Album Notes

Kristy recently won "Best Female Vocalist" in the 2006 Dallas Observer Music Awards, Dallas' premeire entertainment weekly.

This album is great for fans of Lucinda Williams, Suzanne Vega, Tom Waits and Wilco. The album includes 10 of Kristy's lyrically dark originals, and one cover of Depeche Mode's "Never Let Me Down Again," which will make you want to drive really, really fast. (as stated by CD Baby's president, Derek Sivers.)

It is entitled "Songs from a Dead Man's Couch" because Kristy wrote almost all her songs on a second hand couch of a dead man and it just weirded her out a little bit and she would always think about him when she was sitting on his couch writing songs.

Some numbers feature Kruger in a more traditional country and jazz environment, while others mix Americana and electronics, forming a genre we call: Ameritronica.

For a get up and shake yer rump, train-beat style, try "Gold Rush" and "Never Let Me Down Again."
(Warning: may make you want to ride a horse)

For a New Orleans, Tom Waits feel, try "Little Pollyanna."

For some Ameritronica, try the track "Dark Stranger."

For a crossing of Americana and a bit of generation x-ey, but somehow cosmic-ey sound, try "Blackhole."

For a more traditional country sound, (an "I'm so lonesome I could cry" kind of sound) try "The Night You Never Came to Meet Me" and "Talk Radio."

For a dark, twisted, kind of sexy, depressing song, try "The Prospect of Gold."

For some sort of a twisted/distorted cabaret number that may make you want to strip one layer at a time, also reminiscent of New Orleans, try "This is Now."

For a dark almost Johnny Cash-like number, but with surf guitar, try "The Weed in the Garden."

And for more Ameritronica, try "The Peddler."

If you like what you hear, PLEASE sign up on our mailing list at: www.kristykruger.com

Kristy's BIO:
Songwriter and artist Kristy Krüger has an extensive history in music that spans classical, jazz, folk, and rock genres. Throughout the course of her career as a pianist and composer, Krüger won a multitude of local, state, national, and international awards culminating with the highly coveted “Dee Bee Award” from Down Beat Magazine. When she shifted gears into the world of the singer/songwriter, she brought a broad spectrum of influences with her, ranging from Hank Williams, Sr. to Miles Davis as she criss-crossed the country alone in her car. Her untraditional jazz-influenced approach to folk music has carried her throughout the United States, performing at top-notch venues, both headlining and opening for national acts. She also received a 2003 & 2005 Dallas Observer nomination for Best Acoustic Act, securing her status as a favorite in her hometown of Dallas, Texas. With a wealth of life experiences from her solo journeys, Krüger has also contributed to Public Radio International's This American Life. In addition to these efforts, Krüger has found time to record four full-length albums. Her latest, entitled Songs From a Dead Man’s Couch.

Krüger started playing piano at age five. By eighth grade, she was performing, composing and competing in the classical piano world. She studied jazz in Dallas at Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts whose alumni includes Norah Jones, Edie Brickell, Erykah Badu, and jazz trumpeter Roy Hargrove. There her strength became composition. On four separate occasions she took first place in state from the Texas Music Teachers’ Association and was honored with over a dozen other awards during her high school career. By the time she was 17, she had two original compositions published, and before graduation, the Teachers’ Association presented her with the Whitlock Memorial Scholarship Award for winning more musical awards than any other high school senior in the state of Texas. The prestige of the subsequent Down Beat Magazine “Dee Bee Award” for Best Extended Composition in the North American Continent led to scholarships at the country’s best music schools.

Krüger chose the University of Southern California in Los Angeles where she majored in Music Industry. During this period, she began writing songs on both piano and guitar in the singer/songwriter tradition and delved into the Los Angeles music scene. She founded her own label, Do It Yerself Records, in 1998 and released her debut album, Bachelor of Apathy. Upon completing her degree at USC, Krüger relocated to her native Texas and began performing solo at universities, nightclubs, conferences, and festivals throughout the US and Canada. During this time she released a second album reflecting her tours entitled, The Noise I Make which received a Just Plain Folks nomination for Best New Folk Album of 2001.

While promoting The Noise I Make, on a tour in California, Krüger met engineer Andrew Gilchrist, sonic guru behind Ani DiFranco. The two established a working relationship and Krüger relocated to New Orleans where she recorded her third album with Gilchrist entitled An Unauthorized Guide to the Human Anatomy. An anatomical concept record, Anatomy, comes with a 24-page mock medical textbook and each song is paired with a body part. Krüger co-produced the record with Gilchrist and was able to put her classical counterpoint skills to work, composing background vocals that move like string arrangements throughout the album. Unlike The Noise I Make, this record featured Krüger with a full band, including Dave Pirner, bassist Brad Houser of Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians, and drummer Tony Nozero of Drums and Tuba (on DiFranco’s label). Anatomy also won Best Female Singer/Songwriter Album of the Year at the Just Plain Folks International Independent Music Awards, out of 10,000 entries.

Krüger just released her fourth album, scheduled for release this spring – with two tracks already named finalists in the International Acoustic Music Awards. This album features Krüger in a different setting than her previous releases. After six years of touring the country alone, Krüger gives a nod to her Texas roots, offering up a classic country influence on several numbers. There is also a definite hint of New Orleans in her writing, inspired by the traditional jazz she heard while living there. Krüger produced the record, leaving some tracks raw and layering others with ambient electric guitars, keyboards and pedal steel. “This is an interesting process for me with my jazz background. It’s really challenging to see if you can make a song interesting with a minimal number of chords. The jazzer in me loves to complicate things harmonically. Then I look at a writer like Lucinda Williams and think, ‘Man, she writes the most beautiful 3-4 chord songs I’ve ever heard.’ I wanted to try that out.”