After four seasons of thirsty contemplation and public experimentation, songwriters Jeni Lee Richey and Fred Beldin announce a solid lineup for The Great Tribulation. With drummer Cory Snavely and bassist Tom McCartan on the team and augmented in the studio and/or on stage with local Michigan roots players like Paul Delamater (pedal steel, from Rust County Electric), Mark Wallace (violin, from Black Jake and the Carnies) and Ryan Racine (accordion, from Gas For Less), The Great Tribulation is now poised to beguile a wider audience of seekers.
Our full length debut, The Flood Brought The Fire, was assembled over the past two years from sessions at Jim Diamond’s Ghetto Recorders, Jim Roll’s Backseat Productions and Tim Pak’s Woodshed Studios. Each month a new windmill to tilt at, every season a song, a diary for us all, the accumulation of sporadic recordings suddenly congealed into part one of some terrible, beautiful fable ... frozen winter and the swelter of summer informs these songs, as does the emotional expansion and contraction that follows the rage of love, the envelopment of despair and the righteousness of revenge and overcoming defeat.
Ten Songs. These songs are a snapshot of where Fred and Jeni Lee came from, where the band was at the time of coming together and where we arrived at the time we recorded the final songs. It's our very first story. It's varied, sexy, textured, wicked and sad at parts in the sweetest way. Despite the band name, we're not a Christian band. We sing about the tribulations of life. (don't we all?) These songs are about the trials we put ourselves through, the trials other people put us through, the pain, the questions, the reasoning, the acceptance, the results, and most importantly, the triumph of overcoming. (And one of them really is about an Alfred Hitchcock episode; we'll let you figure it out.) Slow, fast, swaying, chaotic, it's all there.
This isn't a country record. This isn't a folk record in the way that most people might think. This is, as Fred so perfectly states it, an effort to define and defy the chaos of survival through the medium of the American folk song. There are elements of our influences there, but the sound is all ours because it just is.
Outlaw country swagger, the truth and beauty of American folk songs, the blazing freedom of inappropriately loud guitars ... featuring past, present and future members of Flatfoot, Bone Orchard Revival, The End Times and Seger Liberation Army, this is the history of once-proud pioneers who settled the Michigan forests and found peace by fighting for their freedom.
The Great Tribulation is:
Jeni Lee Richey - vocals, acoustic guitar
Fred Beldin - electric guitar
Tom McCartan - bass guitar, organ, backing vocals
Cory Snavely - drums and percussion
With very special guests:
Paul Delamater - pedal steel guitar
Chris Wall - bass guitar on Silver Bullet, Chinatown, and Heart Attack
Pat Bills - drum kit on Barroom and Stranger
Jim Diamond - organ on Silver Bullet and bass guitar on Stranger
Mark Wallace - violin on Better Left Unfound
Shine That Silver Bullet, I’ll Be Here, In The Barroom, Better Left Unfound and Chinatown written by Jeni Lee Richey
You’ve Got Ghosts, When A Stranger Kisses Me, When I Have My Heart Attack, Sure As The Rain and Don’t Count The Days written by Fred Beldin
All songs copyrighted respectively 2011.
Shine That Silver Bullet, When A Stranger Kisses Me, Chinatown and When I Have My Heart Attack Recorded and Mixed by Jim Diamond at Ghetto Recorders, Detroit, MI
You’ve Got Ghosts, I’ll Be Here, Better Left Unfound, Sure As The Rain and Don’t Count The Days Recorded & Mixed by Jim Roll at Backseat Productions, Ann Arbor, MI
In The Barroom Recorded & Mixed by Tim Pak at Woodshed Studios, Ferndale, MI
All Songs Mastered by Jim Roll at Backseat Productions, Ann Arbor, MI
Artwork and Layout by Jenny Harley
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