Kelly Hunt – Even The Sparrow
Rare Bird Records – 17 May 2019
Based in Kansas City, Memphis-born Kelly Hunt puts her vintage Depression-era calfskin tenor banjo to good use on her debut album, a collection of often story-led self-penned songs that, accompanied by multi-instrumentalist Stas’ Heaney and Tyler Giles on guitar and pedal steel, draw on traditional American music.
“Oh, one more time won’t you speak those words I long to hear. That ring like a melody that lingers in my ear”, she sings on the opening line of the softly picked banjo dappled Across The Great Divide, a song about how the heart refuses to let a lost love go as it treats on forgiveness. The title track follows, Heaney on violin for another emotionally downcast number that showcases Hunt’s vocal range and delivery.
The going home-themed Back To Dixie livens things up the pace as the banjo’s joined by guitar bass and percussion for a toe-tapping rhythm, the Southern soil is tilled again on Men of Blue & Grey in which, set after the Civil War, inspired by the work of photo-documentarian Mathew Brady and played out on simple banjo and fiddle notes, photographic glass plates of the conflict are repurposed to repair a greenhouse roof in a metaphor of building hope and growth out of war’s aftermath.
Joined by Chris DeVictor on upright bass, the soulful tempo-shifting Fingernail Moon calls Gillian Welch to mind while ringing the changes Delta Blues features just her voice and a muted drum rhythm that points in the direction of Rhiannon Giddens.
At five minutes, the fiddle-accompanied mountain music lullaby Bird Song reps the longest track while at just 100 seconds and again using avian imagery How Long is the shortest, a brief gospel-shaded love in waiting song as she asks “how long can a field go without rain, how long can a bird fly without touching down again?”
Nothin’ On My Mind was written on a rainy morning after falling sleep with George Hamilton IV’s Abilene running around her head, its ghost clearly hovering over the dusty folk blues melody and vocal, while, nineteen years on from the film, she obligingly pens a song titled Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? a sparse Appalachian Cain and Abel song about division and inequality on which she raspingly sings “you go your pasture, I’ll go to my field.. father ate your lamb while he left my corn…tell me brother why should you be preferred while I slave away in the sun and the dirt?”
It ends with the goodtime New Orleans gospel stomp of Gloryland; a splendid send off to an album, we strongly suggest you really should keep your eye on this sparrow.
Even the Sparrow is out now.
https://www.kellyhuntmusic.com