LAURA BENITEZ AND THE HEARTACHE
ARE RIGHT AT HOME IN
CLASSIC COUNTRY STYLE
WITH THEIR NEW ALBUM, WITH ALL ITS THORNS
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| Click To ENLARGE
Front
Cover Photo: Credit Emily Sevin - Website
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With a voice filled with sunshine she takes a bad break-up and
molds it into 10 new Country classics dripping with heartache..."--Blue
Suede News
"Her tight and focused
band play country music with a view to the past and an ear for the future.
This is identifiably country music and not some pop crossover. There’s twang,
there is steel guitar and there’s an understated but entirely effective rhythm
section pushing things along. "- Lonesome Highway
"(Laura Benitez and The
Heartache) channel the best of that which made the old hometown tick musically
back then. Before you say it must be rehash, let me assure you that it is not.
It is original, as good as it got and as good as it gets."--No Depression
Laura Benitez’s latest album, WITH
ALL ITS THORNS is an autobiographical collection of loving,
open, vulnerable and ultimately heartbreaking songs. With her delicately
distinctive voice, Benitez pulls from traditional country music and brings the
sound to the present-day.
Benitez tours and records with her
band The Heartache, which includes Bob Spector on acoustic and electric
guitar, Ian Sutton on pedal steel, Mike Anderson on electric and upright
bass and Steve Pearson on
drums. Benitez contributes lead and harmony vocals and acoustic rhythm
guitar, and for the album brought in Billy Wilson on accordion, Steve Kallai on
fiddle and Jim Goodkind on harmony vocals.
“What I love about this record is
how much more relaxed and confident we are as a band,” said the artist.
“It’s so great to be able to stretch out and take risks. We’re still very
much a classic country band, but we’ve incorporated more textures and colors on
this record, bringing in Cajun and Mexican influences with the accordion, adding
fiddle and upright bass, and stripping things down to all acoustic for the
songs that need it. We’ve grown a lot as a band and really expanded our
horizons on this record.”
This is identifiably country music…” Backroads Bluegrass speculated, “If I closed my eyes, it is very easy to smell the cigarette smoke, hear the clink of longneck bottles and the scraping of boots on wooden floors. This is ‘real country’ with no frills.”
Published on Aug 10, 2017: Laura
Benitez and Bob Spector play Easier Things to Do at 25th Street
Studios in Oakland on August 5, 2017.
Words and Music by Laura Benitez, Copyright 2016. Film by Jamie Turner, Sound Recording by
Gabriel Shepard.
Known for story songs involving clever lyrics, Benitez kicks off with the swinging Cajun influenced ‘Something Better Than a Broken Heart”. “This song rose out of a conversation I had with my friend, Doug Tieman, who ended up giving me the idea for the song,” she explained. “He was talking about how you always think you’re going to get something besides a broken heart out of a relationship and I really identified with that. It’s that question you have after a relationship ends, that ‘What was it all for?’ feeling.”
The song “In Red” was inspired by
Benitez spilling red wine down the front of her own wedding dress and thinking
that white was a pretty impractical color to get married in. The line “I
Should Have Married You In Red” came from that moment. “It stayed in the
back of my mind as an idea for many years,” she said. “When it finally
became a song, it turned into the murder ballad/revenge fantasy you hear on the
record.”
The arrangement for the song, “Ghostship”
is spare and simple, so as not to distract from the story. Last December in
Oakland, CA, a fire broke out in a warehouse known as Ghost Ship. It had been
converted into an artist collective and at the time of the fire was hosting a
concert. A total of 36 people were killed. “The Ghost Ship fire hit the
Bay Area arts community very hard,” Benitez remembered. “I have played
underground shows and attended underground performances many times, and I felt
it could have easily been me, could have easily have been any one of us. I
wanted to testify to my own and my community’s grief and anger over the
tragedy, and to say that those who died have not been forgotten.”
Release Date: 26 Jan 2018
Laura Benitez and the Heartache - With All Its Thorns (Copperhead Records)
11 Tracks/ Time: 36:08 |
Released on Copperhead Records
Amazon UK - UK iTunes - Amazon.com - Bandcamp
REVIEWS:
No Depression Review (Rating:
Positive): I raved about her last album, Heartless Woman, partially because it
brought back memories of what I call West Coast country--- music just slightly
different than that of Nashville back in the day. I will be raving about With
All Its Thorns too. It is straight out of my growing up period. A large part of
my introduction to music as life. This could well be a jukebox to my youth.
