Angela Easterling

There's an innocence in her voice which matches the blond hair and blue eyes perfectly. But there's also an old head on young shoulders in her writing and on some of these tracks she shows that underneath there's a burning ambition to not be good, but to be great. On songs such as 'Better' there are whispers of an early Emily Saliers in delivery and song style which should be compliment enough.


Although this is just the second full length release there's a personal honesty and splash of life that jumps out of you - helped I'm sure by the band of experienced helpers that add to this well crafted sound. Produced by Will Kimbrough, nothing stands out above her voice but adds balance in the perfect amount. And when she does fall foul of the Nashville clique its done on her terms, on her songs.

'Blacktop Road' could be sung by any New Country Gal, but is not a glorification of life on the road or progress but a pissy, snarling indictment of how this progress destroys memory and lives - think of a new country 'Big Yellow Taxi'. 'American ID' is likewise not afraid of distancing itself from insularity within the good ol' US of A and treats difference as a celebration. 'The Picture' deals with a daughter discovering a photograph of a lynching in the effects of her god-fearing father and doesn't pull any punches in condemnation. It's twin, 'Field of Sorrow' treads a delicate path, dealing with a family separation and feels strangely like Robbie Robertsons wonderful 'Twilight'. 'Big Wide World' is a rollicking hoedown, 'Stars over the Prairie' a delicately delivered ballad written by her grandfather which squares the circle perfectly. The dual treatment on 'One Microphone' and it's French buddy 'Un Microphone' is charming and I'm sure has its own story.


These songs are about place, about family, about belonging and in opposition as much about rebellion, not fitting in, leaving and growth. There have been many false dawns over the years about someone with a bit of guile and craft breaking into the mainstream on their own terms - maybe, just maybe, she has a chance.

Date review added: Tuesday, September 08, 2009

Reviewer: Andrew Williams

http://www.americana-uk.com - Andrew Williams

Review in Vintage Guitar Magazine Oct.09 issue

by Steven Stone

If Steve Earle was reborn as a girl, he’d very likely be Angela Easterling. And Blacktop Road is her Guitar Town . She comes surging out of the chute like a spurred bronco, full of sideways kicks, bucking with all the compressed energy of a coiled steel spring.

Blacktop Road is Easterling’s second solo release. She enlisted producer Will Kimbrough, who brought his roots sensibilities, along with guitar and mandolin chops. Anyone with a taste for twang will appreciate Kimbrough’s judicial use of old-fashioned plate reverb.

Several of the strongest songs on Blacktop Road address Easterling’s family history. Their family farm, settled in 1791, was split in two by a road that the state graciously named after them. The title song examines her less-than-positive view of the proceedings. Instead of a plaintive wail, the tune rocks with the compressed bile reminiscent of Earle’s “Copperhead Road”. The only cover, Neil Young’s “Helpless”, demonstrates Easterling’s ability to take even a well-known and often-covered tune and give it her own special treatment. Neil, eat your heart out…

Other tunes, such as “The Picture”, examine the emotional baggage of being a white Southerner with a tarnished family history in the area of race relations. Easterling’s ambivalence toward her family’s past makes for poignant songwriting. But her penetrating lyrics would only be political polemic without her enticing melodies. Her “Field of Sorrow” draws from a gospel tradition, while “One Microphone” uses jug-band swing and swagger to get its point across. Easterling’s thorough grounding in traditional melodies and song structures supply her tunes with strong foundations so they sound familiar without being boring. - by Steven Stone

Ten reasons to listen to Angela Easterling:
by Michael Bialas, blogcritics.org, 8-3-09

1. This is a road trip worth taking
BlackTop Road, Easterling’s second album (not to be confused with “BlackTop Road,” the single), doesn’t fall conveniently into any one category, embracing roots rock and comfy country while adding elements of pure pop and righteous folk. There are expressions of sadness (“Field of Sorrow”), frustration (a rousing “Big Wide World”) and resentment (“The Picture”). But it also captures what the most endearing moments of a warm family reunion at her longtime South Carolina home might feel like. Eleven of the 13 songs were written by Easterling, yet she reached back into her proud heritage to update her great-grandfather’s “Stars Over the Prairie.” And she also pays her respects to another familial patriarch in A.P. Carter’s Blues,” where she’s haunted by the spirit of one of country music’s founding fathers after visiting his grave.

