Today, Massachusetts-based singer-songwriter Sandy Bailey has unveiled “Get The Message Through,” the lead single from Daughter Of Abraham, her first LP with Red Parlor Records, set for release on August 18th.
“The latest single from Sandy Bailey – a soft-country power ballad about mortality and heartbreak and everyday existentialism – is the kind of song that country music was built on,” says Holler in their premiere.“Delivered with a faux breeziness, it’s both painfully real and bleakly comical. Her almost throwaway, conversational delivery making the lines land even harder as she ponders her grown up children leaving home, while the song slowly spirals towards a deeper truth about how disconnected and isolated we become from each other as adults….It’s like if an AI music generator had been tasked to come up with a Carole King song that perfectly tapped into the futility of doom scrolling and the existential dread of the pre-apocalypse.”
“A headline caught my eye in The Wall Street Journal that read ‘Moms in Middle Age: Rarely Alone, Often Online and Increasingly Lonely,’” Bailey told Holler. “I thought about my love/hate relationship with social media and wrote a song about the irony of the current environment that we live in, where we are more connected than ever through the internet but also lonelier than ever.”
For the video, Bailey put a team together from the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. “We knew we wanted the video to have a throwback 70’s feel,” Bailey explained to Holler. “In going through a bunch of vintage stock footage for ideas, the director Sofi Taylor was inspired by a video of a clean, empty kitchen. The contrast of a once vibrant house now unlived in was our inspiration for showing change, loneliness, and the passage of time.”
After Bailey wrote the song, she entered it in NPR’s Tiny Desk Contest on a whim. “Then a few days later I took it down to Nashville for a workshop with Mary Gauthier. She gave me advice on how I could improve a few things and so I took it home and rewrote it and recorded it to put on the album,” Bailey told Holler. “Then several months later I learned that WBUR (the Boston chapter of NPR) selected my original version as one of the 21 best Tiny Desk entries in Massachusetts.”
The depth of Bailey’s songwriting stems from her life and identity as a biracial woman and single mother who abandoned a Pentecostal upbringing in favor of a life of art-making and rock n’ roll. Her sound has often been compared to acts like Norah Jones, Patsy Cline, and Susan Tedeschi, though the upcoming 10-song collection, expertly produced by Bailey, showcases her bolder, more idiosyncratic attention to detail.
Each of the profound, candid tracks on Daughter Of Abraham incorporates elements of gospel, blues, soul, and classic Americana. The album includes performances by acclaimed musicians; guitarist Ryan Hommel (Amos Lee), bassist and engineer Marc Seedorf (Dinosaur JR, Lou Barlow), and drummer Don McAulay (The Rolling Stones, Neil Young) as well as neighbors, parents, coworkers, and even Bailey’s kids.
It’s an alluringly moody, genre-defying album, alternating in tone between the laid-back cool of Bonnie Raitt and the fire of Joni Mitchell, tempered with moments of genuine, heartbreaking vulnerability. Daughter Of Abraham is the sound of a working-class American woman living her most authentic life. The album is available for pre-save and pre-order HERE. Be sure to follow Sandy Bailey via the links below for the latest news and updates.
You can connect with Sandy Bailey on website sandybaileymusic.com, Facebook @Sandy Bailey Music, Instagram @sandybaileymusic, YouTube @SandyBaileyMusic and Spotify @Sandy Bailey
