eilen jewell ‘sundown over ghost town’

i just love this album. do me a favor. order this. when you get it, put aside some time and get yourself a good bottle of bourbon. pour a healthy bit of that bourbon over ice in a tumbler, and then slip this album on in a room where you can listen up good. this girl can sing, and her band knows how to get behind her in a simplified but organically country way. there is not a mediocre cut on this album. check out ‘needle and thread’ below. i first got turned on to her stuff when i got her 2011 release ‘queen of the minor key’, and then quickly picked up her 2010 tribute to loretta lynn, ‘butcher holler’. she is coming to my favorite venue here on her current tour of this release, and i plan on being there.

“Needle and Thread” is about the mountain town where I spent a lot of time as a child: Idaho City, Idaho. It boasts a population of about 450 these days, though some maps list it as a ghost town.” “My family has some land up there. It’s mostly timber, dirt and rocks. Both Idaho City and the land around it have certainly seen better days. It was once the capitol of the Northwest — during the Gold Rush — but the miners took most of the gold out of it, and then it burned down twice. We love it though.