New album from vocalist Kathleen Grace

Vocalist and songwriter KATHLEEN GRACE delivers her most intimate recording yet with the release of her newest album, TIE ME TO YOU, with renowned jazz pianist LARRY GOLDINGS. Releasing April 17, 2020 (Monsoon Records), the album was born from a place of new awakening and self-discovery, the kind that can trigger massive change and devastating loss, but ultimately, also hope. 

 

Grace grew up in Tucson, Arizona, eventually relocating to Los Angeles. From there she has forged a career that has sent her around the globe. Grace is firmly rooted in the jazz tradition, while embracing her own eclecticism within the blues, folk and pop realms; her sound moves between the traditional and an approachable modernity. "Jazz is a value system," Grace explains. "I may not always be creating music specific to that space, but I try to let its deepest truths of freedom, listening and trust guide my path, my choices."

 

As Grace describes it, she didn't make TIE ME TO YOU exactly-it arrived fully formed just as her life both fell apart and came together. Her personal awakening cost her the marriage that had consumed her adult life. Grace was losing sleep, her mind flooding with poems, songs and music day and night. She wanted a recording that would be spontaneous enough to capture all that she was feeling, without big arrangements or post-production fixes. She envisioned simple songs broken down into their most basic parts. Grace knew immediately who she needed to accompany her on this musical journey; she picked up the phone and blindly called Larry Goldings, the legendary, Grammy-nominated keyboardist who has worked with artists James Taylor, Norah Jones and John Mayer, among others.  Grace said simply, "Listen, I need to make a record, and you're the only person in the world I want to do it with. Can you call me back?"

 

He did.

 

Grace and Goldings soon found themselves in a recording studio in Silver Lake, Los Angeles, recording live in the low light of a wood-framed building, often producing songs in single takes. What emerged was a portrait of a mourning woman as she must let go-the end of a relationship, the transition into the love of another and the struggle in realizing one's own personal identity. At once viscerally relatable and powerful in its intimacy, the album beautifully weaves Grace's evolving perspective on the human condition with an open vulnerability that invites listeners to be just as sensitive with themselves. 

 

 

TIE ME TO YOU features original music by both Grace and Goldings as well as covers of pieces by French icon Francois Hardy, blues great Son House and The Beatles, and standards by Irving Berlin, Cole Porter and Rodgers & Hart. Grace's choice of songs reflects her cross-disciplinary tastes in music and storytelling. As Grace puts it, "Larry and I agreed to leave genre at the door."  She and Goldings re-work repertoire from the Great American Songbook including "Where or When," "Love for Sale," "The Thrill is Gone," and "What'll I Do." Their honest, in-the-moment performances give new life and meaning to songs that have been around for decades, while their originals reflect a timeless and instantly nostalgic quality.

 

The album opens with the lullaby "Tie Me to You." Co-written with Goldings, the song is arresting in its simplicity while leaving listeners with a sense of familiarity and longing. The harpsichord-like piano and haunting melodic lines of the violin echo the songs's lyric of connection through time and space. Other songs were impromptu learned in (or on the way to) the studio. As Grace recalls. "Larry suggested the 'The Thrill is Gone,' I listened to Chet Baker's version on that way to the studio and decided to keep it in that key, the bridge feels right low, resigned to the truth the song is about." She discovered the song "John the Revelator" when her friend, guitarist Anthony Wilson, shared the version made famous by blues great Son House; "We recorded that song in one take, it felt incredible."

 

The duo's rendition of Irving Berlin's "What'll I Do" is the first song the pair recorded. "I'd never sung that song before I sat down to sing it with Larry," Grace explains, "we'd never performed or practiced it together and from the moment we started to play, it felt special. This is the song that made the record happen, we knew we had to do more." Grace and Goldings carry that magic into the rest of their eclectic yet cohesive set of songs that fill he album.

 

The debut album from Kathleen Grace and Larry Goldings, TIE ME TO YOU takes a fragmented listener and makes them whole with its ethereal, textured arrangements set against Grace's subtle yet emotive voice.  Love may be temporary, but Grace shows us that through hardship and transformation lies beauty, strength and a heightened sense of self.

TIE ME TO YOU will be available in stores and online everywhere on April 17, 2020 and is available for pre-order now at http://kathleengrace.bandcamp.com.