Heartache Looking For a Home
Rounder Records has announced the 15th February release of Charlie Sizemore’s CD, Heartache Looking for a Home. It is the follow-up to his 2007 Rounder debut, Good News.
A native of eastern Kentucky, Sizemore was hired at age 17 to take over for the departing Keith Whitley in Ralph Stanley’s Clinch Mountain Boys, with whom he stayed for nine years before leaving to start his own band and to attend college. He graduated with honors, and now maintains a successful law practice in addition to his musical endeavors. Sizemore is highly regarded as a vocalist, songwriter, instrumentalist and bandleader, his songs have been recorded by Ralph Stanley, Jimmy Martin, Doyle Lawson and Dry Branch Fire Squad to name a few.
…not only can Sizemore write great songs but he also sings beautifully. Sizemore’s voice has a wonderfully warm comfortable timbre that demands you listen – Vintage Guitar Magazine.
While Sizemore didn’t write any of the 14 songs on the new album, there’s a common thread of restlessness, of yearning, in the material chosen so carefully. The people in these songs are all seeking comfort, some momentary peace, in a lover’s arms in Down in the Quarter, in a glass of Red Wicked Wine or in fantasies of unobtainable women in the movies Ashley Judd or the apartment upstairs Walking the Floor Over Me. While this isn’t a concept album, our restless soul finds peace at last, closing with Crossing Over Into the Valley, a love song of homecoming to the Shenandoah Valley: Sweet sanctuary, welcome me in.
Charlie is joined on this album by the four like-minded musicians in The Charlie Sizemore Band; banjo player Josh McMurray; resonator guitarist Matt DeSpain; mandolinist Danny Barnes and bassist John Pennell. There’s no flash-for-flash-sake. All play with the same restrained soulfulness that’s a Sizemore trademark. Even as he reaches beyond bluegrass for material, his Charlie Sizemore Band remains firmly rooted in the sound he was raised on.
I don’t want to make the record I made previously. I just try to keep it interesting for me...
…it could be my years with Ralph, but I’ve never thought of us as anything but a traditional bluegrass band – Charlie Sizemore.
Heartache covers lots of ground, musically and geographically, which suits Charlie just fine.
0 Comments