The Night You Wrote That Song: The Songs of Mickey Newbury

Gretchen Peters is one of the early 21st centurys most treasured singer/songwriters. A member of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, shes penned hits for dozens of country artists and is a world-renowned recording artist. Her catalog is full of self-penned jewels rendered in her unaffected alto; Peters consistently delivers canny narratives of the human experience at its most vulnerable. The Night You Wrote That Song: The Songs of Mickey Newbury is an unexpected covers set. Newburys songs have been covered over 1,500 times by more than 1,200 artists, including Ray Charles, B.B. King, Willie Nelson, Linda Ronstadt, Kenny Rogers, and Vampire Weekend. Newbury was a pioneer of psychedelic country and a die-cutter for Americana; he passed in 2002. (In addition to his songs, he brought fellow Texans Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark to Nashville, and mentored Kris Kristofferson.) Peters cut the basic tracks over a few years at Cinderella Studio in Madison, a suburb of Nashville (where Newbury recorded his finest albums) with husband and pianist Barry Walsh and guitarist Will Kimbrough. Overdubs were added as needed later on by harmonica ace Charlie McCoy, guitarist Wayne Moss, pedal steel player Dan Dugmore, Celtic string king Eamon McLaughlin, and several others. Peters delivers gorgeous versions of classics such as She Even Woke Me Up to Say Goodbye, Just Dropped In (To See What Condition What My Condition Was In), Heaven Help the Child, Frisco Depot, and San Francisco Mabel Joy. Newburys tunes are often steeped in pathos: emotional, spiritual, and historical, yet steely in their unflinching honesty and in their revelations of vulnerability. Peters shines throughout, delivering them with an authority central to her own experience as a woman and as a songwriter. Her readings of lesser-known tunes such The Sailor, register as unearthed fables from the mists of time. Her take on the title track is an elegiac waltz with Walshs accordion underscoring every sung line. In Saint Cecelia and Three Bells for Stephen Peters resists radical rearrangements. She stays close to Newburys melodies but coaxes shifting shades of meaning through her phrasing, adding a present-tense female dimension to these narratives. Her read of Why You Been Gone So Long is a rollicking country-rocker fit for a honky tonk dancefloor. In Leavin Kentucky, McLaughlins fiddle introduces Peters, who sings: Cold on the mountain when winter comes on/Dew in the morning is sprinkled alone/The road down to Nashville’s like crystal and stone/Leavin’ Kentucky and I’m goin back home… Lord I’m just one girl, I wish I were three/Take a .44 pistol to me/Put one in my brain for his memory/One more for my heart, and then I‘d be free…. The harrowing depths the protagonist suffers over lost love are a whirlpool, yet Peters narrator remains standing and continues her journey knowing suicide is merely pains voice in her ear, as pedal steel, electric guitars, organs, and pianos swell around her. With the Night You Wrote That Song, Peters gifts Newburys songs as evidence of his enduring relevance. And intentionally or not, this albums contents are a stained-glass window shining light into her own sacred hall of inspiration. ~ Thom Jurek