Album Notes

Live From Charlottesville

On December 16, 2005, hometown fans braved an ice storm to hear Terri Allard and her band play at the opulently restored Paramount Theater. The gilded space and sparkling ice of that evening is captured on Live from Charlottesville, Terri's fifth CD and first live recording. Unlike typical live recordings, Terri's album features seven new songs – five fabulous originals and two wonderfully sung covers of her fan's favorites. If you were there that night, this recording takes you back on a cloud. And if you weren't there, you are now. Terri and the boys open on Wings of Love with fingers flying over the strings of their instruments, notably Jim Taggart’s soaring mandolin. But they're just setting up for the train that rumbles through on their cover of the Traveling Wilbury’s Rattled. Listening to this CD, you expect the walls to start shaking. With Gary Green's harmonica steaming, Terri stokes the fire with her gutsy alto, then poignantly introduces the next song, Heroes, on which she tells about her four-year-old son donning a super-hero cape for a flight to Heaven in order to bring back Terri's brother Scott. It's a tribute to her songwriting ability that Terri can sing about such sadness with stark guitar virtuosity and still lift the spirit, which she does with aching clarity on Hope. Backed by her band of consummate musicians on lap steel, upright bass, violin, accordion, guitar, harmonica and mandolin, Terri chronicles the highs and lows of just living every day. Whether singing with a country lilt on Once Upon a Time or velvet-voiced raucousness on We'll Have Elvis, Terri Allard is an American original. Along with special guests John Jennings (Mary Chapin Carpenter's longtime collaborator) and jazz pianist Art Wheeler, Terri and her Dad, Bill Allard, bring the whole magical evening on home with an emotional duet of Randy Newman’s Louisiana 1927... an event that no one has to miss thanks to this superb recording.