It was time for Gretchen Peters to take a break. She set the bar so high with three consecutively brilliant albums – 2012’s Hello Cruel World, 2015’s Blackbirds and 2018’s Dancing With the Beast, that she wanted to take a long-awaited pause and pay tribute to one of her major influences. “I had had the idea of recording an album of Mickey Newbury’s songs for the past 10 or 15 years, but it was always one of those ideas I put on the shelf because I was busy writing and making records of my own songs,” Peters explains about the conception of the album. She continues, “I decided early on that I didn’t want to make an album of Mickey’s hits…All my lifelong favorites were on the first list, of course – but some of those, much as I loved them, proved not to be the right fit. I came across ‘The Night You Wrote That Song’ early on, and felt it was the perfect title for the album. You never knew how right you were the night you wrote that song… seems to sum up my feelings towards Mickey Newbury perfectly. In so many ways he was ahead of his time.”
Peters will release the album digitally on May 15th but is delaying the physical release until June 19th, due to our current pandemic. She has released three singles already – “Wish I Was,” “Why You Been Gone So Long” and “The Night You Wrote That Song.” “‘Wish I Was’ is one of the first Newbury songs I remember hearing,” Peters told Billboard. “I’ve known and loved the song since the late 70s, so it was always on my shortlist for this album. I’m drawn to visual imagery in songs, and this lyric is like a little movie; full of beautiful images (I wish I was a grain of sand/playing in a baby’s hands/falling like a diamond chain into the ocean) and that pervasive sadness that Mickey’s songs are known for.”
While many of the songs fall into a maudlin camp, the rollicking “Why You Been Gone So Long” is a burning country rocker featuring stellar rocking piano from husband, Barry Walsh, drums from Bryan Owings, and a host of vocalists that include Walsh, Kim Richey, Wayne Moss, Dee Moeller, Robert Lucas, and Will Kimbrough. Peters told another outlet, “I started playing ‘Why You Been Gone So Long’ as part of our encore with my band a couple of years ago. For me it’s a throwback to the years I spent playing in bars, in my late teens and early 20s. You had to have those barn burners to play in clubs – the ones that gave the band a chance to stretch out. It’s such a kick to sing.” You may be sitting quietly with your glass of wine and jump out of the chair to dance to this one.
On the other hand, the soft ballad, “The Night You Wrote That Song,” imbued by Walsh’s accordion, is the perfect vehicle for her gossamer voice that deeply stirs emotions in what by now, is Peters’ signature style. Here she also quotes lines from Kristofferson’s more famous “help Me Make It Through the Night.” Listeners will likely find her slowed, haunting take of the First Edition’s radio hit, “I Just Stopped In (To see What Condition My Condition Was In) both mesmerizing and fascinating. Another highlight is the sterling rendition of “Frisco Depot” featuring Buddy Miller on the harmony vocal while Peters accents every note of loneliness and pain. Will Kimbrough’s blazing guitar, Walsh’s keyboards, and McLoughlin’s fiddle fire the soaring “Leavin’ Kentucky.” Dan Dugmore’s pedal steel and legendary harmonicist Charlie McCoy bring impeccable touches to the intriguing narrative “San Francisco Mabel Joy.”
Every one of her interpretations offers something special. There’s the sad poetry of the opening “Sailor,” and the weeping beauty of “She Even Woke Me Up to Say Goodbye,” (a big hit for both Ronnie Milsap and Jerry Lee Lewis) where Dugmore’s pedal steel is simply immaculately perfect for the tune. There’s the wanderlust of “Heaven Help the Child” and the haunting desolation of “Wish I Was.” She seems to futilely search for salvation in her tender rendition of “Saint Cecelia” before ending beautifully with the mournful, piano, string-laden “Three Bells for Stephen” – “Now I come to you/Dear hearts and gentle people/A voice across an endless sea of time/Where ever there are songs I will be singing/Dear hearts and gentle people goodnight/Dear hearts and gentle people goodnight.”
The album was recorded at Cinderella Sound Studios near Nashville, where Newbury recorded his great trio of early ‘70s albums – Looks Like Rain, Frisco Mabel Joy and Heaven Help The Child. Cinderella sits outside Nashville as a secluded converted garage studio in Madison, TN. Peters, Walsh, and Kimbrough (see below) took their time, recording a few songs at a time over the course of two and a half years. Cinderella owner, and legendary guitarist Wayne Moss who worked with Newbury, Roy Orbison, Bob Dylan, and others also contributed.
Peters expounds on making the album, “Mickey had such a distinctive guitar style. I didn’t want somebody who would copy it, but someone who could sort of ‘channel” it. And I Knew that person wasn’t going to be me. I knew going into this that I didn’t want to play guitar. That’s how Will Kimbrough became such a huge part of the record. I also knew that I wanted the basic tracks to be live, so that I could just sing. Barry and Will could play. We did the whole album that way, just the three of us. Then if we felt we needed to add stuff, we did.”
Newbury is revered among songwriters. You may recall the famous name drop in Waylon and Willie’s “Luckenbach, Texas (Back to the Basics of Love).” (“Between Hank Williams’ pain songs and Newbury’s train songs and ‘Blue Eyes Cryin’ in the Rain’/ Out in Luckenbach, Texas ain’t nobody feelin’ no pain,” Jennings sings in the 1977 song.) In 1980, Newbury was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Newbury is a favorite of the late John Prine and Kris Kristofferson, who once said “I’m sure that I never would have written ‘Bobby McGee’ and ‘Sunday Morning Coming Down’ if I had never known Mickey. He was my hero and still is.”
Peters continues to make exquisite recordings. This writer admires her artistry so much that initially an album of covers was disappointing news. Yet, in true Peters style this holds up as well as her originals efforts. She says it this way, “…And in the back of my mind, I hoped that this project would inspire my own writing. And it did. These are inspiring songs…My ultimate goal was to create new Mickey Newbury fans. I wanted to shine a light on him.” Yes, she went far beyond accomplishing that goal. She not only captured every drip of emotion in his lyrics but stunningly transformed his songs.
