Description
In San Franciscos Mission District, theres a Victorian house with a garden full of towering tobacco flowers and rose vines so thick theyre pulling down the fence. Every Sunday, for a great span of 2021, songwriter Sarah Rose Janko would join producer and engineer Alicia Vanden Heuvel (Aislers Set, Magic Trick) there, to play guitar, sing harmonies, and hum lines for other instruments, before retreating to Vanden Heuvels basement recording studio (Speakeasy Studios SF), to roll tape on her Otari half-inch 8-track.
This is how, week by week, Dawn Ridings new record Youre Still Here, was chipped out of the ethereal and into an expansive album of meticulously crafted and deeply captivating songs. Its an album steeped in intimacy and warmth, each song built with a level of restraint that leaves room for Jankoss quietly fierce vocals and her powerful songwriting to sit front and center. Nothing is rushed and each song is presented almost as a vignette: some with so much stillness one can feel the relationships, some that build from the hearts interior solitude into swells of emotional catharsis. Above all, the album drives and breathes with storytelling.
Youre Still Here marks Dawn Ridings third full-length album, dropping this November as a co-release between The Long Road Society and Speakeasy Studios SF, two women-owned Bay Area record labels, a fitting arrangement considering that the albums creation was deeply collaborative. The credits reveal a wealth of Bay Area musicians lending their talents, with multi-instrumentalist Vanden Heuvel acting as producer and musical arranger. In addition to long-time Dawn Riding drummer Jasmyn Wongs familiar shuffle on All The Time, Keenah Silver Fassett brings a rockier edge to two of the heavier numbers on the record. Hall McCann, Dawn Ridings long-time lead guitar player and backup vocalist pushes her harmonies to the apparitional on Scales Fall From My Eyes while her guitar lines on The Difference are dirty and raw, invoking CSNYs Ohio. Vanden Heuvel steps away from the mixing desk to play bass, organ, and even drums (on Nine Lives). Jacob Aranda (Tarnation) plays pedal steel and violin on a number of songs, including a haunting steel track on Scales Fall From My Eyes. Anna Hillburg adds trumpet, and Jessie Leigh Smith, who often performs live with Dawn Riding, plays soulful harmonica, lending a comforting down-home vibe to the journey.
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