Album Notes

“... music of a moving, searching America ... rich with imagery, with memorable, hummable melodies and spine-tingling insights ... Great record all around.” Tom Petersen, “Victory Review”

“ ... This is country music before the high-fructose corn syrup was added ... All the dark notes of yearning and loss are lit up by the light of their grace-filled attention. They bear witness to the whole terrain of the human heart, and honor it all by making it beautiful.” Cindy Buck “Fairfield Weekly Reader”

“Really lovely, sparse, rich ... The whole thing makes me feel like I’m traveling through a soundscape. Especially the ending with its long gorgeous ‘Rodeo’ ...” Patrick Bloom, Songwriter, musician, producer (Greg Brown, Mike and Amy Finders, Joe Price)

Following the 2006 release of Leave Nothing Behind, Truckstop Souvenir, the husband and wife duo of Dennis James and Lauryn Shapter, packed up the household and left the metropolitan confines of Seattle, WA, moving some 1900 miles to the wide open prairies of southeast Iowa. Their latest release, Under A Big Blue Sky, is a reflection of both the roads that led them to Iowa and the life they found when they arrived. A true DIY project, Blue Sky was recorded in the attic of their rural Iowa home during quiet moments stolen in between the frequent coal trains on the Burlington Northern line at the edge of town. Reflecting their independent spirits, Lauryn and Dennis not only produced and engineered Blue Sky, they relied very little on outside musicians, performing the overwhelming majority of the parts themselves.

The eleven original songs on their sophmore album paint a landscape of lament, loss, hope, and redemption. From late night motels and empty mining towns to peaceful rolling drives across the prairie, Truckstop Souvenir comfortably settles into the heartland with a collection of keepsakes from along the way.