Despite the breezy banjo-driven honky tonky opener Half Way Gone, this album is nowhere near as joyful and optimistic as the title suggests.
Jane Kramer says her second full-length release is for “anyone who has stared down the barrel of themselves and their failures and fears and scraped up against the bottom of their own capacity for hoping”.
Once part of all-female trio, the Barrel House Mamas, it is as a solo artist that Kramer has found her true voice. The ten tunes are originals apart from a cover of a Tom Petty's Down South.
" “I'm not great at making stuff up", she says, and credits Mary Gauthier as her song-writing hero and mentor.
Like Gautier, she documents the ways in which her life is no carnival yet still manages to retain a measure of resilience and hope. This spirit is best exemplified in Good Woman and Highways, Rivers & Scars, songs where she lays bare her faults without asking for tea or sympathy.
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Formerly based in Portland, Oregon, this album taps more into her roots in North Carolina’s music scene. Kramer was adamant that she wanted Asheville musicians and Appalachian instrumentation and this request bears fruits thanks to Michael Evers' elegant arrangements.
The New Orleans jazz-influenced Why’d I Do That Blues puts a brave face on her regrets while My Dusty Wings closes the album, as it began, on a resolutely upbeat note.
However, as with her first album, Break And Bloom, her best songs are those in which she confronts the downturns in her life head on.
Jane Kramer's website
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