*** Welcome to piglix ***

Radio Soul

Radio Soul
Byrdjones-Radio Soul.jpg
Studio album by Byrdjones
Released May 2007
Recorded January 2007, Nashville, Tennessee
Genre country, folk, singer-songwriter
Length 35:22
Label self-released
Producer Diana Jones
Jonathan Byrd chronology
This Is the New That
(2007)This Is the New That2007
Radio Soul
(2007)
The Law & the Lonesome
(2008)The Law & the Lonesome2008
Diana Jones chronology
My Remembrance of You
(2006) My Remembrance of You2006
Radio Soul
(2007) Radio Soul2007
Professional ratings
Review scores
Source Rating
FolkWax (8/10)
FW Weekly (favorable)

Radio Soul is a 2007 album by "Byrdjones", a collaboration by contemporary folk singer-songwriters Jonathan Byrd and Diana Jones. The duo assembled the album in preparation for a series of tours in which they split the bill across parts of Europe and the United states.

Although the liner notes do not include any musician credits, the sound of the album is essentially that of the voices of two distinct songwriters and their guitars (Byrd plays mandolin on a couple of tracks). It could have been done all at once with a single microphone (think of the stripped down sound of Time (The Revelator) but with higher tempo and slightly more conventional harmonies). Byrd's flatpicking solos are featured on a couple of tracks as well (notably on "Poor Boy" and "The Things of This World"). The song, "The Other Side" is delivered a cappella.

The entire album was recorded in seven hours with only a few days of rehearsal. The recording was engineered by Bruce Chandler at the Nashville Record Barn in Nashville, Tennessee.

The album kicks off with the title track—the album's only legitimate co-write. The rest of the album more-or-less alternates between compositions that Byrd and Jones individually contributed with a Carter Family cover near the end.

A few of the songs have appeared elsewhere in the individual artists' catalogs. Jones sings the title track of her 2006 breakthrough, My Remembrance of You with Byrd adding a natural harmony that was absent in the original. Some of her other songs here, "Maryville" (presumably Maryville, Tennessee) and "Orphan's Home" might also have fit well on her solo album—they have the same longing for the ancestors and home that she never knew while growing up (Jones was adopted as an infant).

Byrd also revisits some earlier material; "Vemla" was first recorded for his 2000 debut, Wildflowers. The song gives his account of serial killer Velma Barfield whose victims included Byrd's own grandfather. An earlier electric version of "Poor Boy" was recorded for, but didn't make the final cut on Byrd's This Is the New That (it is one of three outtakes hidden in a data track of the CD release).


...
Wikipedia

...