Amy Speace "Hurricane"

Amy Speace wrote the songs for her latest project with her life in a state of transition. Having lived an urban Northeastern existence for years, she up and relocated to the South. Her March release Land Like A Bird was a goodbye to those people and places, as she settled in her new East Nashville home. The CD was produced by Neilson Hubbard, whom she first met seven years ago while performing on an Arizona TV show. They realized a shared vision of musical direction, so when they were reintroduced last year it led to this collaboration.

Also forthcoming is the Big Star documentary Nothing Can Hurt Me: The Big Star Story which includes Amy’s performance of “Try Again” with the surviving Big Star members, the Posies and Evan Dando at the Alex Chilton tribute at SXSW in March of 2010. She had met Big Star member Jody Stephens a few years before that in Memphis, and that was cause for a mutual admiration society too.

I think we take it for granted that Amy makes fans wherever she goes. Her craft is epic. When she came to play for us during Americana Fest in Nashville in September, she brought us a song that is not on the new CD, “Hurricane.”

We again draw your attention the Red Cross for aid to the tornado victims.

-Jessie Scott

Frazey Ford "September Field"

Growing up in the 60s was a politically charged time, painted in stark black and white. There were vicious fights over sunday dinner on the morality of the Vietnam War, pitting generation against generation. There was dissent within the family, with siblings or cousins in different camps. And there was a terrible cloud of hanging over some of us, as we waited to see whose draft lottery number would be called next.

It was a shock, the realization that some of us would die without having had a chance to live. It spawned a cottage industry of doctors who would write the necessary diagnosis to get you reclassified. There was also a new kind of underground railroad, with people crossing the border to Canada. My mother always said if my brother Mitch was called up, that was what we’d do. Fortunately, we never were faced with that decision.

Frazey Ford comes from a family that had to make that choice. Her father escaped to the communes of Canada as a draft dodger. She says this created an atmosphere of the wild west, "crazy and adventurous," and it colored her being and informed her art.

After ten years with Vancouver’s Be Good Tanyas, Frazey Ford emerged with a solo CD called Obadiah, which is actually her middle name. She came before the Music Fog cameras in conjunction with the Americana Fest in September during our shoot in the Sheraton Sweet Suite. You can check out her live show dates here, but today we bring you an opportunity to check out an as yet unreleased song, “September Field.”

-- Jessie Scott

Sarah Jarosz "Song Up In Her Head"

Bob Lefsetz writes a topical blog that is widely read by movers and shakers in the entertainment industry. He writes from the heart. He writes from the point of view that the old system is broken, and the new day, though it is undefined as yet, is upon us. One of his ongoing mantras is directed at musicians, and reminds them about making music for the love of it, and not for the money. And that if you do it out of love, that might lead you to make money.

Enter Sarah Jarosz. We are in awe of her talent, her poise, and her scope. As we get ready for her new album, Follow Me Down, to come out on May 17th, we are struck by her ease and her eloquence, and note with utter amazement that her twentieth birthday is approaching within a week of release date. She has made quite an impact in these last two years, what with GRAMMY® and Americana Music Award nominations, a trio of Austin Music Awards, invitations to perform on “Austin City Limits” and “A Prairie Home Companion” and appearances at Bonnaroo, Newport and Telluride.

Photo Credit: Ryan Mastro

Sarah is still growing, still exploring, having headed to Boston’s New England Conservatory to study contemporary improvisation on an elite scholarship. For the forthcoming album, she and producer Gary Paczosa had to work around her college course schedule, as well as her high profile gigs. They did a session with Punch Brothers in New York, another in Boston with her trio mates Alex Hargreaves and Nathaniel Smith, and there were several sessions in Nashville with some of the finest pickers and singers in the world, including Bela Fleck, Jerry Douglas, Stuart Duncan, Viktor Krauss, Dan Tyminski, Shawn Colvin and Darrell Scott. Today, we bring you Sarah solo, from our sessions in Nashville this past September, as we caught up with her during the Americana Music Festival. It is a quick look backward, as we await the future, which is just ahead. Here is the Music Fog recording of “Song Up In Her Head,” the title track from her 2009 debut.

- Jessie Scott