP
Special Limited Edition Vinyl with CD INCLUDED!
180 gram LP
Special cover and inner sleeve art!
Back Cover
Making the LP -
Photo 1
Making the LP -
Photo 2
- Birds
of a Feather
- She's
Got To Be
- Bus
Bus
- Cold
Shoulder
- Who
Sold The Gun
- Out
On The Farm
- SLC
Radio
- Blame
Is A Killer
- Stand
and Deliver
- Rabbit
Foot
|
|
Amy
Ray and the Volunteers - Live
in Knoxville
- Put
It Out For Good (MP3)
- Sober
Girl
- Driver
Education
- Rural
Faggot
- Black
Heart (MP3)
- Late
Bloom
- Let
It Ring
- Mountains
of Glory
- Blender
- Laramie
- Lucystoners
(Bonus track)
- Hey
Castrator (Bonus track)
|
| |
Amy
Ray - Prom
Lyrics here
- Put
It Out For Good (MP3)
- Driver
Education (MP3)
- Rural
Faggot
- Give
In
- Covered
For You
- Blender
- Sober
Girl
- Pennies
On The Track
- Rodeo
- Let
It Ring
|
7"
Only $5.00
SOLD OUT
|
|
Amy
Ray - Careless Youth/Mountains of Glory (live with The Butchies)
7"
$5
Back cover
|
|
|
Amy
Ray - Stag
Lyrics here
- Johnny
Rottentail
- Laramie
- Lucystoners
(MP3)
- Hey
Castrator
- Late
Bloom (MP3)
- Measure
of Me
- Black
Heart Today
- Mountains
of Glory
- Lazyboy
- On
Your Honor
|
|
|
