“The American singer Jude Johnstone was for a long time only known as a supplier of songs for other artists. For example, Trisha Yearwood, Emmylou Harris, Bonnie Raitt, Mary Black and Bette Midler recorded her songs. Only in 2002 did she decide to take her own chance as a solo artist by releasing her debut album “Coming Of Age”. That became a big windfall and soon a series of other solo albums followed, including “On A Good Day” in 2006, Blue Light” in 2007, Mr. Sun”, 2008, Quiet Girl” in 2011, “Shatter” in 2013 and “A Woman’s Work” in 2017.
This year, Jude Johnstone, who lives in Nashville, Tennessee, released her eighth official solo album under the title “Living Room”. On that album are ten new, mostly fairly sober songs for which she has written almost all lyrics and music, but for which she has also invited some guest musicians for the instrumentation. We note the names of the regularly acclaimed Neilson Hubbard as co-composer of the song “My Heart Belongs To You” and Rob van Duuren also plays on pedal steel on three tracks: “That” s What You Don’t Know “, “All I Ever Do” and “One Good Reason” that you can listen to a live performance here.
Jude Johnstone herself plays the piano as an accompaniment instrument for her intimistic songs and she also has some songs sung by other vocalists living in Nashville. For example, Hunter Nelson sings the song “That’s What You Don’t Know”, singer-songwriter Ben Glover sings “Seasons Of Time” and Brandon Jesse takes care of the vocals for the beautiful song “Serenita”. With the song “So Easy To Forget” Jude Johnstone sings a duet with Tim Hockenberry who was only discovered at the age of 49 in the television show “America’s Got Talent”. He also provides great harmony vocals for the song “All I Ever Do”.
You can read in her biography that Jude Johnstone is actually a discovery of the late Clarence Clemons, the saxophonist of Bruce Springsteen’s “E-Street Band.” That this artist regularly compared to Norah Jones, Shawn Colvin and Rickie Lee Jones soon made her own way in the music world, she owes mainly to her great talent as a songwriter and to the beautiful solo albums she has recorded, including certainly also this new CD “Living Room”.
“Known as the songwriter for Emmylou Harris, Bonnie Raitt and Mary Black, etc., the Nashville based Jude Johnstone convinces once again on her new solo record “Living Room”, referring to the place where these newly penned songs were recorded. She was assisted by four male singers that provided lead vocals on a few songs, but the typical trademark of her great songwriting has remained 100% intact throughout the whole album.” – www.rootstime.be
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