2. She’s an all-Americana girl ...
Easterling will be one of the showcase artists at the 2009 Americana Music Festival to be held September 16-19 at five downtown Nashville venues. She’s in pretty good company, too, with Asleep at the Wheel, Cross Canadian Ragweed and Marty Stuart among a long list of performers.

3. ... and Roger McGuinn’s latest “Sweetheart”
The jingle-jangle guitarist and founder of the legendary Byrds made Easterling’s opening song, “American I.D.,” one of his choice cuts on a recent BBC radio show and went on to call her “a bright shining star on the country/folk/alt.music horizon!” and said BlackTop Road (De L’Est Music) “brought me back to the time the Byrds recorded Sweetheart of the Rodeo – tradition meets youthful exuberance!”

4. She sounds like ...
Well, take your pick. Fellow Carolinian (from the North side, though) Tift Merritt would be a good place to start, particularly on the wistful “One Microphone.” After a breakup, “those old happy chords sound so blue,” sings Easterling, who also provides a French version as a bonus track. But Angela’s angelic voice on “Better” and the romantic “Birmingham” also bring to mind Nina Gordon, while there’s a hint of feisty Miranda Lambert on the spirited “BlackTop Road.” That’s covering a lot of ground and range.

5. There’s an inner Steve Earle just itching to get out
“BlackTop Road,” the single (not to confused with BlackTop Road, the album) should be the perfect companion piece to Earle’s “Copperhead Road” on the Hardcore Troubadour’s show for Sirius’ Outlaw Country channel. On her personal protest song, an angry Easterling verbally kicks ass as some South Carolina land in her family since the late 18th century is being grabbed by the state for development. With verses like “We cried, ‘This can’t happen in the USA!’ / They said, ‘You’d better shut up or we’ll take your farm away’ ” the song and the singer seem destined for a spot in FarmAid.

6. When’s she not writing records ...
An excerpt of a letter this “lifelong Democrat” wrote to Rolling Stone regarding an article titled “The Death Tax’ Scam” was printed in a recent issue, denouncing the inheritance tax and how it’s affecting not-so-wealthy property owners everywhere. Easterling’s eloquent prose is heartfelt, even in sentences RS leaves out: “I believe the community is a better place with the historical legacy, old-growth trees and open land preserved, rather than just another Walmart or gas station in its place.”

7. Then there’s that tweet comedic touch
On Twitter, Easterling took South Carolina scandalous governor Mark Sanford to task even before Letterman and Conan had punch lines prepared for their monologues. Some samples:
• This is a great day for our state! SC just pulled ahead of TX and AK in the most embarrassing Governor competition!
12:56 PM Jun 24th from web
• Haha, Sanford didn't want Obama's stimulus package because he was too busy delivering his own stimulus pkg in Argentina!
12:40 PM Jun 24th from web

Easterling also recently posted this twitpic taken of her with Earle, commenting, I have to laugh b/c we both look so jolly and both sing about such miserable stuff, LOL :)

8. Who’s her “Daddy”?
Brilliant guitarist Will Kimbrough has worked with everyone from Rodney Crowell to Jimmy Buffett to Allison Moorer, and currently runs a band with Tommy Womack called Daddy. He and Easterling aren’t really related, but the Alabaman produced her album and plays just about everything on it, including mandolin, banjo, dobro, piano and, of course, acoustic and electric guitars. Easterling adds acoustic guitar throughout while accomplished musicians such as Fats Kaplin (fiddle, accordion, among others), Al Perkins (pedal steel) and Anne McCue (lead guitar on “BlackTop Road,” lap steel) are also major players in this well-rounded instrumental cast.

9. Young love for Neil Young
Covering the Canadian who made country cool must be a prerequisite for up-and-coming musicians seeking to graduate with honors from the school of songwriting. Fortunately, Easterling’s rendition of “Helpless” isn’t overproduced, relying mainly on her plaintive vocals and a solid bass line. It fits right in with other recent low-key rendition’s of Young classics performed by Holly Williams (“Birds”) and the Cowboy Junkies (“Don’t Let It Bring You Down”).

10. She’s mad about Mad Men
The terrific Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning television show about ad men, their wives and their often miserable lives set in New York City during the stylish Sixties returns for its third season on August 16, and Easterling wants to be on it. She’s urging fans to choose her during an open casting call at amctv.com that runs until August 11.

