Album Notes

Little Words, the new full-length project from Chico’s Karen Joy Brown, is a satisfying collection that aptly displays the artist’s wide-ranging acoustic palette via voice, strumming guitar and songwriting. Starting off with a crisp and irresistible title track, followed by the equally infectious, mid-tempo “Made for TV,” the aural experience widens as Brown’s voice, a throaty, sultry mix of pop, jazz and soul, harks back to such contemporary jazz vocalists as Linda Tillery and Cassandra Wilson. Elsewhere, the quick, scatty-jazz essence of “De Rien” is followed nicely by “I Know What Heaven Is,” an insightful ballad of perseverance that offers, “It’s the sand that makes the pearls.” Brown’s backing band, the Bona Fides (Chris Wenger on electric guitar and the CN&R’s Christine LaPado adding some fine upright bass passages) enhances the album along with David Silva, who contributes nimble acoustic lead licks plus a song of his own, “Deep Blue.” Brown is back in Chico after a stint in Spain, passionate, reflective and refueled, offering musical messages reflecting life’s lessons she’s learned so far. “Show that small town that you ain’t done yet,” she offers in the encouraging “Daisy,” closing the album with a tender, gospel-tinged “Scarlet Silence,” with its message to “stop and savor every echo in our mind.”

-Alan Sheckter, Chico News&Review, June 24th, 2010.

A solitary spinster’s extraordinary inner life inspired the title track for the album, “Little Words.” Prizes or published works qualify poets, yet neither validated Emily Dickinson in her lifetime. A shy, brilliant woman who rarely left the confines of her parents’ home and garden wrote over 1,800 poems that were only published posthumously by the loving effort of her sister. Modern readers easily list her name among great authors without appreciating the utter lack of professional or public affirmation without which she created incredible works of art. For Emily Dickinson, there was nothing but the quiet enchantment of pen and paper; a passionate, playful fellowship with little words. I dedicate this album to that lonely poet’s rich communion with the joys and sorrows of life.

-Karen Joy Brown, May 16th, 2010.