Album Notes

"The New Orleans Sessions," reveals a powerfully distilled and authentic voice. Capturing the intimacy and directness of live performance, this work offers a sparse simplicity, proof that "less is more". The richness comes through one voice, one guitar and a collection of fifteen songs.

Recording in New Orleans with mardi gras beads dangling on microphone stands and candles glowing on ochre walls, this album provides the space to revel in the nuances of Luckett's voice, the intricacy of her guitarwork, and the depth of her songwriting. From the bluesy, funk opener, "Kindness," to the jazz-tinged "Hold On" and the flamenco influenced "Si Volverá," Luckett's writing continues to demonstrate a vast palette of elements and flavors.

A city where music flows effortlessly and musical traditions mix as smoothly as whiskey and water, New Orleans provides fertile ground for Erika Luckett's latest musical offering.

On her straightforward follow-up to the excellent My Little Crime (Acoustic Guitar's "Best Independent Release of 2002"), Erika Luckett reasserts her prowess as a singer-songwriter and self-accompanist.

Luckett is the whole package, showcasing a supple, imaginative guitar style, lithe vocals, and impeccable timing, while wringing maximum emotion from provocatively personal material. This time, however, she steps out of the production pool of the comparatively pumped-up My Little Crime; only one of The New Orleans Sessions' 15 cuts has as much as a backing vocal (not counting the unlisted "bonus" track).

That spartan approach enables one to hear Luckett on CD as Taylor staffers have heard her in concert - as a seductive, formidable talent who commands her space onstage the way an imploded star consumes the light around it. It also emphasizes her music's intimacy, affording Luckett's storytelling the room to capture the listener in lush lyrical landscapes.

Standout cuts on an album of standouts include "Kindness", "Hold On", "Ghosty", "BirdFish", and "Postcard from Graceland". On that last, Luckett's inscrutably polyrhythmic fingerwork on her 514ce is so good it's almost distracting, which makes it all the more amazing that she sings trenchant lyrics over it. And as if to dot the "i" in surprise, she throws us a mesmerizing curve in a slowed-down reading of the Goffin-King classic, "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?"

Luckett was born in Mexico and raised in Brazil and Venezuela, so it's hardly shocking that she shines on the Brazilian "Carinhoso" and the exotic, Spanish-language "Si Volverá". What is noteworthy, as again evidenced on The New Orleans Sessions, is that her mastery of spoken languages is more than matched by her mastery of musical linguistics.
-David Kaye

"10,000 Miles from Erika Luckett's new album THE NEW ORLEANS
SESSIONS, is a near perfect song, that says so much with the barest of ingredients: an impassioned and eloquent voice and some simple acoustic guitar strumming." --Relix

"Her smoky vocals and honest lyrics wrap themselves around each note, every song infused with subtle hints of the many stops on her world travels, like stamps on the pages of a passport."
--San Francisco Examiner

"Two-hand tapping, lots of beautiful jazz voicings, and Latin and R&B grooves; This is a free-spirited gypsy who's clearing her own trail."
--Puremusic.com

"Erika Luckett has arrived with enough multifaceted talent and musical maturity to make Norah Jones blush."
--San Francisco Bay Guardian

"She knows how to carve a groove and make her instrument become rhythm, counter melody and canvas for her poetic lyrics."
--Femalemusician.com

"The album is an exercise in simple beauty. Recorded live, the record features Luckett playing solo, just her guitar and her blues-tinged, lilting voice. The amazing thing is that, with such sparse instrumentation, absolutely nothing else is needed."
--California Aggie