Laura Benitez And The Heartache release new album WITH ALL ITS THORNS

LAURA BENITEZ AND THE HEARTACHE 

ARE RIGHT AT HOME IN CLASSIC COUNTRY STYLE

WITH THEIR NEW ALBUM, WITH ALL ITS THORNS

Click To ENLARGE

Front Cover Photo: Credit Emily Sevin - Website

The Self-produced Album dropped on Copperhead Records January 26, 2018

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.”

WITH ALL ITS THORNS marks Benitez’s 3^rd record. FOR DUTY OR FOR LOVE, released in 2010, was her first album, then in 2014 she released HEARTLESS WOMAN to great critical acclaim. Lonesome Highway praised, “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…” 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.

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.

Back Cover Photo: Credit Emily Sevin - Website

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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