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You are viewing the most recent 17 entries February 3rd, 2009: Winter 2009 Tour Diary Check out the latest update here: http://www.daemonrecords.com/amy/difkdia January 12th, 2009: Winter Tour 2009 Winter Tour 2009 starts this week! Make sure to check out www.daemonrecords.com or www.amy-ray.com for info and tour dates! December 4th, 2008: 2009 Tour Dates Just Announced!
October 13th, 2008: New Amy Ray video clips You can view them here: http://uncensoredinterview. Thanks! October 4th, 2008August 31st, 2008August 25th, 2008: NEW Tour Dates! 10/19 Nashville, TN – 3rd & Lindsley - http://www.3rdandlindsley.com/ 10/21 St Louis, MO – Blueberry Hill - http://www.blueberryhill.com/ 10/23 Omaha, NE – Slowdown - http://www.theslowdown.com/ 10/24 Minneapolis, MN – Fine Line Music Café - http://www.finelinemusic.com/ 10/25 Ames, IA – Maintenance Shop - http://www.m-shop.com 10/26 Madison, WI – High Noon Saloon - http://www.high-noon.com/ 10/29 Chicago, IL – the Metro - http://www.metrochicago.com/ 10/31 Cleveland, OH – Beachland Ballroom & Tavern - http://www.beachlandballroom.com/ 11/1 Pittsburgh, PA – Mr. Smalls Theater - http://www.mrsmalls.com/ 11/2 Buffalo, NY – Tralf Music Hall - http://www.tralfmusichall.com/ 11/4 Toronto, ONT – Mod Club - http://www.themodclub.com/ 11/5 Burlington, VT – Higher Ground Ballroom - http://www.highergroundmusic.com/ 11/7 Somerville, MA – Somerville Theatre - http://www.somervilletheatreonline.com/ 11/12 11/14 Washington, DC – 9:30pm Club - http://www.930.com
August 14th, 2008: Housing Works Bookstore 8/6/08 Checkout AmyRayTV for clips from the show and from soundcheck: August 7th, 2008: Amy Ray TV in NYC New songs from Soundcheck and the show last night at the HousingWorks Bookstore in NYC can be seen here: August 5th, 2008: Be Green! Buy Didn't It Feel Kinder, released today, online. itunes, napster and emusic even offer BONUS TRACKS! emusic: http://www.emusic.com/album/ : Didn't It Feel Kinder Available today in stores Nationwide. If your local retail outlet doesn't carry Didn't It Feel Kinder you can order at www.DaemonRecords.com or www.Amazon.com You can hear previews and read review snippets at www.ReverbNation.com/AmyRay Thanks for listening! July 31st, 2008: NEW SONGS Posted everyday on KyteTV. July 28th, 2008: Check Out AmyRayTV A new live acoustic version of a song off of Didn't It Feel Kinder added everyday. And pre-Order NOW for shipping this week!
July 18th, 2008: Didn't It Feel Kinder available for Pre-Order NOW Please visit our website www.daemonrecords.com to pre-order Amy Ray's new CD Didn't It Feel Kinder now! Pre-order the new Amy Ray solo CD "Didn't It Feel Kinder" before July 31 and you will receive it by or before the August 5 street date! also available is a limited edition vinyl version!! Current Mood:  happyJuly 8th, 2008: Amy Ray TV There is a new channel to watch instead of reruns this summer! http://www.kyte.tv/ch/76232..-amy-ray-tv You can keep up to date on the new Didn't It Feel Kinder [Daemon Records, August 5, 2008] there, or here on myspace, a link was added to the page. There will also be updates on the new DVD we are working on to be released in Spring 2009. So make sure you check it out right away and stay tuned for even more. June 25th, 2008: Didn't It Feel Kinder August 5, 2008 AMY RAY "I wanted to explore new territory, and I wanted to use a different part of my voice." In "Didn't It Feel Kinder," Amy Ray's third solo recording and most ambitious independent effort to date, the singer-songwriter's style and lyricism reflects her many musical influences, breaking new ground for avid Indigo Girls followers and her solo career fans alike. New listeners will follow Ray far through a rich musical landscape that is both intimate and grand, like sneaking in on sound check at the Knitting Factory. Independent to the core, Ray began designing the album while on tour with the Indigo Girls in the Hey baby my baby sweet baby I'm on the bus tour bus bunk I got my headphones on and I'm listening to Elliott rock rock rock rock Rock me to sleep I got my phone on vibrate in case you call me Rock me to sleep... Didn't It Feel Kinder marks Ray's first solo effort utilizing a producer. Greg Griffith (The Butchies, Le Tigre, Loudspeaker, Vitapup), a fearless listener and multi-talented musician, worked with Ray to incorporate a variety of sounds and influences as diverse as Al Green, The Pretenders, OutKast, and Violent Femmes, to create her unique and evolving voice throughout this record. Ray rose to the challenge to redesign the halls of rock and folk that have housed her for so long: "I just thought I wouldn't break new ground unless someone was making me do it." The two took Ray's back-of-the-napkin GarageBand maps to structure