With the second annual From a Distance – Southport Festival of Americana fast approaching (31 October- 2 November), The Atkinson is wetting your appetite for the burgeoning Americana music scene with the return of Chastity Brown on Wednesday 24 September, 7.30pm.
Throw all the genres and hyphenates together you want to describe her – gospel, roots & soul, jazz, blues & country – they are all right, and also not enough. Chastity channels songs that are borne deep in the American bone, the hunger, desperation and confidence that runs through our times.
Coming from Tennessee to Minnesota, touring the country, she has had half her own lifetime and million lifetimes gone before to concoct her powerful sound. Ignite it all with love, and the rest is rapture.
She’ll put a spell on you. Sweet as molasses and wood smoke, clear and burning as summer sun, Chastity Brown casts magic. With a voice that brings you to the crossroads with every turn, warms comforts and challenges you. She is the inheritor of Leadbelly, Nina Simone, Bonnie Raitt and Roberta Flack. She is past, present and future. She is fire, earth, air and water. She’s a natural.
“Raw gospel-bred folk blues from this excellent Minnesota songwriter” Daily Mirror
“A heady mix of Dusty, Adele, Lucinda, Nina and even a smidgen of a young Emmylou and the terms smouldering, smoky and sexy will be used ad-infinitum. Stunningly beautiful.” 5* Maverick
With her fourth full-length record, Back-Road Highways, Chastity pushes her own natural talent even farther, to stunning effect. Back-Road Highways was recorded at the venerable Helsinki South studios in Nashville, Tennessee with the support of her new label C & D Music Network, giving Chastity a return to Southern warmth and a roster of heavyweight studio musicians with credits such as Mavis Staples, Garth Brooks and BeBe & CeCe Winans to lay down tracks. Also on Back-Road Highways is guitarist Robert Mulrennan of No Bird Sing, who plays with Chastityin her live band.
Chastity pulls from a diverse cross-section of talent for her live shows, playing with percussionist Michael X, keyboardist deVon Gray (Heiruspecs) and bass player Jef Sundquist (Hildur Victoria), resulting in restless, electrifying and completely enveloping performances that never want to stop and linger long after the last note has quieted.
Back-Road Highways is the best yet from Chastity. She opens with the slow, pulsing insistence of “House Been Burnin”, a cry out for our needs, and then follows it up with the rocking blues of “When We Get There” and the plaintive, moving roots of “Solely”.Chastity turns it all around and brings out the joys and sorrows of love with the enormous, pleading, “Say It”, and throughout Back-Road Highways, Chastity sings it all out, gives us all a reason to keep on going one more day.
A talent like this doesn’t appear overnight. It takes travel, it takes guts. It takes chance, work and luck. It takes love. Get ready to love Chastity Brown.
Tickets for Chastity Brown are £11 and available online at theatkinson.co.uk or by calling The Atkinson Box Office on 01704 533333. You can also purchase your tickets over the counter during The Atkinson’s opening hours.
-ENDS-______________________________________________________________________
LISTING INFORMATION
Chastity Brown
Wednesday 24 September
7.30pm
Tickets: £11
*Please be advised that there is a £2 booking fee for telephone and online sales.
The Atkinson
Lord Street
Southport
Merseyside
PR8 1DB
HOW TO BOOK
In person: Visit The Atkinson box office on Lord Street
For tickets: visit the website theatkinson.co.ukor call box office on 01704 533333
Posted on 8 September 2014 under General news
