Your Country's Right Here: Eilen Jewell Carves A Path In Loretta Lynn Country
posted in: Country • Features • Music News
Eilen Jewell knows that the wide open country, about which Loretta Lynn and other classic country stars sing, isn’t gone.
The Idaho-born Boston transplant feels such a power with those images that she wrote much of her upcoming album while holed up in a shack in the Idaho mountains. Like clean air and the smell of nature, that’s the only place to really find the genuine vibe needed to create the country music album she plans to release this summer.
“What I did was take about ten days and went to this little shack in the mountains in Idaho where there was no electricity or running water and no distractions,” Jewell says. “I just wrote for a solid week. I tried to write a sketch of a song in the morning and one at night. A lot of them were inspired by what I was feeling and seeing at that time, so there’s a lot of western imagery. It reminds me of where I grew up and makes me more than a bit homesick.”
Although she’s based on the east coast, Jewell found her country music calling in the west. That’s where she became a self-professed lover of pedal steel and immersed herself in the songs of Loretta Lynn and other classic country artists.
After honing her skills in such modest venues as Farmers’ Markets in and around New Mexico, Jewell arrived on the national scene with her 2007 release Letters from Sinners & Strangers, that soared to the Top 10 on Americana radio charts. The 2009 album Sea of Tears won critical acclaim as did her 2010 album Butcher Holler, a side project that is her tribute to Lynn and her legendary fifty-year career.
Songs on the Butcher Holler album are Jewel’s interpretations of such classic Lynn songs as “Don’t Come Home a Drinkin’ (with Lovin’ on Your Mind)” and “You Ain’tWoman Enough (to Take My Man).” Yet while Jewell’s stamp is on these versions, they’re close enough renderings to let you know she’s”well, paying tribute”to Lynn.
“It is a bit of a double-edged sword,” says Jewell. “You don’t want to sound too imitative and you don’t want to sound like you’re making it into something it’s not. I don’t really like [to hear cover] songs when the artists change the song for novelty sake. I’d rather err on the side of the faithful but I also didn’t want to sound like Eilen Jewell imitating Loretta Lynn.”
Special kudos to Jewell for making the vocals just what she intended. That was arguably challenging because Jewel’s original music is accented with touches that lead back to her love of ’60’s girl groups including the Shirelles and Roni Spector & the Ronettes.
But, of course, not too much.
“To me [country music] is like the wolf or the eagle. You don’t see them in many places but they are not extinct. They are part of America life,” she says. “It’s like Kenny Rogers singing. You may not hear it all the time, but it doesn’t mean it is dead. It is still there. It is still part of my life.”