Lori McKenna Album Release

LORI MCKENNA

Numbered Doors – Release Date September 23, 2014

It’s fair to say that songwriters spend a good amount of time in motel rooms. We arrive late - after a show. We stare into the trunks of our rental cars wondering what we can safely leave out there in the parking lot and how many instruments we can carry up the stairs without making two trips. We always bring the guitar of course – because motel rooms were made for songwriting.

A lot of songs have been written in motel rooms. Of course we know we are there to get some sleep before driving to the next gig. But it’s sometimes hard for a songwriter’s mind to find rest in that room. Think of all the stories that started or ended in that room. Think of all the feelings given into and the ones ignored. All the gossip that room could spit out about all the strangers that have come through. Ourselves included. The love made, the promises, the lies, the turning points and last hopes, the prayers.

Makes you want to write a song – doesn’t it?

If Lorraine and Massachusetts were personal records – Numbered Doors is more inspired by those lingering stories. Stories of people I know and characters that I - and my co-writers - have invented. Stories of people I can identify with and people I don’t understand at all.

March 12 & 13, 2014 Mark Erelli and I booked some studio time to make an EP of 4 or 5 new songs that I wanted to get out. We decided we would sit side by side at Chris Rivals Middleville studios. We would play them and sing them. Together and alone. Just like we do for almost all my shows. Two days seemed like enough time to get it done. But we got all 5 songs that first day. I was driving to the studio the second day figuring Mark would suggest some overdubs or we’d start mixing when he called me to say – “why don’t we just record 5 more songs and call this thing a record?” And so we did. 

MARK ERELLI, Support

When questioned about his musical heroes as younger artist, Mark Erelli would dutifully rattle off names like Jackson Browne and John Hiatt—the sort of emotionally literate lyricist and soulful vocalist to which he was oft-compared. But Erelli would always throw the interviewer a curveball by also listing musicians like David Lindley and Ry Cooder, two sidemen closely associated with Browne and Hiatt’s best albums. “As a teenager I sat in front of my stereo for hours, in hopes of learning to write songs like that,” remembers Erelli, “but I also tried to learn the guitar solos on those records note for note.”

Thousands of musical miles later, Mark Erelli now travels his own road that both embodies and challenges our expectations of a singer/songwriter. Erelli has tackled everything from western swing and protest songs to lullabies and murder ballads, all in a richly expressive voice that Twangville.com heralds as “the male counterpart to Neko Case.” It is a journey that has taken Erelli from church basement coffeehouses to the main stage of the Newport Folk Festival, stopping briefly along the way to sing the national anthem at Fenway Park.

Erelli still indulges that teenage fascination with the guitar solos, though it has evolved into a career as an in-demand multi-instrumentalist sideman. These days, fans are just as likely to find Erelli backing up Lori McKenna at the Grand Ole Opry, or Josh Ritter at London’s Royal Albert Hall, as they are to see a solo acoustic performance at venerable listening rooms like Harvard Square’s Club Passim. Some might see chasing both a timeless lyric and an exquisite lap steel guitar solo as mutually exclusive endeavors, but not Erelli.

“Every time I accompany a great songwriter, I have the best seat in the house,” Erelli explains. “I see how these amazing artists connect with their songs and their audiences from a unique vantage point. For me, every sideman gig is a Master Class, and it makes me a better musician and songwriter.”