If anybody deserves to go back in time, it’s this sweet Southern bella donna. So stop, look and listen up. If you want to make your vote count, just pretend you’re picking the next Americana idol.

http://blogcritics.org/music/article/music-review-angela-easterling-blacktop-road/ - Michael Bialas

Great music from Angela Easterling
By Rick Cornell, July 2009 Country Standard Time

Album: BlackTop Road

Home: Greenville, SC

Musical Influences: Emmylou Harris, Johnny Cash, Indigo Girls, Neil Young, the Carter Family, Judy Garland

Bio: Angela Easterling first left her South Carolina home to attend college in Boston and later for a couple-of-year stint in Los Angeles, but she's back and living not far from the family farm located in Greer. "We always go out and explore, and we always come back," Easterling says of her family, adding with a laugh. "Then we leave again but keep coming back."

On her most recent return, Easterling thought she was coming back only temporarily, but she's ended up making the Greenville area her base of operations. "If there's anyplace in this world where I can call home," she says, "it's that land in Greer."

And it's that piece of land that's at the heart of Easterling's second album, "BlackTop Road," its title track telling the story of the family farm and its struggle again "progress" manifested in pavement. There are other personal moments on the album, whether firsthand (A.P. Carter Blues was inspired by a trip to the titular patriarch's grave, while Stars Over the Prairie revisits a song written by her great-grandfather in the '40s) or borrowed (The Picture details a harrowing discovery a daughter makes after the death of her father). And in the voice of Easterling and the hands of her and producer Will Kimbrough - along with top-flight guests like Ken Coomer, Dave Jacques, Fats Kaplin, Anne McCue and Al Perkins - the songs get the loving, and often rocking, treatment they deserve.

CST's Take: Lovely (and theater-trained) vocals, penetrating songs, and a restless heart that always finds its way back home with stories to tell.

Country Standard Time: I hear a strong sense of place in your songs, whether it's cities like Copenhagen, Birmingham, Nashville, and L.A., or it's the mountains or a farm. Can you talk about that aspect of your songwriting?
Angela Easterling: I've been spending a lot of time these days on the road, so a lot of these are coming from my own specific journeys and specific experiences. There's the specific experience I had in Copenhagen (American I.D.). I wrote that song, Just Like Flying, on the plane from Nashville to L.A. So some of those are just literal and specific. Birmingham, I have to confess, was not. That song I wrote about coming back home to where I'm from, which is Greenville, S.C., but it just didn't sound very good. (laughs) So I chose Birmingham. I don't know if I've ever even been to Birmingham. I hope that doesn't ruin the experience of listening to the song, but Birmingham sounded a lot more evocative....The song about our farm, that's very specific too. That song is about our farm; it's a real place, and it's about what my family has been going through. The picture on the cover of my CD was taken out in front of our farm, in the road that I wrote BlackTop Road about.

CST: There's also a strong sense of character, but it's not coming from story songs in the traditional sense. It really comes from first person, although you're not always the "I" that's in the song. How tough is writing from that perspective? I'm thinking about The Picture in particular, an especially powerful song.
AE: Thank you. Well, that song I felt like it had to be first person even though it's not from my point of view. I felt like it had to be first person to be meaningful, to be powerful. I felt like if I was talking about someone else and her father, it wouldn't hit with the same amount of emotional gravity of the situation. With that song, the idea of saying "her" or "her father" or making it not in the first person, that was never even an option. From the moment I had the idea to do that song, I knew it had to be first person. The same with Field of Sorrow, which is another first-person song, from the point of view of a dead girl looking back at her family. I thought that was the same kind of thing, giving the song an emotional gravity, an emotional weight, to make it more personal.

CST: Was The Picture based on something you read or heard? I swear I read an account a couple years ago about a woman who found letters in her attic that revealed her father had been a member of the Ku Klux Klan, but I couldn't find it when I looked today.
AE: Oh wow. Just in general, my aunt told me a story of a friend of hers whose father had passed, and she'd found some things like that. So, that's what started my brain to working. The concept was something that I'd been wanting to write about for years, but I hadn't really found a way inside it. I hadn't really found an angle. I wanted to write about these after-effects of our history, how it still affects us to this day whether we want to admit it or not. But I didn't know how to write about it without sounding trite. (starts singing) "Oh now I'm going to sing about racism." I wanted to find a way to write about it that was going to be compelling. When I heard of this, I thought "Well, I'll just tell this story." And it's a story about a father and a daughter, but it happens to be this American story. And have to say that this is probably something that happens every day in this country. It's probably not an isolated incident.

