Sandy Bailey
Northampton, Massachusetts, United States | SELF
Music
Press
'A sweet and soulful blend...
...of Americana, gospel and jazz, complete with intricate vocal harmonies, piano and a minimalist production style," sums up CD Baby of Sandy Bailey's debut album, "Raven's Flesh."
The Valley is loaded with musical talent, and stellar newcomers keep popping up, among whom this Northampton vocalist/songwriter/pianist must surely count. Part of a musical family- she often performs with her father, Jim, and siblings, Sharon and Eric - Bailey grew up singing gospel music to church congregations and listening to bluegrass on the radio, although it wasn't until early adulthood that she began to develop her own compositional and performance style, melding folk, gospel, bluegrass and blues into a fresh but familiar sound that has led to evocations of Maria Muldaur, Norah Jones and Patty Griffin.
Recorded in the Pushkin Gallery, a converted historic bank in Greenfield, Bailey's CD serves to showcase a fully integrated talent, including a strong, emotive voice, a poetic lyric-writing ability, a moody sense of melody and a natural grace at the keyboard. - The Daily Hampshire Gazette
'A sweet and soulful blend...
...of Americana, gospel and jazz, complete with intricate vocal harmonies, piano and a minimalist production style," sums up CD Baby of Sandy Bailey's debut album, "Raven's Flesh."
The Valley is loaded with musical talent, and stellar newcomers keep popping up, among whom this Northampton vocalist/songwriter/pianist must surely count. Part of a musical family- she often performs with her father, Jim, and siblings, Sharon and Eric - Bailey grew up singing gospel music to church congregations and listening to bluegrass on the radio, although it wasn't until early adulthood that she began to develop her own compositional and performance style, melding folk, gospel, bluegrass and blues into a fresh but familiar sound that has led to evocations of Maria Muldaur, Norah Jones and Patty Griffin.
Recorded in the Pushkin Gallery, a converted historic bank in Greenfield, Bailey's CD serves to showcase a fully integrated talent, including a strong, emotive voice, a poetic lyric-writing ability, a moody sense of melody and a natural grace at the keyboard. - The Daily Hampshire Gazette
Discography
Raven's Flesh - 2010
Photos
Bio
Having spent her formative years singing gospel music to church congregations, Sandy Bailey's writing style and vocal delivery are rich with the influences of her soulful upbringing. The Daily Hampshire Gazette praises Bailey as "a fully integrated talent, including a strong, emotive voice, a poetic lyric-writing ability, a moody sense of melody and a natural grace at the keyboard."
Bailey grew up in a musical household and she continues to sing with her father, Jim Bailey, and siblings, Sharon and Eric, at many folk venues and charity events around New England. She has been writing songs and playing piano since she was a small child, teaching her sister the harmony vocals and multi-tracking her songs on a tape recorder. It wasn't until 2006, when she had the first of her own two children, that she became serious about songwriting and pursuing a career in music. She remembers, “writing songs became my outlet and my way of sorting through my own character flaws to try to be a better person for my children. Eventually I had enough to fill a record.”
Her debut album, “Raven’s Flesh” was engineered by Justin Pizzoferrato in an old bank-turned-art-gallery with a bare-bones production style that allows the purity of the vocals and the intricacy of the harmonies to shine through. The record was produced by her close friend and piano teacher, Jeff D'Antona, who infused Bailey's soulful originals with his jazz influence, creating a jazz/folk/gospel feel in the vein of Norah Jones or Maria Muldaur. The overall tone of the recording is roomy and mellow, but listen closely: Sandy Bailey’s songs are much like the lyrics in her original tune “Velvet House”--“But I'm looking good/ from the outside/ I'll never tell a single soul/ that I'm dying on the inside.” Her compositions have a quiet fire. The sweetness of the melodies often betray her lyrics beautifully--lyrics that lament lost time and lost love, that brood from an inner dismantling.
Bailey has just finished recording her sophomore album at her home in Massachusetts. As a symbol of the honest place from which her songs are written and in the spirit of a sixties soul recording, the album was tracked mostly live, even down to the final vocal tracks, which have no comps or overdubs. The result is the feeling of sitting in a room with a killer band and a vocalist who is singing her heart out. The record was produced by Ryan Hommel (producer and guitar player for Grammy ® nominated artist Seth Glier) and engineered by Mikhail Pivovarov of Carriage House Studios in Connecticut. The album is expected to be released by January of 2013.
As a testament to Bailey's diversity and proficiency as a songwriter, her new album is in many ways drastically different from her first: less jazz, more soul, and an impressive presentation of her power as a vocalist. The tracks range from epic gospel-soul to alt-country to moody Fiona Apple-meets-Dark Dark Dark. Yet all of the songs posses the common thread of Bailey's rip-your-heart-out vocals and her emotional confessions of life experience.
Since the release of “Raven's Flesh” in 2010, Bailey has been playing shows from Portland, Maine to New York City and has landed opening spots for Lucy Kaplansky, Winterpills and Eilen Jewell. “Raven's Flesh” is receiving airplay on Northampton’s WRSI and Pandora.
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