Whins & Weather

Description

Whins & Weather is an album by the American singer and songwriter Beki Hemingway, independently released in Spetember 2017. The album was recorded by Jason Morris, Steve Watkins, and Todd Ayers and was co-produced by Conor Brady and Randy Kerkman. Mixed by Brady and Kerkman at Camden Recording Studios in Dublin, Ireland. Featuring Beki Hemingway on vocals and husband Randy Kerkman on guitar.

I remember discovering Beki Hemingway’s song «Sinsick» on a sampler CD back in the late 90s. I loved it and played it on my radio show. When Beki got in touch to say that she was coming to Belfast, I took a chance and booked her for a gig.

She duly arrived with her guitar toting husband Randy Kerkman. On her first evening my wife Janice invited her to sing for a Chaplaincy girls group in our front room. I remember standing outside the door listening to see what her voice was like. Was the risk worth it? And then… she sang… oh my goodness. What a voice!

Beki and Randy took a number of year out of music. Randy became a sheriff in Denver, Colorado. Then, their itchiness for adventure and inability to settle brought them to Wexford – well I did say adventure. Just as the music started to get its time again, cancer struck and Beki was going through surgery and radiation treatment. It has been a journey with a, thank God, healthy destination.

So, Whins and Weather has been written in a bit of a storm. «My World Is Out There» gets them travelling, «The Shape You Left Me In» and «Is This All» are about illness, Because is about the love, earthly and divine that gets us through it and «Thank You For The Rain» is the most joyous four minutes of thanksgiving you will hear inside or outside of Church in a very long time. Duke Special even makes a wee cameo in the wonderfully quirky finale «Tourist».

Whins and Weather is the music triumph for a couple who have conquered some of life’s most serious gales. Hemingway has found her Americana space and moved into it. She has never written a more stronger collection of songs. Kerkman has has never been a more driving and at the same sensitive musical companion.

Whins and Weather is a book of Psalms. There is doubt and hurt and faith and celebration. If Maria McKee had made the follow up to You Gotta Sin To Get Saved that we all wanted it might have sounded a whole lot like this! [Steve Stockman, Soul Surmise, September 2017]

> iTunes (https://music.apple.com/us/album/whins-and-weather/1292281400)

CD tracklist:

01. Two More Hills – 4:51
02. My World Is out There – 3:43
03. Is This All – 4:17
04. Anyone but You – 5:14
05. Not Excused – 4:39
06. You Sing This Song – 3:21
07. Thank You for the Rain – 2:42
08. The Shape You Left Me In – 3:44
09. Because – 2:51
10. Tourist (feat. Duke Special) – 4:29