HEATHER SHAYNE BLAKESLEE: Bones

Heather Shayne Blakeslee

Bones

© 2001 Heather Shayne Blakeslee (783707379128)

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Cowboy zen with a nose ring: alt-folk, pop, and country-twinged narratives that'll make you want to cry in your whiskey.

tracks

1 Sequoia
2 Opiates & Envy
3 Lazarus
4 The Ballad of Anna Mae
5 44 Summers
6 City Lullaby
7 Calling
8 No Rain
9 Letter to a Lover
10 Bones

notes

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REVIEWS AND OTHER ALL-TRUE TALES
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"Heart-wrenching stories."
---John Gomez from WHPC, Garden City, NY

"Heather Shayne Blakeslee's music melds contemporary folk rock with darker themes and the smell of Autumn. While most of the songs are centered around her acoustic guitar and luxurious voice, the album benefits from its minimal instrumental accompaniment and its crystal clear production. The songs, while obviously deeply personal, never read like a bad diary entry; instead, Blakeslee melds her experiences into more abstract and poetic verses. The warm sounds of the acoustic guitars and dobros slyly contrast the album's deeply troubled subject matter; in fact, two of the first three songs mention the big H. Blakeslee has created an album that is soft, dark, feminine and mature."
---Splendid E-Zine

"Blakeslee has taken up the mantle of "modern-day minstrel" with a grace and a finesse rarely seen or heard in this day and age. The lilt of her voice seems to echo that of a young Joni Mitchell, and the scope of her talent really shines...From the gentle bombast of "Sequoia," to the wandering groove of the closing title track "Bones," she pulls no punches on this fine collection."
---Long Island Music Scene

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BACKGROUND AND OTHER PROPOGANDA
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This album is populated with hard luck cases: runaways, bar flies, dust bowl wives, and suicides. They were who I found the last few years as I traveled back and forth between where I was born, rural Pennsylvania, and where I lived for six years, New York City. As my brother and I collected photographs for the album artwork we stamped around the houses and haunting grounds where my parents grew up, replete with spooky old barns, tire swings in the yard, and country lanes with potentially ominous names like Quiet Valley Road. The characters for these stories were hiding out there in the woods, and as I found them I probably uncovered whatever part of me that's sympathetic to their lives.

The name of the album is Bones for two reasons related to the lyrics. First, for whatever reason, the imagery of bones came up again and again in the songs that I wrote. More importantly---and here's where you find out I'm a geek---one of the definitions of articulation is to erect a skeleton, or to articulate the form with bones. That's pretty much what I'd been doing writing these songs: raising people up from nothing and making them breathe.

Incidentally, the fellow who produced the album is Jimi Zhivago, who also produced Susan McKeown and Chanting House's first record, also called Bones. I don't believe in fate or New Age bullshit, but ghosts, yes....and I'll take serendipity when I can get it.

Happy hunting,
Blakeslee

reviews

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  • Outstanding
    author: M. Montgomery

    BONES is one of those CDS, like BLOOD ON THE TRACKS and Cowboy Junkies' TRINITY SESSIONS, that you reach for at 3 a.m. while wide-awake and sitting in the dark for no good reason. Heather Blakeslee evokes whole lives in songs that are alternately aching and soothing. An excellent debut that suggests great things to come.

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