Sat 11/21 Angela Easterling at Beacon Pub

Saturday November 21st

Angela Easterling

at Beacon Pub

9pm

"Angela Easterling is a bright shining star on the country/folk/alt.music horizon! Her gift is so special. I loved listening to her new "Black Top Road" CD! Brought me back to the time the Byrds recorded "Sweetheart of the Rodeo" - tradition meets youthful exuberance!" Roger McGuinn, founder of The Byrds

"Nashville's overripe with young female singers who want to be the next Taylor Swift, or the next Gretchen Wilson. Thanks, but no thanks. Then you have singers like Angela Easterling, whose music doesn't kowtow to commerce - the songs on Black Top Road, her ...second CD, don't seem to have been written with big radio play in mind. Instead, they focus on her sparkling, honey-hewn voice, etched with traces of sorrow and hopefulness in equal measure. Produced the estimable Will Kimbrough, the CD is pure, mountain-air acoustic country music. Let's put it this way: Think Emmylou Harris, Alison Krause or even Gillian Welch. -- http://www.connectsavannah.com/news/article/101342/


Angela Easterling was raised in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Much of her childhood was spent on the farm that has been in her family since 1791, seven generations. Ironically, it wasn't until she moved to Los Angeles, that the homespun musical calling in her soul became a siren's song. A performer all her life, Angela had begun playing guitar and writing songs while studying at Emerson College in Boston.


Angela released her second album, "BlackTop Road", produced by Will Kimbrough in July ’09.
The title song tells of her family's struggle to hold onto their farmland in the face of widespread development and represents a bold new step in her singing and songwriting. Angela was selected for an official Americana Convention Showcase and also named a 2009 Kerrville Hill New Folk Finalist.


The genesis for Angela Easterling’s new album, BlackTop Road, actually started in 1791 in Greer, SC. That’s when her mother’s family started the farm that eventually, as farms go, was cut by a road that now bears their name. It’s not a new story, but it’s a personal story, acutely told by the angelic singer who started writing her second record when she returned home to South Carolina, and began putting together the pieces of place and family to better steer the future by. And, Easterling had only one producer in mind for the project --Will Kimbrough, a multi-award winning artist, musician and producer, known for his solo work and with folks such as Todd Snider, Rodney Crowell, Kate Campbell, and Jimmy Buffett just to name just a few.

It was a shift from the shoestring budget of Easterling’s debut, Earning Her Wings, even though the record won raves - named the top Americana CD of the year by Smart Choice music and emerging on many top-ten lists, landing her on stages with music legend Ray Price, Suzy Bogguss, Radney Foster and Lori McKenna.

Easterling’s songs run the range of emotions of a woman fully assessing her family’s past and present with a new life perspective, juxtaposing the personal with outside forces. Anger and fear of the mistreatment of her family and farm sear through the title track, and "The Picture" employs a fictional father-daughter relationship to personalize remnants of America’s shameful past. "Big Wide World," while playful, is an expression of a modern woman’s frustration, and the book The Lovely Bones provides the backdrop of the haunting "Field of Sorrow," underscored by banjo and fiddle.

She also explores place and heritage in terms of musical roots, finding kinship with both the famous and familial. She captured the spirit of the wandering soul of A.P. Carter after visiting his home and graveside -- tying it in with her own searching on "A.P Carter Blues," and takes on Neil Young’s "Helpless," with a sweet mountain vocal. And she updates "Stars Over The Prairie," not a famous song, but penned by her great-grandfather in the 40s.

"This is a very personal album for me," says Angela. "There is so much of my family in it. The themes are family and home and looking for a home. I think there is also a theme of where the past, present and future intersect and have an effect on each other. Sometimes it seems like the future is trying to destroy the past. But we can’t escape the past; it still haunts us."

There is joy here, too, both in love ("Better" and "Just Like Flying") and in finding oneself exactly where one wants to be ("Birmingham.") And where she wants to be -- is onstage performing. "As much as I love writing, a song doesn’t seem real until you have shared it with others. Then it takes on a life of its own and doesn’t belong to me anymore, it belongs to everyone. I feel so blessed and fortunate to be able to make my way through the world by sharing my music and my stories."


Easterling was selected as a New Folk Finalist at 2009 Kerrville Folk Festival and offered an official showcase at this year’s Americana Music Conference. "BlackTop Road" was in the top five for radio adds the first three weeks of its release and debuted in the Americana top 40 for airplay in early September. It was also named a top pick in both Oxford American and Country Weekly.

This week, Angela appeared live on one of the nation's top nationwide radio stations....WSM 650 in Nasheville as part of Music City Roots: Live from Loveless Cafe with country legend Charlie Louvin, Webb Wilder, and Steve Kimock.http://musiccityroots.com/shows

For more info on Angela, including bio, tour dates, and audio downloads, please visit

http://www.angelaeasterling.com/

http://www.myspace.com/easterling


http://www.beaconpub.info/