CST: In the liner notes for "BlackTop Road," you write about the family farm and how your grandparents worked the farm while also holding other jobs. That kind of struck a chord with me because, and this is purely speculative, with your writing and your performing you seem rooted in your rural upbringing, but still trying to experience what the rest of the world has to offer.
AE: Oh yeah, and that's how my grandparents were too. My grandfather was a farmer all his life, but he graduated from Furman University when he was only 19 years old with a degree in chemistry. He spoke fluent French. He read the Bible every day in French so he could maintain his fluency. Like many men of his generation, he went to Europe in World War 2, but he went back many other times in his life. He traveled to Africa. My grandmother traveled to Israel five times, three of the times by herself. And this was in the last 10 years of her life. Every other year, she would go to Israel, and she'd save the money to go to Israel by doing her neighbors' sewing and making quilts. My grandfather's sister lived in Africa for most of her life as a nurse. Yet, everyone always came back to this place. The family that I come from is a very worldy and educated family, but were are rooted to this place. It's like a magnet that draws us back.

CST: In addition to your writing, your singing is obviously a major drawing card. What are your earliest memories of singing, and do you remember the first time you got paid to sing?
AE: Let's see. I grew up singing in church, but obviously I didn't get paid to sing in church. From a young age, I really loved to sing, and I loved to perform. Even to this day, one of my favorite singers is Judy Garland, but especially when I was little. I used to watch all her movies when I was a little kid, and I wanted to be just like her. And I also liked Julie Andrews. I grew up doing musical theater and then started writing my own songs when I was in college. Maybe the first time I got paid to sing might have been my freshman year in college, when I played my first show out. I'm sure I didn't get paid any much more than tips, but I'm sure I appreciated it. (laughs) To this day, I can't believe I get paid to do what I love for a living. I'm not rolling in dough or anything yet, but the fact that I can buy my groceries and gas and everything and pay for my cat's cat food by singing is pretty amazing. I definitely grew up not with country or folk music or anything like that. I listened to old musical theater and singers like that, and I went to college and majored in musical theater, so I had a lot of vocal training. But when I started writing songs, it was funny because people said to me, "Oh, you write country songs." And I was like, "What? I don't even listen to country music." I knew Johnny Cash, and that was it. So I started listening to Emmylou Harris and stuff like that and started writing more in that vein. But then when I went to record, it sounded like Julie Andrews trying to sing country music. (laughs)

CST: I'm always interested in why artists choose to cover the songs that they do. Of all the songs out there - and all the Neil Young songs - what made you decide to record Helpless?
AE: That's one that I've been doing in my live shows over the last couple of years. It started as a fluke. I was doing this songwriter night with these guys up in New Hampshire a couple years ago, and they were like, "What are some songs that we can all jam on?" I suggested Helpless, and they said "Okay, you sing it." I'd never thought about singing it. But it ended up sounding so good that we must have played the same song for 15 minutes. Afterwards, the lady came up to me and bought two of my CDs, and she said she wasn't going to buy my CDs until she heard me do Helpless. (laughs) Which I don't know if that's so much of a compliment, but I thought, "Wow, I'm going to start singing that at all of my shows."
http://www.countrystandardtime.com/d/column.asp?xid=327


Country Standard Time review by Rick Cornell 8/09

When Angela Easterling prepared to record her sophomore record, her wish list for producers had one name in bold: Will Kimbrough. "We seem to have a very similar vocabulary musically," Easterling says of the Nashville Underground hero. "Plus, he has a firm foothold in a rock sound." Kimbrough ended up signing on, and, sure enough, "BlackTop Road" rocks the rock and talks the talk - and does so eloquently.

Some of that eloquence no doubt stems from the bulk of Easterling's songwriting being drawn directly from her own experiences, with the title track detailing the struggles of a farm that's been in her family for more than 200 years while the introspective leadoff cut American I.D. dissects her wanderlust. She can work outside of her own sphere of influence though: the penetrating pair of The Picture and Field of Sorrow were inspired by a secondhand story and the novel The Lovely Bones respectively. Things definitely do get louder this time out, with the roots-rock hooks of American I.D. and Birmingham and the righteous jangle of One Microphone calling out for immediate attention. But quieter numbers like A.P. Carter's Blues and Stars Over the Prairie - the latter a revisiting of a song her great-grandfather wrote in the '40s - suggest that Easterling's about as likely to relinquish that part of her musical personality as she is to forsake the family farm. And holding down the middle of the record is an adventurous and strikingly confident take on Helpless. Those looking to connect some dots might recall that Kimbrough once wrote a song titled Neil Young for his band Will & the Bushmen. Yep, similar vocabularies.
http://www.countrystandardtime.com/d/cdreview.asp?xid=4261
- Rick Cornell

From ‘BlackTop Road’ to Ardmore’s MilkBoy

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

By Craig Ostroff
Managing Editor
The price of progress can often be the loss of history.

