MP3 Carsie Blanton - Idiot Heart

The album embodies Carsieâs playful take on a âSixties rock record,â showcasing her myriad influences and interests, blending jazz, blues, and pop with bucolic folk rock arrangements and her own inimitable persona.

10 MP3 Songs in this album (34:55) !
Related styles: Rock: Roots Rock, Pop: 60's Pop, Solo Female Artist

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Details:
âIf I had an all-encompassing rule for life, itâd be that you have to follow your heart.â Carsie Blanton says. âIt doesnât mean that everything it tells you is going to be smart, but you have to follow it anyway.â

Following her heart has worked out pretty well for Carsie, earning her widespread critical acclaim and a coast-to-coast fan following for her clever wordplay and indelible melodies. The remarkable new Idiot Heart represents the Philadelphia-based singer/songwriterâs finest work thus far, a panoramic collection of exuberant, expansive folk-pop, crafted with uncommon spirit and ingenuity. Songs such as âTogether Too Longâ and âBackboneâ are given breath by producer Oliver Woodâs warm, unaffected arrangements and Blantonâs remarkable vocal stylings, at turns coy and confident, sly and sensual. Idiot Heart reveals Carsie Blanton to be a preternaturally gifted storyteller whose extraordinary life experiences fuel her open, knowing lyricism, using finely etched characterizations and a deeply personal perspective to touch a truly universal chord.

âI feel like my strength as a lyricist is not poetry, itâs telling the truth,â she says. âI say the things that everybody wants to say but doesnât usually get to.

Carsie was surrounded by music while growing up in the Shenandoah Valley town of Luray, Virginia, instilling in her a lifelong love of the classic singer/songwriter canon. The Blantons advocated the educational philosophy known as unschooling, allowing Carsie to learn through natural life experiences as opposed to the traditional school curriculum.

âI was raised in a way that made it really easy for me to feel like itâs natural to go out of the box or do something out of the ordinary,â she says. âBecause of that Iâve been really comfortable living a creative life. Being a songwriter professionally was not that scary for me as a career choice. For me, it was like, well, this is just one more alternative lifestyle choice.â

Carsie took piano lessons at an early age but her true calling came to her while at summer camp. âI saw a teenage girl playing guitar and I just thought she was so awesome,â she says. âI wanted to be just like her so I picked up the guitar and started learning songs.â

It wasnât long before she began constructing her own, having already been a prolific poet and keeper of journals. As she put pen to paper, Carsie became focused on the sheer craft of songwriting, striving to work out the pure power of music.

âI got really obsessed with trying to figure them out,â she says. âLike, why is this song so moving? What is it about the story that does it for the listener? I was definitely focused on the craft from a really young age.â

Further inspiration came from such contemporary artists as Patty Griffin, Ani DiFranco, and Joan Osborne, as well as a burgeoning interest in jazz. She began with iconic singers like Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, and Nina Simone but soon went down âthe rabbit hole,â delving into the dazzling sounds of New Orleans via such masters as Louis Armstrong and Sidney Bechet.

âWhatâs always attracted me, to both folk music and jazz, is the soulfulness,â Carsie says. âThat personal quality really moves me and thatâs always been something Iâve sought out.â

At 16, Carsie packed up her songs and headed west to Eugene, Oregon where she moved into a group house comprised of other artists and musicians. Life there was lived on the extremely cheap. Blanton worked odd jobs like dog grooming, supplemented by dumpster diving and the kindness of strangers. Most importantly, her five years there served as a kind of college of musical knowledge. She started her first ever band, sang back-up in a touring funk unit, and discovered the wonderful world of swing dancing, an interest that flowed from her affection for traditional jazz.

âThe things I wanted to learn werenât available to me at home or at school so I had to go somewhere else in order to pursue my education,â she says.

In 2005, Carsie recorded and self-released her first CD, Ainât So Green, simply to share her music at shows and open mic nights. She relocated to Philadelphia the following year and was soon drawn into the City of Brotherly Loveâs thriving café community.