I
smell cigarette smoke and stale beer every time I hear this. It was a strange
but wondrous world. And this album captures it beautifully.
Country Music People (Rating: 3.1/2 STARS;
Paul Riley)…The music on the new release
sounds timeless and that’s always a good sign for a traditional country album.
Laura Benitez has a superb country voice and she is a hell of a songwriter.
This is the kind of CD that fans of “real” country need to support. It should
go to number one on the country charts, but it will not; it's too country. How
crazy is that? Buy This Album.
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| Image extract (Facebook) from Country Music People Magazine March 2018 issue Printed Version | Digital Version |
"With All Its Thorns shows Benitez and
company claiming their place in a competitive genre in which success is often
secured by those who can best reconcile emulation and originality; i.e.,
'making it new,' but not too new. This has been the golden formula for Alison
Krauss, Jamey Johnson, Sturgill Simpson, and Margo Price, among others. Benitez
and the Heartache strike their own persuasive balance, offering songs that will
engage conventionalists and hybridists alike; in the process, honing an
undeniable presence that, with time, will only grow more finely tuned." - John Amen, No Depression
Country Standard Time - The album is a
collection of mostly autobiographical, vulnerable and often heart-wrenching
songs, set up as stories with clever lyrics. For example, "In Red"
was inspired by Benitez spilling red wine on her wedding dress and thinking
that white was an impractical color to be married in. Thus, the line "I
should have married you in red." The bluegrass "Nora Went Down the
Mountain" is about a wife who leaves her husband never to return. "Ghostship"
is the searing story about a fire that killed 36 people in a converted concert
venue named Ghost Ship in Oakland in December 2016.
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Back
Cover Photo: Credit Emily Sevin - Website
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From the twangy rockabilly number, “Whiskey Makes Me Love You” to the conjunto-style “Almost the Right One/Casi Mi Cielo” then the sweet acoustic “Why Does It Matter”, With All Its Thorns wraps up with the bluegrass-style “Nora Went Down the Mountain” about a wife who leaves her husband without warning, never to return.
With the exception of “Something
Better Than a Broken Heart” all songs were written solely by Benitez on her
acoustic 1996 Epiphone Excelante. “It was given to me as a gift by my
ex-husband, which is a great way to get a guitar if you’re going to write
country songs!” She joked. “There are nicer guitars out there, and no doubt
better sounding ones, but it was very important to me that the guitar I used to
write every song on the album be the guitar I played when recording them.”
CREDITS:
Music
and Lyrics by Laura Benitez, except for “Something Better Than a Broken Heart”,
Music by Laura Benitez, Lyrics by Laura Benitez and Doug Tieman
Lead
Vocal: Laura Benitez
Electric
and Acoustic Lead Guitar: Bob Spector
Pedal
Steel Guitar: Ian Sutton
Electric
Bass: Mike Anderson
Drums:
Steve Pearson
Acoustic
Rhythm Guitar: Laura Benitez
Upright
Bass (Ghostship): Mike Anderson
Accordion
(Something Better Than a Broken Heart, Almost the Right One & Secrets):
Billy Wilson
Fiddle
(Ghostship, Nora Went Down the Mountain): Steve Kallai
Harmony
Vocals (Something Better Than a Broken Heart, Secrets, Why Does it Matter, and
Nora Went Down the Mountain): Jim Goodkind
Harmony
Vocals (Something Better Than a Broken Heart and Easier Things to Do): Laura
Benitez
Recorded
at Decibelle, San Francisco and 25th Street Studios, Oakland
Produced
by: Laura Benitez
Recording
and Mix Engineer: Gabriel Shepard, Webfoot Audio
Mastering
Engineer: Piper Payne, Neato Mastering
Album
Graphic Design: Johnny Bartlett of California
Photos
by: Emily Sevin
As a member of the country cover
band the Cottonpickers in the mid 2000’s, Benitez began writing songs. “I
had no idea when I started if they would be any good, but after a few months I
was writing songs that I liked and believed in,” she remembers. “I was
afraid to put them out into the world—I would nearly pass out every time I sang
one for friends or at a jam. It really took the sudden break-up of my marriage
to get me to form the band. I was so sad and angry at the time that I
just forgot to be scared.”
“I think I have a unique
perspective as an artist,” Benitez observed. “I’m a woman of mixed race
in a world that wants you to be one thing or another, working in an industry
that’s still very much a boy’s club, and I’m also a West Coast city dweller
singing roots music. As I’ve gotten older I am much less afraid to tell my
story as I see it, and I think that shows in my songwriting.”
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