Album Notes

john r. williamson and the cest la vies, who perform original toe-tapping salt-of-the-earth roots music, call to mind the soul-stirring stuff of Mississippi John Hurt, Bob Dylan, and the late great Johnny Cash. Their music is a brew of country blues, gypsy music and gospel. Their two most recent albums, the visceral Lost Songs (2002) and the stunning Maybe In A Shade You Don't Know (2004) received critical acclaim from PASTE Magazine and Opus Magazine. While their passion is playing concerts, they have also appeared on NPRs All Songs Considered, as well as Choices with Dorothea Bradley and KXLU radio. They just released their new album, Portable Shrine (July 8, 2006) on ToneMesa. the current lineup features John R. Williamson, who has been writing and performing since 1987, and Rosamond Finley, a compelling violinist who studied violin performance at Vanderbilt Universitys Blair School of Music. Finley, who began playing at the age of 3, also performed in a Nashville Belly Dancing Troupe and Orchestra, called The Perfumed Garden, before coming out West. ====== GQ Magazine: UNSUNG HEROES: Who is the one musician or band who deserves to be in the hall of fame, but who, for some reason, has toiled in obscurity, never won a grammy or gone platinum? We asked musicians, singers, and writers to nominate their favorite SECRET MUSICAL GENIUS: T BONE BURNETT nominates JOHN R. WILLIAMSON After a talk that I had given one night at a college in the San Gabriel Valley, a young man walked up and handed me a CD called Songs from Crescent Vale. Daniel S. McCoy told me he was Peter Buck's cousin and that he was producing records for the guy that he motioned was sitting on the bleachers about twenty feet away, John R. Williamson. This sort of thing happens to me every once in a while. If I go to some conference or festival or something along those lines, I generally collect enough intellectual property that I have to ship it home. But that night, I had a long drive back to Santa Monica, so I put the CD on in my car and headed west. The fourth song was called "Offerings." After the first listen, I put it on a loop and kept listening all the way home and for the next several weeks. I don't know what it is about that song--I guess if a song is ever any good, you never do--but it is flat-out touching. It has this mesmerizing cadence and old-world language, and the execution is effortless, languid and deeply optimistic. I've got a lot of John's songs now, and a few of his paintings. His extraordinarily benevolent music has insinuated itself into my life in an important way. John's stuff does not fit. One could call John an outsider artist, but he is more outside than that. If his music were any more quiet, you would have to play it yourself to hear it. -May 2006