In Greer, S.C., the fastest-growing area in the state, land is being taken by the state to make room for development.

And for singer-songwriter Angela Easterling, it’s a very personal subject. Because not only has she seen open space and green lands sacrificed for “progress” in her hometown, but she’s also watched it happen to her family’s farm.

“Family farms are such an important part of the heritage of our country,” Easterling said in a recent telephone interview. “Part of what this country was founded on was people having their own property and being able to do what they want with it and not having someone come along and take it away from you because they feel like they have a better use for it.

“It’s always surprising to me, with all we know about how we need to conserve and be green and hold onto the land, how people seem to think if there’s open land, you’re hindering progress. It surprises me so many people still feel that land is not worthwhile unless there’s a building on it or a house on it or a Walmart on it.”

To do her part in drawing attention to the plight of not only the Hammett Farm (which dates back to 1791), but also similar farms across the country, Easterling penned “BlackTop Road,” an all-too-true story of a family farm dismantled piece by piece by those who felt it was standing in the way of progress.

“When I was a little kid, it was all farms,” Easterling said of the area. “Now when you drive around, it’s like our farm is in the middle of a suburb. It’s the only open land left, and everybody wants to build something on it. It’s something that’s going to be a struggle every year.

“Every year my aunt has to go to the zoning commission and petition to be kept agricultural zone, because they want to rezone it as a residential area, build houses and apartments there.

“Ironically, all these apartment buildings and complexes in the area have our family name on them. There’s even a condo complex called Hammett Farms, which I think is ironic, because everybody is trying to get the actual Hammetts out of there.”

Even the cover of her sophomore CD, also titled “BlackTop Road,” strikes a different chord than the soft, bright colors of her debut, “Earning Her Wings.” The cover of “BlackTop Road” features Easterling standing on the very road that the government widened by taking land from the family farm (that’s the Hammett Farm on the right side of the photo), with Easterling standing under a cold, dark sky, looking defiantly straight ahead, suitcase in hand and mandolin case at her feet.

“That’s me holding my ground,” Easterling said of the photo. “Inside [the CD package] there are several pictures of my family, in the same places where I am in my pictures. I wanted to give people a feeling that this is real, this is my family. I’m not standing here in front of a barn to be cute; my great-grandfather built this barn, my grandfather built this barn.

“I felt like in this album I needed to be staring straight at the camera; I’m facing all the things in my life, face them head-on.”

And she does just that. If “Earning Her Wings” announced Easterling’s arrival, “BlackTop Road” shows that she’s here to stay. Easterling handles soul-searching topics fearlessly and gracefully, weaving stories that entrance as much by her warm, inviting voice as by her heartfelt lyrics.

The album opens with “American I.D.,” an inquiry into where we fit into the American melting pot when we seem to do little else but cling to our differences. Written in 2004, Easterling said she only felt comfortable singing it in the last several years.

“I wrote it for myself — I was trying to figure out where was my place in this country, where do I belong here?” she said. “Am I an American even though I feel this way about this thing? What is it that ties me to other people in America when we’re so disagreeing on things that seem so fundamentally important? I think, in a way, that song was kind of like a pleading to feel like I belong here, trying to find what I have in common with other people, what makes us Americans.

“I found that what we have in common is so much more than what divides us. The things we have in common, the agreement we have to live together in a democracy — a lot of countries can’t do that. We’re a country of dreamers and people who follow their dreams. We come from all over the place, and for the most part, we do live in peace.”

Easterling also touches on racism and its place in American history in “The Picture,” a haunting melody about a woman (a friend of Easterling’s aunt) who finds a photograph in her recently deceased father’s belongings, how it changes everything she thought she knew about her father and how she tries to explain it to herself.

“This was something I wanted to write about because I feel like it’s a part of our history,” Easterling said. “People just don’t want to look at it, ‘It’s all over, it only happened back then, it doesn’t have anything to do with me,’ and I don’t think that’s true. I think the things that happened in our past, they affect us more than we want to admit.

“It’s deeply personal, yet it relates to everyone. As you go through her thought process, her first impulse is to destroy the evidence, but she realizes that doesn’t change anything. Her second impulse is to rationalize, to make excuses. But the truth is she’ll never know.

