Description
Providence is the seventh solo album by the American singer, songwriter, session musician and producer, Phil Madeira, funded by a PledgeMusic campaign and independently released by Madeira on Mercyland Records in April 2018 (official release date April 6, though shipped to campaign backers in early February). The album was recorded at Sound Emporium Studios in Nashville, Tennessee.
Comprised of 10 songs, ‘Providence’ gives listeners a closer look at Phil Madeira’s life and the inner conflict of being raised in New England yet feeling an undeniable attraction to the music of the South. In Madeira’s own words, “It’s an album full of love songs to where I’m from and where I’ve come to.” Songs like «Rich Man’s Town» reflect on his childhood in Barrington, a suburb of Providence, Rhode Island. Others like «Dearest Companion» with the words “We’re Dixon and Mason, lost in translation/ If love ain’t frustration, I don’t know what is,” make the connection between where he was raised and Nashville, his home of over 30 years.
The record straddles Madeira’s iconic Americana style and jazz, more specifically, a sixties jazz piano style. Made at Nashville’s Sound Emporium Studios, the live album features “three quarters” of The Red Dirt Boys, with Chris Donahue on bass, Brian Owens on drums, and Madeira providing lead vocals and piano. Will Kimbrough (also a Red Dirt Boy) lends guitar work on one songs, and jazz icon John Scofield adds guitar to another. Touches of brass and reeds round out the sound, but it all hinges on the trio of Madeira, Donohue, and Owens.
I have been a fan of Phil Madeira’s for over twenty years. And I don’t mean his songrwriting with the likes of the The Civil Wars that he won a Grammy with, or the two Mercyland records of hymns for everybody, or his production of tribute records to Paul McCartney and Mark Heard or his membership of Emmylou Harris’s The Red Dirt Boys. No, I mean Madeira’s very own work. Off Kilter was a beautifully crafted mood piece that had traces of Daniel Lanois.
There was a sixteen year gap in madeira solo records between 1999 and 2015 but the glut of his songs got finally released over three records PM, Motorcycle and Original Sinner. Indeed a song called Church that Phil recorded for a session on my radio show back in 1999 finally gets a release on Motorcycle.
Though all three of those recent albums are worth checking out Providence has had particular attention, even making Rolling Stone. It is rather a departure for Madeira. Everything until now has been very guitar orientated while Providence is piano driven. And I mean driven. These songs rattle along like a man on the Highway from Rhode Island to Nashville and back. Which is a perfect music backdrop to songs that go back to Madeira’s childhood and formative years before he headed to Nashville to follow his dream.
Lyrically this a beautifully autobiographical record. Barrington is about the area of Providence that Phil spent much of his childhood in, as does Rich Man’s Town. Crescent Park was a forbidden amusement park nearby. We even go further back to Gothenburg where his ancestors came from – immigrants and a political hit in the subtlety. The fact that Madeira is almost falling back in love with his home spaces rather than needing catharsis from some scars he escaped from make sit a joyous ride.
Phil Madeira as a jazz piano man. Who’d have thought? Is there anything this man cannot do musically. It’s Randy Newman meeting Mose Allison. It tasteful and in some ways that word tasteful maybe best describes everything Madeira touches. [Steve Stockman, Soul Surmise, 27/04/2018]
> Apple Music (https://music.apple.com/us/album/providence/1365317453)
CD tracklist:
01. Wicked Job – 6:28
02. A Rhode Island Yankee on Jefferson Davis Court – 3:18
03. Dearest Companion – 3:07
04. Back in the Ocean State – 4:15
05. Barrington – 4:05
06. Crescent Park – 4:31
07. Rich Man’s Town – 5:38
08. Wide Eyed Dream – 2:38
09. Native Son – 4:40
10. Gothenburg – 3:10
Note: Released on both 12-inch vinyl LP and CD. Available at Bandcamp: https://philmadeira.bandcamp.com/album/providence
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