Michaela Anne at Kentuck Festival Of The Arts 2018
Alabama Music Office.com goes to Kentuck Park in Northport, Alabama to attend a performance by Michaela Anne at Kentuck Festival Of The Arts 2018
Upon releasing her 2014 album, Ease My Mind (Kingswood Records), singer-songwriter Michaela Anne garnered considerable acclaim for her introspective songwriting. The New York Times praised the “plain-spoken songs of romantic regret and small-town longing” and the Village Voice listed it among its Top 5 Country Albums of the year. Since then, however, this once-solitary diarist has transformed herself into a gregarious storyteller. Michaela Anne has discovered her inner extrovert.
Bright Lights and the Fame (Kingswood Records), recorded at Farmland Studio in Nashville, is full of sharp observations and easy wit, with several upbeat numbers tailor-made for the dance floor of the nearest honky-tonk. While there are gentler, more personal aspects to it that recall her earlier work, Bright Lights and the Fame displays a newfound brashness, starting with the album’s cover image, in which Michaela Anne sports a bedazzled denim outfit, a vintage find that’s perfect for catching the spotlight.
Having recently relocated from Brooklyn to Nashville, Michaela Anne took advantage of the many collaborative writing opportunities Nashville has to offer as she developed her repertoire for the album. She’d met the Grammy-nominated producer Dave Brainard (Brandy Clark, Jerrod Nieman) after opening for singer Clark at the Highline Ballroom in Manhattan and co-wrote two tracks, strikingly different in mood, with him: the heartbreak ballad “Everything I Couldn’t Be” and the up-tempo “Won’t Go Down,” a deceptively barroom-worthy number about the lines the narrator just won’t cross. Michaela Anne and Brainard had a lot in common: they both were raised in very disciplined military families but were drawn to the more freewheeling world of the musician. The song reflects that intriguing dichotomy in Michaela Anne’s own life: “It’s about being a bit of a square. I have boundaries. When I was a teenager, I was afraid of getting in trouble but I was attracted to the people who would. I always dated the bad boys. Dave and I were talking about treading this fine line. It’s a pretty autobiographical song.”
continued at https://www.michaelaanne.com/bio
video by Jerry W. Henry