“Some of my ancestors owned slaves, some didn’t. Some fought for the North, some fought for the South. You want to go back and ask them why. ‘How on earth could you have ever felt like this was the right thing to do?’ And if I descend from this person, does it make me a bad person? How does this relate to my identity, knowing this history? That’s what I was getting at in a larger context. I think we need to talk about these things — there can’t really be any reconciliation until people are honest about what happened.”

But “BlackTop Road” isn’t all serious and solemn. Far from it, in fact. As she did on her previous album, Easterling includes a tribute to a country music legend (“A.P. Carter’s Blues”), a song written by an ancestor (“Stars over the Prarie,” written by her great-grandfather), love songs and a good old-fashioned romp (“Big Wide World”).

“I’m at that time in my life where everything I’ve been going through, being on the road, everything [her family] has gone through these last few years, that’s really what I felt I had to write about,” Easterling said. “That’s just what struck my fancy. But my whole life isn’t just sitting around thinking about all the bad things in the world. Very little of it is.

“I look at writing an album as almost like writing a book — each song is a chapter; they have to kind of work together. And this album has songs that are uplifting and positive.”

Easterling, who played to a very appreciative, packed MilkBoy Coffee last March will return to the venue June 28 for an 8 p.m. show that will feature tunes from her debut album as well as from “BlackTop Road,” which will be released July 14 (visit Easterling’s MySpace page at www.myspace.com/angelaeasterling or her Web site www.angelaeasterling.com for ordering information), during a tour that will see her play more than 20 (and counting) dates up and down the East Coast through August.

“Playing live, that’s why I do this,” Easterling said. “I love performing. And I love sharing the songs with people. When you put a song out in front of a crowd, that’s when you give them a life.”

And though there may be darker songs on her latest album, Easterling assures that her show will be just as fun and energetic as it was the last time she visited.

“I am a very happy, positive, upbeat person. I tell the stories behind some of these songs, especially ‘BlackTop Road,’ and that song is very angry and it makes me angry, but I’m certainly not angry the whole show. I try to give each song what it requires. The show will still be fun and upbeat and lively.” - Craig Ostroff

If you want an excellent example of what Americana, that 5 layer-dip of genres, has to offer you need to just put on Angela Easterling’s new release Blacktop Road. Easterling delivers neo-trad country, folk and rock in her earnestly melancholic voice betraying her Greenville, S.C. roots, and her expanded tastes and sensibilities that might have been cultivated by her stretch in L.A. She sounds like she’d be right at home in a honky-tonk or a New York supper club.

Blacktop Road was produced by Will Kimbrough (Todd Snider, Rodney Crowell, Kate Campbell, Jimmy Buffett) and the album reflects his good sense to not burdon it with studio wizardry.

Easterling has the goods and needs little more than a mic (though here she has a crack band – Al Perkins, Fats Kaplin, Ken Coomer, Anne McCue and Dave Jacques, along with Kimbrough – backing her) to get the job done. whether it’s John Mellencamp or Steve Earle style roots rocking on American I.D., a mid-tempo piece about American multiculturalism and self-identity and the title cut (not a cover of the Lost Trailers crappy song by the same name) decrying the encroaching suburban sprawl and the loss of a rural way of life.

American identity is again addressed in the The Picture about a woman’s relationship with her father and his involvement in the Jim Crow South. For all braying about social messages in contemporary country music they are like crayon scribbling compared to finely crafted song like this.

Better is a beautifully aching hillbilly-chamber piece featuring mandolin, dobro, cello and violin (not fiddle) as a backdrop for longing for the comfort of a loved one. AP Carter’s Blues continues the bittersweet tone and offers a fine tribute to the Carter family patriarch with excellent pedal steel accompaniment by Fats Kaplin.

The cover of Neil Young’s Helpless is done similarly as the original’s slow, woeful simmering manner that fits the song to a T without being done by rote. Stars Over The Prairie is wonderfully spirited is A Western Swing shuffle reworking of a song penned by her great-grandfather in the 40s.

