29
Jun
2004
A little time off can do wonders for an artist.
Before singer Reneé Austin gave up performing music in 1999, she felt in a bit of a rut, stuck performing blues material that really wasn't her. She had an album, Dancin' with Mr. Blue, but that alone didn't provide enough material for a show.
"In the club scene, you have three hours to fill," she said. "You're trying to fill with what the people want."
That changed after she returned to playing in 2001. "When I came back, I focused less on what would be hugely popular and started to do things I liked," she said. She incorporated a horn section and started singing some soul - "adding some elements I hadn't done before," she said.
The change paid dividends. "I really seemed to be myself more on stage," she said. Austin said she also feels like she's a stronger writer now - technically improved and "better able to say what I feel."
And you can hear all that on her Sweet Talk record, released late last year on Blind Pig. It is clearly a blues album, but it's more of a blues blend. "Pretend We Never Met," a duet ballad with Delbert McClinton, would be - and is - at home on radio stations in a variety of formats. "Bottom of a Heart" has gospel-style backing vocals, and "Unraveling" is more a jazz song than anything with its horn solo.
This stretching sounds natural for Austin. While adept at the blues, her voice is simply too strong to be contained by just one genre. With the huskiness and soul of Melissa Etheridge and Tina Turner, Austin has some serious pipes, and she uses them well. The voice doesn't merely exist for showing off its incredible range; it's an amazingly expressive instrument.
Austin doesn't feel like she's betraying the blues but mixing them with other elements. "Every 10 years the genre changes," she said. "It has to breathe. It has to grow." Although she grew up in Texas, Austin now lives in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, and her blues as a result have a funkier feel. She also said that her individuality is something she doesn't want to sacrifice for sales. "I didn't want to be the next somebody else," she said.
Sweet Talk has certainly generated some buzz for Austin, and some airplay beyond blues shows. "We're getting airplay on rock, country, roots, AAA," she said.
That is in part a choice, she said: "I write more regular songwriting" than blues - with verses, choruses, and bridges. And as a writer, Austin has some wicked wit. "Bury the Hatchet" sounds like a pretty standard blues title, but with one couplet Austin transforms it: "I'm gonna bury the hatchet, baby / But you don't want to know where."
After working as a regional artist in Minnesota from 1997 to 1999, Austin took a couple years off from music, working as a massage therapist and trying to reduce her debt. "I didn't know if I'd play again," she said. It wasn't exactly a clean break. "I surrounded myself with music, but I didn't want to perform," she said.
In late summer 2001, though, "I started getting antsy," she said. When she visited clubs, she critiqued other performers. The urge was back. "It was just dormant for a while," she said. Music is "such a part of what I'm gifted for, I couldn't stay away for too long."
After her hiatus, she played her first show the week before the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and drew a good crowd of 150 people. After that, "we couldn't get anybody in clubs" for a year, she said.
Eventually, though, people started coming back. "It helps people heal," she said. "People seem to gather around blues music. ... It's their way of getting away from reality for a little bit."
She signed a deal with Blind Pig in 2003 and opened for McClinton, and that began the process of changing Austin from a regional artist to one with a national audience. Working with McClinton - one of her idols - on the new record was something special. It's not the icing, she said, but "the birthday candle."
The record earned her a nomination for a W.C. Handy award, which Austin said she knew she was "too new" to win. But she was still honored, in part because artists she respects such as McClinton and Jonny Lang have never even been nominated.
Austin plans to start work on a new record soon, and said she has a lot of material with which to work from her hiatus. And she's thankful that Blind Pig seems content with having Reneé Austin, instead of somebody it can mold into somebody else: "They have really let me be me."
"In the club scene, you have three hours to fill," she said. "You're trying to fill with what the people want."
That changed after she returned to playing in 2001. "When I came back, I focused less on what would be hugely popular and started to do things I liked," she said. She incorporated a horn section and started singing some soul - "adding some elements I hadn't done before," she said.
The change paid dividends. "I really seemed to be myself more on stage," she said. Austin said she also feels like she's a stronger writer now - technically improved and "better able to say what I feel."
And you can hear all that on her Sweet Talk record, released late last year on Blind Pig. It is clearly a blues album, but it's more of a blues blend. "Pretend We Never Met," a duet ballad with Delbert McClinton, would be - and is - at home on radio stations in a variety of formats. "Bottom of a Heart" has gospel-style backing vocals, and "Unraveling" is more a jazz song than anything with its horn solo.
This stretching sounds natural for Austin. While adept at the blues, her voice is simply too strong to be contained by just one genre. With the huskiness and soul of Melissa Etheridge and Tina Turner, Austin has some serious pipes, and she uses them well. The voice doesn't merely exist for showing off its incredible range; it's an amazingly expressive instrument.
Austin doesn't feel like she's betraying the blues but mixing them with other elements. "Every 10 years the genre changes," she said. "It has to breathe. It has to grow." Although she grew up in Texas, Austin now lives in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, and her blues as a result have a funkier feel. She also said that her individuality is something she doesn't want to sacrifice for sales. "I didn't want to be the next somebody else," she said.
Sweet Talk has certainly generated some buzz for Austin, and some airplay beyond blues shows. "We're getting airplay on rock, country, roots, AAA," she said.
That is in part a choice, she said: "I write more regular songwriting" than blues - with verses, choruses, and bridges. And as a writer, Austin has some wicked wit. "Bury the Hatchet" sounds like a pretty standard blues title, but with one couplet Austin transforms it: "I'm gonna bury the hatchet, baby / But you don't want to know where."
After working as a regional artist in Minnesota from 1997 to 1999, Austin took a couple years off from music, working as a massage therapist and trying to reduce her debt. "I didn't know if I'd play again," she said. It wasn't exactly a clean break. "I surrounded myself with music, but I didn't want to perform," she said.
In late summer 2001, though, "I started getting antsy," she said. When she visited clubs, she critiqued other performers. The urge was back. "It was just dormant for a while," she said. Music is "such a part of what I'm gifted for, I couldn't stay away for too long."
After her hiatus, she played her first show the week before the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and drew a good crowd of 150 people. After that, "we couldn't get anybody in clubs" for a year, she said.
Eventually, though, people started coming back. "It helps people heal," she said. "People seem to gather around blues music. ... It's their way of getting away from reality for a little bit."
She signed a deal with Blind Pig in 2003 and opened for McClinton, and that began the process of changing Austin from a regional artist to one with a national audience. Working with McClinton - one of her idols - on the new record was something special. It's not the icing, she said, but "the birthday candle."
The record earned her a nomination for a W.C. Handy award, which Austin said she knew she was "too new" to win. But she was still honored, in part because artists she respects such as McClinton and Jonny Lang have never even been nominated.
Austin plans to start work on a new record soon, and said she has a lot of material with which to work from her hiatus. And she's thankful that Blind Pig seems content with having Reneé Austin, instead of somebody it can mold into somebody else: "They have really let me be me."
