Sweet Kind of Blue Emily Barker

• 1 Sweet Kind of Blue 03:36
• 2 Sister Goodbye 04:08
• 3 Sunrise 03:41
• 4 No. 5 Hurricane 04:52
• 5 If We Forget to Dance 05:07
• 6 Crazy Life 03:57
• 7 Over My Shoulder 04:07
• 8 Change 03:31
• 9 More! 02:43
• 10 Underneath the Honey Moon 03:00
• Total Runtime 38:42

Info for Sweet Kind of Blue

Sweet Kind of Blue was recorded at Sam Phillips Recording Service in Memphis with Grammy winner Matt Ross-Spang (Jason Isbell, Margo Price) and an all star cast of Memphis session players: Rick Steff (keys), Steve Potts (drums), Dave Smith (bass) and Dave Cousar (guitar). For Emily’s fans, it will be a new sound: as Matt Ross-Spang suggested to Emily in persuading her to record the album at Sam Phillips, there's a certain groove that only Memphis can produce. For Emily herself, it’s a return to where her love of music started: far away from Memphis or London, singing her heart out to Aretha Franklin records in her bedroom in sleepy Bridgetown, Western Australia.

When I was a teenager, I got really into sixties soul singers, Aretha being my favourite. At twelve years old, my tiny country town in the south west of Australia, Bridgetown, hosted its first Blues Festival. What was, on a daily basis, a population of 2,000 people, suddenly became 7,000 for three days on the second weekend in November 1993.

Every café and pub, the town hall, school assembly room, the show ground’s oval all became venues, with Blues music bass lines bouncing down the street and clashing in the air. The following year, my high school suddenly upped its game in the music department, and went from having the option of learning recorder or playing a Casio keyboard, to having a drum kit, a couple of electric guitars, electric basses and vocal microphones. Everyone became a musician. I became a singer. I auditioned for the school's Year 10 band, and got the role! Being in love with soul and blues, we learned Chuck Berry’s ‘Go Johnny Go!’, Wilson Pickett’s ‘Mustang Sally’, Aretha Franklin’s ‘Respect’, Koko Taylor’s ‘Wang Dang Doodle’ and many others. I performed at school assemblies and graduation ceremonies and after school I would shut myself in my room and have a Best of Aretha compilation on repeat as I taught myself how to “belt it out” without losing my voice.

So I feel like I’ve come full circle, because the album I have just recorded at Sam Phillips Recording Service in Memphis; the songs, the recording studio, the sound, the musicians, the feel; it all tips its hat and winks back to those last days before I hit my teens, falling in love with singing and falling in love with soul and blues music.

Just being in Memphis felt like one of those moments when you have to pinch yourself and say "this is really happening", and "wow, look where my life has lead me!" A south-west Aussie country bumpkin kid who used to lose her voice learning to sing in her bedroom, goes to Memphis, Tennessee, to make an album in a studio built by Sam Phillips, the man who forever changed the course of music history by bringing blues and rock ‘n’ roll to the world… without whom, that Bridgetown Blues Festival may never have happened.

„…the sweltering funk of Sunrise and the title track sound like lost Muscle Shoals gems.“ (UNCUT)

„It's a sweet and tender distillation of Americana influences. Blues meets country meets gospel, Emily's songwriting seems to capture a world that belongs both in the past and the present.“ (Clash)

“the arrangements are exquisite and the clear love [Barker] has for this music brings its own integrity” (The Times)

“country-soul with luminous warmth” (Mojo)

“finally sets out her true claim for stardom” (Q)

Emily Barker, vocals, guitar, piano
Dave Cousar, guitar
Rick Steff, keyboards
Dave Smith, bass
Steve Potts, drums

Emily Barker
is the award-winning songwriter and performer of the theme to BBC TV's Wallander starring Kenneth Branagh. Her music is a blend of roots influences from country to English folk via 60s pop, all wrapped in the rich string arrangements and multi-part vocal harmonies of The Red Clay Halo, spearheaded by Emily's clear, expressive voice and her charismatic stage presence.

Alongside the Wallander theme, Emily has also provided the theme music to BBC TV drama The Shadow Line (which won an Ivor Novello for best TV soundtrack for series composer Martin Phipps) and has recently (in collaboration again with Martin Phipps) composed music for Daniel Barber's The Keeping Room (Sam Worthington, Britt Marling, Hailee Steinfeld) as well as her first feature length soundtrack, for Jake Gavin's UK road movie Hec McAdam starring Peter Mullan.

Emily's most recent album with The Red Clay Halo, Dear River, was critically acclaimed across the board, with four and five star reviews including lead reviews in The Times and Evening Standard, alongside recognition from specialist magazines such as Maverick, R2 and Country Music People. It went on to be voted 'Americana Album of the Year' by readers of the UK's foremost roots music website, Spiral Earth, and debuted in the UK Independent Album Breakers chart at #3, spending 5 weeks in the top 20.

This album contains no booklet.