Easterling’s first offering, 2007’s Earning Her Wings, was an excellent first release, and with Blacktop Road she advances her skills and confidence and has provided us a great Summer soundtrack.
www.twangnation.com - Baron Lane

"Angela Easterling, we now know, is a quietly plaintive singer who rewards attentive listening. Her Blacktop Road, with its mandolins, dobros, lap steels, peddle steels, fiddles, etc., is out-and-out "alt. country," a genre no longer in vogue but still kicking. A lot of the songs here sound like they've been around for years—that's a compliment—including the sweetly yearning cover of a certain Wannabe Southern Man's "Helpless." Produced by the agile and sensitive Will Kimbrough." Oxford American - Oxford American

Dynamite honky-tonk singer Angela Easterling brings a tough traditionalist sound to ballads and ravers alike on her fine new CD Black Top Road. - Philadelphia Inquirer

Praise for “BlackTop Road”:

"Angela Easterling is a bright shining star on the country/folk/alt.music horizon! Her gift is so special. She will be able to perform and record as long as she wants to. I loved listening to her new "Black Top Road" CD! The instruments are multidimensional and have a luster that I love. Brought me back to the time the Byrds recorded "Sweetheart of the Rodeo" - tradition meets youthful exuberance! I love the Jingle Jangle guitars on "American ID”. -Roger McGuinn (founder of The Byrds) (Jun 22, 2009) -

“Angela Easterling, we now know, is a quietly plaintive singer who rewards attentive listening. Her Blacktop Road, with its mandolins, dobros, lap steels, peddle steels, fiddles, etc., is out-and-out "alt. country,"A lot of the songs here sound like they've been around for years—that's a compliment—including the sweetly yearning cover of a certain Wannabe Southern Man's "Helpless." Produced by the agile and sensitive Will Kimbrough.”- Oxford American, Editors Picks for June 2009

"Best Political Country Song" - Angela Easterling - "The Picture"- Daniel Gewertz, Boston Herald, Best of 2009 Music (December 11, 2009)

"Dynamite honky-tonk singer Angela Easterling brings a tough traditionalist sound to ballads and ravers alike on her fine new CD Black Top Road." - Philadelphia Inquirer (Jun 21, 2009)

"If Steve Earle was reborn as a girl, he’d very likely be Angela Easterling. And Blacktop Road is her Guitar Town . She comes surging out of the chute like a spurred bronco, full of sideways kicks, bucking with all the compressed energy of a coiled steel spring." - Steven Stone, Vintage Guitar Magazine (Oct .09 issue)

“There's an old head on young shoulders in her writing and she shows that underneath there's a burning ambition to not be good, but to be great…there's a personal honesty and splash of life that jumps out at you. These songs are about place, about family, about belonging and in opposition as much about rebellion, not fitting in, leaving and growth.” -Andrew Williams, Americana UK (September 8, 2009)

"Borrowing Will Kimbrough from Todd Snider’s band to produce and play on Blacktop Road was a stroke of genius for Angela Easterling. Kimbrough surrounds Easterling’s gutsy vocals with some whip-crackingly smart country power-pop on the title track and offers sympathetic sounds even on the more emotional ballads... A pretty voice and poignant songwriter surrounds herself with A-list players and puts out a great alt-country album." Kevin Oliver, Free Times Favorite CD's of 2009 (January 7, 2010)

"Angela Easterling – Black Top Road - Roots/Rock sweetheart with a folk sense of cultural activism" TwangNation Best CD's of 2009 (December 18, 2009)

"Easterling's mix of "gee-whiz" stage presence and solid songwriting and singing was one of the most rewarding, surprising sets of the weekend" Curtis Lynch, Playgrounds Magazine Review of 2009 Americana Music Festival (October 2009)

"...Sparkling, honey-hewn voice, etched with traces of sorrow and hopefulness in equal measure. Produced the estimable Will Kimbrough, the CD is pure, mountain-air acoustic country music. Think Emmylou Harris, Alison Krause or even Gillian Welch. Very sweet stuff indeed. Highly recommended"
- Bill De Young, Connect Savannah (Nov 03, 2009)

"This is a road trip worth taking... BlackTop Road should be the perfect companion piece to Steve Earle’s Copperhead Road. On her personal protest song, an angry Easterling verbally kicks ass as some South Carolina land in her family since the late 18th century is being grabbed by the state for development. The song and the singer seem destined for a spot in Farm Aid." - Michael Bialas, blogcritics.org (August 3, 2009)

"Lovely (and theater-trained) vocals, penetrating songs, and a restless heart that always finds its way back home with stories to tell." - Rick Cornell, Country Standard Time (July 31, 2009)

"Angela Easterling's BlackTop Road is one attractive album. Smartly produced by Will Kimbrough, the set holds originals plus a lovely take on Neil Young's "Helpless". The album's sound is folk-rock, strongly executed throughout." Michael Tearson, Sing Out! (Vol. 53 #2)

