Vincent Harris, Greenville Journal, November 23, 2022
How on Earth has it been seven years since Angela Easterling released an album?
The popular Upstate singer-songwriter put out “Common Law Wife” back in 2015, a strong collection of autobiographical tunes about her life as a new mom.
But since then, Easterling has remained relatively quiet on the new-release front. She’s kept up a busy schedule of shows both with and without her partner, guitarist Brandon Turner, but other than a few singles here and there, the years clicked by without a new album.
“The last seven years we had two more little boys,” Easterling says, “and then COVID came along and it just dragged out further than I had hoped or planned before putting out another album.”
In fact, Easterling had an album ready to go back in 2020, but world (and personal) events got in the way.
“I had the whole thing done,” she says. “But we were expecting a baby in May 2020. And then COVID hit in March and our shows got canceled and I didn’t have any money, and there was no way I could put a CD out that year. So — just kind of released a few songs as singles and shelved it.”
As it turns out, though, that delay was a good thing, because Easterling went on a creative tear and wrote a batch of new songs. She mixed some tunes from the unreleased 2020 record with the new tracks and voila, “Witness,” Easterling’s new, just-released album, was born.
“Witness” is Americana music at its best, a mix of country and rock that buoys Easterling’s soul-searching lyrics and storytelling. The 12 songs are all irresistibly melodic, with Easterling sounding for all the world like Rosanne Cash in certain spots.
Easterling mixes autobiography and fiction on “Witness,” singing about her young family (“Grow Old”) her own rough-and-tumble past (“California”), her current state of being (“Middle Age Dream”) and more.
“I like for people to understand my songs,” she says. “I don’t like them to be super cryptic. I know there’s a few songs on this album that can be interpreted different ways, and that’s fine, but the songs that I like and the songwriters that I like are people that sing about stuff that’s like both really specific and universal and that’s always like the direction that I’m endeavoring to go in, whether I’m successful at it or not.”
One of the most striking moments on the album is actually a cover; Easterling takes on the great Woody Guthrie and Martin Hoffman composition “Deportee (Plane Wreck At Los Gatos)” and delivers a searing portrait of the country’s past view of immigrants that is especially poignant today.
“I loved that song when I was younger,” she says. “And so in recent years with the kids in cages at the border, when that story broke the news, it really struck a chord in me as a mom and the idea of families being separated. And I wanted to write something about that. But then I thought of this song and I was like, ‘Woody Guthrie just says it all,’ and I don’t know if I can write anything that says it any better than the master himself.”
“Witness” has gotten Easterling attention that she never expected, with good reviews and radio play pouring in from all around the world.
The popular Americana music magazine No Depression wrote: “Easterling’s arresting vocals bathe our hearts in cascading phrasing and heart-on-the-sleeve clarity and purity. Her vocals are part Loretta Lynn, part Nanci Griffith, and part Emmylou Harris. Easterling ought to be better known. Her evocative singing and her ability to pull every emotion out of a song’s lyrics, as well as her ingenious songwriting, is on full display on ‘Witness,’ so perhaps this album will make her a household name.”
“It’s great,” Easterling says of the attention the album has gotten. “That’s very fulfilling. I mean, obviously, I didn’t know. It’s been so long since my last album. I didn’t know people were going to care or want to hear any new music from me. This is my first album that I recorded the whole thing in South Carolina with all the guys I regularly play with. So I think it just says a lot about the music quality and the quality of the recording studios that we have here.”
Read article here: https://greenvillejournal.com/arts-culture/upstate-beat-angela-easterlings-new-album-witness-is-americana-music-at-its-best/