Featuring Dirk Powell & Mark Knopfler, our Song of the Day comes from Heidi Talbot with her new single Empty Promise Land (also features in our Regular Folk Spotify Playlist), taken from her forthcoming new album Sing It For A Lifetime (out on 20th May). Accompanying the news of a new album and tour….it also marks new beginnings.
The album was forged in a pressure cooker: it was recorded in one sound-proofed room in a house that was being sold, as Heidi Talbot looked after her two daughters and negotiated the split from her husband of 11 years, the folk musician John McCusker. A planned recording stint in Louisiana, cancelled because of Covid, turned into a remote real-time session over two different time zones, 3000 miles apart. An international group of musicians including her friend Mark Knopfler somehow came together so smoothly, you can’t hear the seams.
The result is a crowning achievement in her 20-year career. It shows a UK folk veteran going transatlantic, an unconscious return to her earliest years as a performer. But most importantly, it features her most raw and open-hearted work to date, as she finds a new voice away from the long-standing recording partnership with McCusker, who produced her records.
“Not to have that person there, for good and for bad, was a big jolt,” she says. “It was freeing, it was also terrifying. I had to man up – woman up – and ask myself what I really thought, stand by my choices. It really forced me to work on my own and examine my own music. I wanted to make a totally different kind of record. I can’t make the same type of record without John.”
She sought out the Appalachian fiddle legend and country producer Dirk Powell for this new phase in her life: the two had played together years earlier, when Powell appeared on her very first record, 2002’s Distant Future. “If I was going to make a country record, now is the time,” laughs Talbot. “I’m divorced, I’m a single mum, I’m out of work…”
With Powell, she found the freedom to experiment, push her own boundaries, experiment with the thumbprints of classic country – and junk them if they didn’t feel right. She hit upon a blend of Celtic and Americana that was already in her bloodstream: born in County Kildare, Ireland, Talbot was entranced by her mother’s Crystal Gayle and Patsy Cline records. She moved to the US as a teenager and began her performing career in the bars of New York, with a five-year stint as part of the American supergroup Cherish The Ladies.
Any great upheaval is a period of self-discovery. Losing the intimate, end-of-the-day discussions she’d had with McCusker in the studio, Talbot found herself having to “live and die by my decisions”.
“It’s exciting and terrifying,” she reflects. “I’m not scared any more – at the start of the process, everything was so precious, it had to be perfect. Now I think, no, I’m going to make loads of records, and this is my best at this point in time.”
With her new producer, she wasn’t afraid to make mistakes. She exchanged favourite songs with Powell – “tacky eighties songs that weren’t cool. He was very open to different styles” – and gently got herself back into the swing of performing.
Empty Promise Land is a strong first offering, a duet with Dirk Powell that is steeped in warm tones, beautifully accentuated by Mark Knopfler’s dobro playing. It dramatizes the end of a relationship, male and female voices reaching a shared place of resignation: “This woman whose life is boiling underneath her skin / This lonely man who’s just longing for his dreams again”.
It’s an exceptional single, you just want to play it again when that final note fades. A promising new future awaits.
Heidi Talbot UK Tour Dates
March
24 The Platform, Morecambe – TICKETS
25 The Witham, Barnard Castle – TICKETS
26 The Atkinson, Southport – TICKETS
27 The Met, Bury – TICKETS
29 Alstonefield Village Hall, Alstonefield – TICKETS
30 Square Chapel Arts Centre, Halifax – TICKETS
31 South Street Arts Centre, Reading – TICKETS
April
01 Bristol Folk House, Bristol – TICKETS
02 The David Hall, South Petherton – TICKETS
03 The Greystones, Sheffield – TICKETS
07 Tolbooth, Stirling – TICKETS
08 Perth Theatre, Perth – TICKETS
09 The Brunton Theatre, Musselburgh – TICKETS
10 Baljafray Parish Church, Bearsden – TICKETS
28 Shetland Folk Festival – TICKETS
Pre-Order Sing It For A Lifetime here.