Jill King

Jill King
www.jillking.com

Jill King doesn’t just sing a song, she inhabits it, pouring her heart and soul into every note. On her new album, RAIN ON FIRE (Foundher Records; April 6, 2010), King pushes the limits with inspired performances that leave an indelible impression, even after a single listen. She moans the blues with a wrenching growl, screams like an unruly woman on a late-night bender, sighs like a lover whispering an early-morning lullaby and belts out rockers with the ferocity of a revival tent preacher. “I grew up in a small Southern town with black and white, right and wrong, and heaven and hell always clashing,” King says. “My desire to reconcile those experiences is what ties the songs on RAIN ON FIRE together.”

RAIN ON FIRE covers a lot of ground, drawing from the deep Southern well of blues, rock, pop, country, jazz, R&B and folk. King deftly puts them together to create her own easily identifiable but hard to define style. “When I started working on this album, songs came flowing out of me,” King says. “I wrote constantly for six months, almost as if I were channeling [the songs]. I listened to what was coming from my heart and let the music take me where it wanted me to go.”

The writing was an emotional experience, intensified by the deaths of Bruce Holloway, one of her co-writers, and Miss Glenda, the childhood mentor King identifies as a second mother. “Making the album helped me to come to terms with all that loss and made me consider the unresolved conflicts in my life and the lives of my friends,” she says. “I looked at the hard times that happened to me, and because of me, and let the music heal me. Salvation hits you when you least expect it. It can come from anyone you meet, as well as your higher power.”

To realize her musical vision, King worked with Australian producer and guitarist Michael Flanders (Garrison Star, Kane Harrison, Bobkatz). “The second I saw Michael play, I knew he would get the sounds I was hearing in my head onto the album,” King says. “When we met, we hit it off and it’s been fantastic. Mike has a thick Aussie accent and I have a thick Southern accent, but we understand each other musically. We have a lot of the same ideas and called on each other to make the music as good as it could be.”

The music on RAIN ON FIRE is very good indeed. The album opens with two ironic love songs. “Beautiful World” is an optimistic tune that doesn’t ignore love’s difficulties before finding a hopeful resolution. Flanders provides a chiming guitar hook for it. The bluesy folk-pop of “California” nods to the singer-songwriter vibe of the 1970s, with a laid-back rhythm track and King’s mellow vocal.

King ups the emotional ante with “Undertow,” generating sizzling erotic heat without being explicit. The song opens with an ominous guitar line from Flanders that complements King’s impressive vocal, a wrenching balance of vulnerability and desire. The gritty, swampy blues of “Mark on Me” is introduced by a few words from Steven Johnson, grandson of blues legend Robert Johnson, and incorporates elements of Robert Johnson’s “Crossroad Blues” and a rap by V. Mayz. King wrestles with the devil as she sings of the struggle between heaven and hell, with a soulful power that’s enhanced by the backing of a female gospel trio.

King takes listeners inside a revival tent for “16 Elephants,” a vaguely unsettling song of salvation with a carnival-like atmosphere enhanced by a Hammond B3. The track builds slowly with King’s vocal climbing to a sanctified wail of thanksgiving. “God My Father” addresses the ambivalent feelings that can color one’s perception of religion and family relationships. It rides a sinister swampy groove, with one foot in heaven and one in hell, with King’s chilling vocal full of understated emotion.

Other winners include “Didn’t You Know,” a bittersweet song of first love with an aching lyric and one of King’s most wistful vocals; “Taking Me Back,” a Latin-flavored exploration of true love’s rocky road, with subtle Norteño accordion and Flanders’ guitar providing Flamenco accents; and the title track, an unrequited love song that rides a funky beat with a sexy, uplifting chorus augmented by a lush string quartet.

King and Flanders laid down the rhythm tracks at Austin’s Congress House with engineer Mark Hallman and then added the ear candy and King’s vocals at a leisurely pace to create the set’s gripping, expansive sound. “The process was full of serendipity and wonderful coincidences, including our meeting with Robert Johnson’s grandson, Steven,” King says. “This isn’t a country album or a pop album, although I know people will label it. It’s just what was in my heart, captured as honestly as possible. We invited all the players to find their own space in the music, and they did. It was a great process.”

HISTORY
Singer-songwriter-producer-guitarist King was born and raised in the small town of Arab, Ala. She want