REIMAGINE MUSIC GIVES TRIBUTE TO BESSIE SMITH
Jenny Owen Youngs ⁌⁍ Tim & Adam ⁌⁍ Doria Roberts ⁌⁍ Whitney Monge Catherine Feeny & Daniel Dixon ⁌⁍ Haley Bonar ⁌⁍ Simone White ⁌⁍ Tift Merritt ⁌⁍ Dawn Landes Barbara Kessler ⁌⁍ Hanne Hukkelberg ⁌⁍ Holly Golightly ⁌⁍ Alessi’s Ark & Scott Verbeek Jesca Hoop ⁌⁍ Abigail Washburn EMPRESS OF THE BLUES: A Tribute To Bessie Smith / Reimagine Music / R 0109 Release Date: 9/30/2015 Contact: Cody Simmons / Reimagine Music / cody@reimaginemusic.com PO box 6073 Holliston MA 01746 | reimaginemusic.com/bessiesmith | Distributed exclusively by THE ORCHARD
“Bessie Smith showed me the air and taught me how to fill it.” JANIS JOPLIN
To
that end, Reimagine Music has produced THE EMPRESS OF THE BLUES: A TRIBUTE TO BESSIE SMITH, our fifth installment in a series of original recordings celebrating iconic figures. Reimagine took this tribute on an indie rock and blues slant producing a track list with the exceptional all-female vocals of: Hailey Bonar, Jenny Owen Youngs, Doria Roberts, Dawn Lanes, Catherine Feeny, Whitney Monge, Simone White, Holly Golightly, Tift Merrit, Barbara Kessler, Alessi’s Ark, and Abigail Washburn. Bessie was not a woman without controversy. By frequenting live sex shows and orgies, literally beating a rival unconscious, sleeping with a musical director, seducing her female backup dancers (driving one of them to attempt suicide), and having a coterie of drag queens following her on tour she made her own trouble and was proud of it. In spite of all that, or perhaps because of her past, after signing to Columbia Records in 1923, ”Downhearted Blues,” her first recording sold 800,000 copies, an enormous number even by today’s standards, and throughout the 1920s she remained one of the bestselling African-American performers. Yet Bessie is virtually unknown today outside of the aficianados. Empress Of The Blues was intended to change that.
The Empress of the Blues: A Tribute To Bessie Smith Jenny Owen Youngs “After You’ve Gone” (2:24) Tim & Adam “Nobody In Town Can Bake A Sweet Jelly Roll Like Mine” (3:01) Doria Roberts “Poor Man’s Blues” (3:44) Whitney Monge “Thinking Blues” (3:31) Catherine Feeny & Daniel Dixon “St. Louis Blues” (3:40) Haley Bonar “Send Me To The ‘Lectric Chair” (3:40) Simone White “Backwater Blues” (4:27) Tift Merritt “Sugar In My Bowl” (2:20) Dawn Landes “Please Help Me Get Him Off My Mind” (3:06) Barbara Kessler “Preachin’ The Blues” (3:50) Hanne Hukkelberg “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down And Out” (3:28) Holly Golightly “It Won’t Be You” (2:23) Alessi’s Ark & Scott Verbeek “Hot Spring Blues” (2:43) Jesca Hoop “Baby Doll” (3:01) Abigail Washburn “Backwater Blues” (3:47)
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Produced by Jim Sampas Executive Producer: George Sampas Mastered by Tom Waltz at Waltz Mastering Cover Illustration by Tyler Hyde
ABOUT REIMAGINE MUSIC Reimagine is a label created exclusively to give tribute to iconic albums, artists and music. Their growing catalog of releases has been acclaimed for their imagination with the selection of core artists to contribute their versions as well as their intent to reimagine the icons anew. The Blue Indian review of their last release, Esperanza: Songs From Jack Kerouac’s Tristessa, almost went to eleven: “Literature and music have long enjoyed a mutually beneficial communion...[Esperanza] is a near-perfect marriage of the two.” Other releases from Reimagine Music include: Come As You Are: A 20th Anniversary Tribute to Nirvana’s “Nevermind”; Paint It Black: An Alt Country Tribute To The Rolling Stones and Subterranean Homesick Blues: A Tribute To Bob Dylan’s “Bringing It All Back Home.” Reimagine Music is exclusively distributed by The Orchard. Press Contact: Cody Simmons at cody@reimaginemusic.com For further information please visit www.reimaginemusic.com/bessiesmith
Other titles produced by Jim Sampas from Reimagine Music: Paint It Black: An Alt Country Tribute To The Rolling Stones “It’s quite the stroke of genius to emphasize more obscure entries...an ideal connection with the downcast delivery so prevalent here. An excellent compendium, this is one tribute thats absolutely essential.” NO DEPRESSION “An exceptionally cohesive and even-keeled album, a rarity among tribute compilations. That should come as no surprise, though, since we know Sampas for his work on other quality salutes...you feel as if you spent some reflective time with Gram Parsons ghost in Room #8.” COVER ME SONGS Subterranean Homesick Blues: A Tribute to Bob Dylan’s ‘Bringing It All Back Home’ “...I really love Ane Bruns rendition...a very quiet, yet psychedelic track...Mirah’s ‘Love Minus Zero’ is another favorite, with a backwoods mountain folk hymn, very delicate, ethereal, very beautiful...Asobi Seksu, is another really nice, dreamy track...Gates of Eden, as performed by DM Stith is just incredible.” JERSEYBEAT. “an exquisite journey, chock full of potent musicianship and transformative revisioning...” COVER LAY DOWN Come As You Are A 20th Anniversary Tribute To Nirvana’s Nevermind “This compilation succeeds...[it] boasts a strong group of bands... It’s what I expected to hear the first time I sat down to listen to Nevermind.” SPUTNIK MAGAZINE “mewithoutYou nurture ‘In Bloom’ into a sparse, multi-instrumental ditty; and Murder By Death transform ‘Lounge Act’ into an actual spaghetti western lounge song...Come As You Are covers a wider range of genres...the production is sleek and varied.” ALTERNATIVE PRESS
“Worth investigating, not merely for the bands featured but also for the approach taken to these iconic songs.” TODAY ONLINE “Some of alternative’s best and brightest weigh in with their various interpretations of the songs from the album that changed the rock world in 1991...all-star nod to the band that led the revolution against ‘80s hair metal mediocrity.” NEWSOK
PO box 6073 Holliston MA 01746 | reimaginemusic.com/bessiesmith | Distributed exclusively by THE ORCHARD