The reviews are in on Whit Hill and the Postcards' new CD, We Are Here...
"For most artists who actually manage the feat, recording a masterpiece is a career-long effort. For Whit Hill, it took a single shot. "We Are Here," suffused with intelligence and champion songcraft, isn't just the best debut album in recent Detroit memory, it's one of the top 2003 premieres by anybody anywhere..."--Detroit Free Press
"...Whit Hill and her band the Postcards have concocted a folk-based country and blues record (with the occasional jazz gesture) that is both a surprise and a welcome relief... .Many of the songs here could be the soundtrack to front porches lined with the world-weary eyes of old men aligned in cane-bottom chairs sipping beer snagged from Styrofoam coolers..."
--Detroit MetroTimes
"Hill's evocative and thoughtful lyrics, nostalgia-tinged vocals and crackerjack band all work to make 'We Are Here' a standout." --Ann Arbor News
"Ultimately, as fine as this record is - it is as cool and deftly done as nything to come out of Detroit in the 21st century - it most likely only hints at what a treasure trove their live performances are. Yeah, just get it."
--All Music Guides
OK, there are more reviews, but you can read them at
www.whithill.com
In the meantime...
Whit Hill and the Postcards was formed in the winter of the year 2001 as a response to the sorry lack of quality beatnik-tinged alt-country music in the greater Detroit area. The Postcards are singer/songwriter Whitley Hill, singer/keyboardist/guitarist/husband Al Hill, bass player Patrick Prouty, drummer Tim Gahagan.
Whitley Setrakian Hill was born and raised in New York City, the child of Southern-born actors: a WASP from Mississippi and an Armenian from the moonshine mountains of West Virginia. Her perfect meal? Corn bread and stuffed grape leaves. She was a child actress, a drama graduate of NYC's High School for Performing Arts and has a degree in dance from the University of Michigan. For many years she was the artistic director People Dancing, an Ann Arbor dance company. Whit's dances have been commissioned and performed by companies across the country.
But she really likes music. As a singer, Whit was a member of the renowned folk band Dick Siegel and the Na-Nas, with whom she toured the country - from New York's Bottom Line to the Vancouver Music Festival - performing and helping to arrange that band's signature theatrics. She and her band have opened for Pam Tillis and performed at the Wheatland Music Festival, the Ann Arbor Folk Festival, the Toledo Folk Festival, the Ark, the A2 Summer Festival, the A2 Art Fairs, the Firefly Club, Memphis Smoke, Zingerman's Roadhouse and lots of other venues.
Al Hill's credits are too numerous to fully recount here, but in brief, this native son of Ann Arbor has toured the country with his band, the Love Butlers, and is currently music director for Motown legend Bettye Lavette. His album Willie Mae, co-written with wife Whitley, was voted Best Blues CD by the Detroit/Windsor Blues Society, and helped the Love Butlers win the 2000 "Best Unsigned Band" competition at Buddy Guy's Legends in Chicago.
The Postcards' first CD, We Are Here, has just been released on Home Run Records. On it are 14 songs about circus performers, bloodbath bar robberies, paramecia, driving to Detroit, traveling via sleeper car, love, disappointment, and alternate uses for the kitchen table. One audience favorite is about Whitley's long-ago friendship with the most famous woman in the world. All this via a sound that blends country, soul, and Southern rock.
Website www.whithill.com And remember: Everyone likes postcards....
Other interesting things about Whitley: Her grandfather owned a saloon called the Sanitary Lunch. She once delivered a friend's baby by herself. Her dad was on the Sopranos.
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