every song - another first for Ray's solo work, because she normally has arranged her music and harmonies in a live setting. Overall, the album teems with the Clash-esq energy that drives so much of Ray's solo work, bouncing and begging the listener to shout along. But as it rocks out, it starts to groove, and then waxes poetic in a well-balanced sequence of intensity, beauty, and fun. Great art, and perhaps music in particular, cannot exist in a vacuum, and Ray is the first to sing the praises of everyone who collaborated on Didn't It Feel Kinder. Wilson, York, and Griffith supported the musical strides that Ray took, but every musician extended Ray's reach. Guitarist Tomi Martin - who with Trina Meade is half of the ascendant Three5Human (and who has played with the likes of Madonna and TLC), filled in parts that Ray says forms the spine of many songs such as "Birds of a Feather" and "She's Got to Be." Ray calls shooting star singer-songwriter Brandi Carlile, whom she met through her work with Indigo Girls, and whose voice adds ethereal power to the record, "the glue" throughout the CD, a glue that is heard clearly on the song “Stand and Deliver”. Indie favorites
This relationship to the environment - whether musical, natural, geographical, or political - is one of the main themes running through the album. "I use a lot of nature or pastoral images - I always have - to describe things that aren't about nature exactly, it's a lens I see through.” Like in the song “Bus Bus”: Snow In March spring in May. Do you remember younger days? Before the arctic was turning to sea Before the polar bear was drifting helplessly I really measure my life by the seasons and the weather and how much it changes over time, over years of touring. I realize that sometimes these days, I feel a lot like that lonely polar bear stuck on a melting glacier, sort of bewildered, but compelled to be there cause it’s all I know and it’s instinctual for me.” Ray's writing is characterized by an emotional complexity which she expertly expresses together with a verbal poetry that dovetails with the music. On the grand opening cut, "Birds of a Feather," Martin's electric guitar elevates the spare lyrics and sparse snare drum allowing the surprising vocal performance to take flight. "Part of what breaks the mold for me this time is in the songwriting, and the other part is the production. For ‘She's Got To Be,’ I was experimenting with using my head voice, my falsetto, and so I wrote in a different direction, too." On this track, voice underscores meaning as Ray breathes through the verses: She's got to be with me always to make sense of the skin I'm in Sometimes it gets dangerous and lonely to defend Marking time with every change it's hard to love this woman in me A bass-heavy rhythm section picks up to float dense lyrics that negotiate gender, relationships, and self-love, rendering the song both thoughtful and groovy. It was a calculated musical risk, unlike any track in Ray's repertoire. "I sang in that high voice to reference the struggle to be who you are. The way soul music was about a struggle, but with a groove - it's so simple with the rhythm that it gives you room to be thinking and also letting your heart hear what's going on." "Hearing with the heart" is one of the record's other main themes, and is expressed lyrically in many ways. If the musicality of Didn't It Feel Kinder is wide-ranging, so too is the songwriting, which covers community, politics, gender and sexuality, religion, the environment, the war, and the sometimes strong, sometimes tenuous lines of love that connect Ray and the listener to it all. In the musically-playful "Who Sold the Gun" she connects a boy gone mad at Virginia Tech to a society losing its humanity in a never-ending war: See you're just one in a long line You're not so lonely after all And I guess we made you famous Cause we're just as fucked up, yeah The lo-fi fairground feel of "SLC Radio" describes a tour stop in Salt Lake City to support a radio station in an overwhelmingly religious-conservative community: I'm sending love to all the Mormons ...I said keep the good things and throw out the bad things you gotta pull the reins on a whole lot of suffering. No bleeding heart polemics here, but rather an example of reaching out - out of your comfort zone, out of your self and your community - that Ray lives and articulates with her music. "What ties the record together for me is this human yearning to be understood and the yearning to become empathetic with other people - how to love each other and be kind even when we're brutally angry." Or, as the final words of this album ask: Didn't you feel stronger when you let love grow? Didn't it open you up inside? Hey let love abide
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