SCOTT DARRELL - CD INVISIBLE MAN

Popis - INVISIBLE MAN:
Darrell Scott – The Invisible Man Darrell Scott is a powerful musical spirit. A Grammy-nominated artist, an award-winning songwriter, and a first-call session musician, living and working (literally and figuratively) on the fringes of Nashville’s Music Row, Scott occupies his own unique half-acre in this city’s crowded musical landscape. In a town that’s got pigeonholing down to an art, Darrell Scott stands out as a refreshingly mischievous artist. The Invisible Man, Scott’s sixth release, finds the artist at the peak of his powers, drawing from a rich well of influence and experience to create his most fully realized work to date. From the album’s opening lyric, “In the early morning hours, just before you’re wide awake,” to its closing title, “In My Final Hour,” The Invisible Man traces a thematic arc between waking and sleeping, living and dying, shining a brilliant light on the fleeting moments between. Scott is a master of both the infectious, Appalachian-inflected riff, and of the instruments that bring them to life. His songs are propelled by his knack for blending tradition-soaked hooks with personal, contemporary lyrics. On The Invisible Man’s 12 tracks, Scott explores themes of love, family, and the joys and pitfalls of the artist’s life. And if the singer sounds a little politicized on songs like “I’m Nobody” and “Goodle, USA” (which is covered by Faith Hill on her latest release under the title “We’ve Got Nothing But Love to Prove”), there are good reasons. “There were times when I got up on a soapbox on this record,” he says. “But I think we’re living in the weirdest time of my lifetime, and I’m going to say something about it.” Born on a tobacco farm in the coal-mining center of London, Kentucky, Scott moved as a young child to East Gary, Indiana, a steel-mill town on Lake Michigan near Chicago. His father is a musician, and he grew up around music and creativity. By 16, he was playing roadhouses in Southern California. After some dues-paying years in Toronto and Boston, where he attended Tufts University, studying poetry and literature, Scott finally made the move south. “Unless you come and start looking around, you could think Nashville is all country radio and Christian music,” he says. “Then you realize that Hank Williams, Kris Kristofferson, and Mickey Newbury wrote here.” From his earliest days in Nashville, Scott the instrumentalist gravitated toward the best, with singers like John Cowan, pickers like Sam Bush, and songwriters like Guy Clark employing his utilitarian string-slinging skills. “Playing with Sam or trying to sing with Cowan is a really cool thing to do,” Scott says. “And if you’re going to play to support a song, can it get better than supporting a Guy Clark song?” Darrell co-produced two Guy Clark albums Cold Dog Soup and The Dark. Also, Darrell is currently an active member of Steve Earle’s Bluegrass Dukes. With gigs paying the bills, Scott pursued his solo career, recording two projects (1997’s Aloha From Nashville and 1999’s Family Tree) and a duet album, Real Time, with bluegrass stalwart Tim O’Brien. That album included the Grammy-nominated instrumental, “The Second Mouse,” and the Grammy-winning song, “Long Time Gone.” It wasn’t long before his songs started to jump off those albums and onto the charts. Scott became one of Nashville’s most decorated songwriters. He was named Songwriter of the Year by the Nashville Songwriters Association International in 2001 and ASCAP’s Songwriter of the Year in 2002. Back in 2003, Scott launched Full Light Records, distributed by Ryko Distribution. His first move as owner was to make an album on his dad, Wayne Scott, and record This Weary Way, an old-school, mountain country album that was one of last year’s more pleasant surprises. When putting his own records together, Scott calls on the cream of the crop. The recording roots of The Invisible Man go back to his powerful release, the critically acclaimed Theatre of the Unheard – which won 2005 Album of the Year with the Independent Music Awards, and was listed as one of the 2003 Critics Top Albums by Rolling Stone Magazine. The bulk of The Invisible Man was recorded live in Scott’s home studio, utilizing his familiar core group of players, including the rhythm section of world-class bassist Danny Thompson (Richard Thompson, Rod Stewart) and legendary drummer Kenny Malone (JJ Cale, Johnny Cash). Helping to flesh out the new record’s more ambitious soundscapes are guitarist Richard Bennett (Emmylou Harris, Mark Knopfler), pedal steel & electric guitar wizard Dan Dugmore, John Cowan and Sam Bush from the New Grass Revival, keyboardist Gabe Dixon (Paul McCartney), and spoken word artist Minton Sparks. The Invisible Man was mixed by multiple Grammy-winning engineer Gary Paczosa (Alison Krauss & John Prine.) On one of The Invisible Man's standout tracks, “Do it or Die Trying,” Scott sings, “Living is a lot like flying, you either do it or die trying.” Subsitute the phrase “live recording,” and you've a got a fair picture of Scott's working method in the studio. It's the same discipline that made his live trio recording, Live in NC (recorded with studio and road veterans Malone and Thompson and released on Full Light in 2004) such an exhilarating listen. Scott’s impressive team of players lent itself perfectly to The Invisible Man’s without-a-net recording regimen, and these tracks retain an immediacy that would be impossible to capture in an antiseptically separated Music Row session. “We’re not making music to be music later,” Scott says of The Invisible Man sessions. “It’s going to be music right now. This song is going to be pulled off now. To me, the breakthrough was getting my friends together – and my friends are some of the greatest musicians around – and making it like, no big deal.” As central as Scott’s own songs are to the project, the spirit of Invisible Man is perhaps best summed up in the album’s only cover song, the harrowing “Shattered Cross,” written by Scott’s friend Stuart Adamson, the late founder of hit Scottish band, Big Country. “I did that song within a month of Stuart dying,” Scott says. “That morning we were recording in the house, and I said, ‘This is a friend of mine that wrote this. He died last month. This is a powerful song, so let’s start the day there.’ And it was powerful…the song is powerful.” Scott looks into both the heart of darkness and the bright light of redemption with unblinking eyes. The truth he finds is unveiled in The Invisible Man.