âThe thing thatâs really nice about Philly, as opposed to New York or L.A. or Nashville, is that itâs not an industry town,â she says. âPeople who live here are doing music for other reasons besides wanting to get famous. Itâs kind of an inspiring scene to be part of.â

Carsie began gigging frequently, acquiring a manager and more importantly, a fervent fanbase. She recorded and self-released a second album, 2009âs Buoy, this time mixing classic soul and R&B into her own idiosyncratic sound. She also started opening for other like-minded artists, including The Wood Brothers, with whom she formed somewhat of a mutual admiration society. In May 2011, Carsie reached out to the bandâs Oliver Wood to see if heâd be interested in producing her new record. He agreed and the two began doing pre-production via e-mail, exchanging songs and ideas through the spring. In July, they spent four days at a studio in Woodâs native Atlanta, with Wood serving as both producer and guitarist, accompanied by Carsieâs longtime bassist Joe Plowman, drummers Jano Rix (The Wood Brothers, Marc Broussard, Damien Marley) and Tyler Greenwell (Susan Tedeschi, Col. Bruce Hampton & The Codetalkers). Additional instrumentation and backing vocals were added in August, including contributions from banjo player Joe McGuinness.

âI wanted to have a band that was well-rehearsed and knew the songs and then cut everything live,â she says. âThereâs that quality of collaboration. You can tell that everyoneâs in the same room, you can tell that they collaborated on the songs.â

The album embodies Carsieâs playful take on a âSixties rock record,â showcasing her myriad influences and interests, blending jazz, blues, and pop with bucolic folk rock arrangements and her own inimitable persona.

âWhat I told Oliver is that I wanted to make a record that was like The Band meets Elvis Costello,â she says, âbut thatâs still me, a girl, whoâs young and has kind of a cute voice.â

The aesthetic focal point of Idiot Heart is Carsieâs longtime fascination with New Orleans, an ardor that has grown in recent years through her frequent travels to the city.

âI just fell in love with the city,â she says. âThereâs a darkness about New Orleans, a little bit of a gothic, morbid feeling. But at the same time, itâs all about celebration and sensuality. Thatâs the quality I tried to get into these songs, the juxtaposition of death with joy and pleasure.â

That concurrence of sex and mortality inspired much of Idiot Heart with songs like âSmoke Alarmâ â described by Carsie as âa feel good anthem about the fact that everyoneâs going to dieâ â and âLittle Deathâ abound with erotic, anatomical imagery and complex ideas.

âThat connection was the spark that lit up all these songs,â Carsie says. âThe concept came to me about a year ago and then I started seeing it everywhere: la petit morte, the femme fatale, âlooks that kill,â incubi and succubi, vampires⦠all these ideas imply that there is a relationship between sex and death. I think the relationship is that people feel most alive during sex, and in some deep part of our brain, it reminds us that one day we wonât be.â

Carsie has mastered her craft the old-fashioned way, by playing over a hundred shows a year both as headliner and as support to such artists as Joan Osborne, John Oates, David Wilcox, Jimmy Webb, and Loudon Wainwright III. In addition, sheâs toured Europe, performed on NPRâs famed Mountain Stage, and taken part in stage productions of Anaïs Mitchellâs acclaimed Hadestown: A Folk Opera.

âTraveling all the time is a great way to take in new information,â she says. âYouâre always on an adventure, meeting new people and getting the stories of their lives. Itâs the best way for me to continue to get inspired about people.â

Carsie is approaching the release of Idiot Heart from the same clear-cut stance that she tackles her life and music. Having funded the project by raising $30,000 from fans, she now plans to simply bestow the record upon her audience, inviting them to use Quidplayer to pay what they like for downloads or physical CDs.

âMy true calling as an artist is to share,â she says. âWhat I actually want to do is make beautiful music and then give it to everyone, regardless of what they give me back. My number one goal is for people to hear it, and I have to trust that Iâll be taken care of.â

Blessed with a distinctive voice â both as performer and songwriter â and an unfettered passion for making music, Carsie Blanton is truly something special, a marvelously original artist who is as forthright as she is ambitious.

âThis is just the only way I know how to be,â she says. âBeing honest and direct is in my blood. Itâs not something I can stop doing, really.â