Ever since we first read about roots / country artist Lori McKenna in late 2007, when she won Popmatters’ Best Country Artist of the Year award, we have been smitten. Here’s an excerpt from Roger Holland’s review …
If you don’t know the story, the 38-year-old McKenna is one of America’s most gifted singer-songwriters. Working out of the home in the Boston suburbs that she shares with her plumber husband Gene and their five (count them, five!) children, Lori McKenna had released a series of four increasingly impressive independent albums — culminating in 2004 with the critically acclaimed Bittertown …
With a voice a little like a female Adam Duritz, McKenna sings in the first person, effortlessly inhabiting her songs of everyday life in a manner that seems so simple, so natural, that you just know it must have taken a whole lot of skill and hard work to achieve. And when I say everyday life, I don’t mean red tag sales and soccer practice, I mean emotions like frustration and disappointment, love and hope, captured in their most natural habitat, the domestic settings in which we live our lives.
VanRamblings has engaged in a process this week of introducing our readers to a few of our favourite music artists. There is no artist we love more than Lori McKenna, no artist whose music we listen to more often.
Last evening, we uploaded a few of our favourite Lori McKenna songs to SoundCloud. Please find five of those favourites, for your listening pleasure, directly below …
