New Eva Cassidy album announced.
The music of the late, great Eva Cassidy is still filled with surprises. Almost three decades after her death, the multi-million-selling master interpreter steers us in a new direction.
Walkin’ After Midnight, Eva’s latest album, showcases the singer’s little-known ‘Western Swing’ side. A dozen songs recorded at a small, one-off show in Annapolis, the capital of Maryland, reveals an Eva you’ve never heard, bewitching as ever.
On that night in early November 1995, the stars aligned almost by accident. The venue was the downtown King of France Tavern located in The Maryland Inn. Fate intervened when two of Eva’s regular four-piece band didn’t make the gig. The result was an improvised performance, never to be repeated, which proved both Eva’s astonishing versatility and her magical, mischievous approach to music.
Thankfully, Eva’s bassist and producer Chris Biondo plugged a DAT recorder into the venue’s PA system, capturing the full concert, which took place a year to the day before Eva died, aged 33, from cancer. It was also two months before the Blues Alley concert which became the foundation of the shy singer’s posthumous fame. Beloved across the world, Eva’s music also found fans among her musical peers from Adele, Elton John and Ozzy Osborne to Sting, Paul Simon and Paul McCartney.
None of Walkin’ After Midnight’s dozen recordings – among them the Patsy Cline title track, ‘Fever’, ‘Ain’t No Sunshine’ and ‘Summertime’, plus Eva’s only ever recording of the ZZ Hill song ‘Down Home Blues’ – has ever been released before. The Western Swing tag, a reference to the 1920s country music subgenre played primarily on stringed instruments, comes from a description doodled on her label’s track list.
Having misplaced two musicians that night, Eva invited her friend Bruno Nasta, a classical, jazz and rock violinist from Baltimore, to guest at the gig. Eva played her acoustic, Chris was on bass and Keith Grimes on electric guitar.
Proving the old adage that less can be more, the combo created a serendipitous, alternate context for some of Eva’s most popular repertoire. Dancing in the space opened up by the absence of additional musicians, Eva’s vocals are as joyous and free as any previously heard and perhaps the most playful of her cruelly cut-short career.
Brilliantly, Bruno morphs from a symphony violinist into a fiddle player who brightens the sound. Keith responds with a lighter touch as befitting a Western Swing band.
Ahead of Walkin’ After Midnight’s digital release on September 6th and physical release on November 8th comes a taster trio of tracks, out today. The title track, which opens the album, became Patsy Cline’s first major hit single in 1957. ‘Blue Skies’ is an Irving Berlin song written in 1926 for the Rogers and Hart musical Betsy and performed by everyone from Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer to Bing Crosby in White Christmas and Ella Fitzgerald. ‘Ain’t No Sunshine’, already an Eva Cassidy classic, was initially a hit for its author Bill Withers in 1971.
With Walkin’ After Midnight, Eva’s extraordinary legacy takes yet another glorious, unexpected turn.
