by Jane Roser
Hitting the road this summer to support Glaswegian band Camera Obscura, New York City by way of Nashville singer/songwriter Laura Cantrell is looking forward to performing songs off her critically acclaimed new album No Way There From Here. Cantrell may also, possibly, duet with Camera Obscura’s lead singer Tracyanne Campbell on one of them.
“We wrote “Glass Armour” together,” says Cantrell, “Tracyanne sent it to me and I thought it was such a cool song, but it wasn’t obvious to me what I was going to do with it. It took me about a year to play with it, so when I finally got around to finishing it, you couldn’t really tell what was my part and what was her part.”
Growing up in Nashville, Cantrell literally lived and breathed music. “You’d go to a street fair and there’d be a bluegrass band playing. My dad loved bluegrass; he was an attorney and had worked for Lester Flatt and was just so proud of that.”
Lucky enough to catch live performances of legends such as George Jones, Johnny Cash and Tammy Wynette, Cantrell paid attention. “Seeing those artists and how they present themselves is an education in itself. I caught the bug at a young age and when I got to college, I became interested in performing.”
Attending Columbia College in New York, Cantrell befriended They Might Be Giants and contributed vocals on “The Guitar” from the band’s 1992 album Apollo 18. “When I first moved to Williamsburg, they’d been there for years already and it was so cool that they were recording with major labels; they’re very artsy guys.”
Cantrell’s popular radio program “The Radio Thrift Shop” on WFMU in Jersey City was a local staple for 13 years and during that time Cantrell released three highly praised albums: Not The Tremblin’ Kind, When The Roses Bloom Again and Humming By The Flowered Vine. With the exception of a 2011 Kitty Wells tribute album, Cantrell took a nine year break from recording to raise her daughter before stepping back into the studio to record her fourth album.
“Making the Kitty Wells record was to get myself acclimated to performing again, it was my road test as to what it’d be like to be a rock and roll mom,” says Cantrell. “It really makes you appreciate the opportunity to get to play and you realize that doesn’t always come along and you can’t hit the road every day. You have to plan and make it work for everybody.”
While recording the Kitty Wells album, Cantrell had written a slew of new songs that were in different stages of development and she wound up collaborating with several different artists to make No Way There From Here a reality.
“It helped to get someone else’s perspective on it and allowed me to do different things, especially with a song like the title track; to play the chords out of that song, it’s really not written on the guitar, it’s written on the piano in terms of melodic moves. I’m not skilled enough on the piano to do it, but my friend Franklin [Bruno] is a great writer and he knew exactly where things should go, so it added this dimension that I wouldn’t have had on my own.”
Producer Mark Nevers got into the same spirit with the recording and helped Cantrell create her vision of incorporating things that wouldn’t be likely on an Americana or alt-country record. “I wanted to do things that would fit the songs, but that would also be pleasantly surprising,” explains Cantrell. “You take some risks, but it’s worth it when they pay off.”
One of the most personal songs on the album is the gorgeous ballad “Someday Sparrow”. “I started writing this when a family member was ill,” says Cantrell. “They were fighting it and after they passed, I realized that even though I wrote the lyrics out of hope, that there might be a different outcome; but there was also this kind of elegant quality to the song and it could work either as a song about overcoming something or about realizing that someone has moved on. It’s very special and a couple of my family members are really attached to that one.”
Cantrell will be at DC’s 9:30 Club July 18th and at World Cafe Live July 19th. Aside from a current summer tour, Cantrell will be taking her songs on the road through the South this fall and then perhaps a West Coast tour, completing new songs along the way for another record, hopefully to be released next year.
“It’s been really great to be out playing the music that we’ve made,” says Cantrell. “We worked really hard on it and want to let it have a life out on the road.”