"A heartfelt album of personal experience, adding youth to tradition. An intelligent and Introspective writer." Larry Kelly, Maverick UK, (January, 2010)
"I produced Angela Easterling's record, but all I had to do is show up for class and play along. She is a powerful, focused artist who has done her homework: rock n roll, country, bluegrass, literature and French pop." -Will Kimbrough
"Highly recommended release from one of our favourite artists." - Smart Choice Music, UK (July 14, 2009)

"If “Earning Her Wings” announced Easterling’s arrival, “BlackTop Road” shows that she’s here to stay. Easterling handles soul-searching topics fearlessly and gracefully, weaving stories that entrance as much by her warm, inviting voice as by her heartfelt lyrics." - Craig Ostroff, Montgomery News (Jun 25, 2009)

"Angela Easterling isn't just one of the finest singer-songwriters in the Upstate, she's also one of the best in the entire Americana field. "BlackTop Road" features everything from Steve Earle-like angst to Gillian Welch-type introspection." Dan Armonaitis, Spartanburg Herald (January 14, 2010)

"If you want an excellent example of what Americana that 5 layer dip of genres has to offer you need to put on Easterling’s Blacktop Road. She delivers in her earnestly melancholic voice and her expanded tastes and sensibilities that sound right at home in a honkytonk or a NY supper club…. For all braying about social messages in contemporary country music they are like crayon scribbling compared to finely crafted song like “The Picture”.- Twangnation.com (Jun 22, 2009)

“The "back to roots" attitude that Easterling brings to her fine new project transcends any casual lipservice. Fiddles and banjos trade space with slide guitar and some charged honkytonk rhythms for an album that has one foot firmly planted in the traditional southern music, the other in the modern interpretations of Americana. It's a balancing act that blossoms on track such as the wistful slow-dance ballad "Just Like Flying", charming French twanger "Un Microphone" and jukebox raver title track. Recommended.” - DirectCurrentMusic.com (Jun 29, 2009)

"Angela has just about the prettiest voice to come out of the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. While she claims Emmylou Harris as an influence (and wears it quite well), there’s also a spark of youth in her voice more reminiscent of someone with a rock background, like Jenny Lewis. She can also knock out an Appalachian rocker that sounds like early Steve Earle, such as the title track from her album BlackTopRoad" - Tug Baker, Free Times Columbia (Jun 11, 2009)

"Easterling is a songwriter who makes listeners feel, think and see.The world can be ugly, but somehow her voice can make anything softer, easier to manage. Harsh stories have beauty. " - Otis Taylor, The State (Columbia, SC) (Jun 11, 2009)

“The songs are thoughtful and well-crafted stories that will resonate with a deep intensity with many listeners on a variety of different levels. Angela Easterling is someone to keep a sharp eye on.” – Bob Gottileb, Folk and Acoustic Music Exchange (Jun 23, 2009) - Quick Press Blurbs

There’s an almost otherworldly quality to Angela Easterling’s sophomore disc, a largely self-written Americana affair produced by singer/songwriter/sideman extraordinaire Will Kimbrough. BlackTop Road is soaked in an intelligence and far-reaching historical sense that makes you suspect its origins couldn’t be entirely human, or at least that all of these songs and performances couldn’t have emanated from one young woman. Easterling, whose voice comes with nary a hint of twang, offers one possible explanation in the eerie “A.P. Carter’s Blues”:

I’ve been haunted by a spirit I can’t seem to lose
Since I got that old Clinch Mountain dust upon my shoes
I stood up at his grave and I thanked him for his song
But when I walked back down that hill, I didn’t walk alone

Infected by the spirit of A.P., the album is at its most historical with timeless-sounding originals like “Field of Sorrow,” a beautiful message from beyond the grave that would fit right in with the Carter Family catalog, and “Stars Over the Prairie,” Easterling’s reworking of lyrics originally composed by her great grandfather.

Even when the sound is more contemporary, the interests are often deeply historical. “The Picture” grapples with legacies of racism, as the narrator discovers a picture of a black man’s hanging amid her deceased father’s personal effects and wonders what role he played in the event. The worst part is the uncertainty of not knowing the whole story (“Cause I always knew you as a good man, standing righteous, strong and tall/But here’s the chance I never knew you at all”), though by the end she seems to have settled on him having been at least complicit if not actually personally responsible, with repetitions of “Daddy, why?” conveying her hurt and confusion. Meanwhile, “American I.D.” finds her battling her own biases on the way toward embracing the differences that built a nation:

I get so angry at my neighbor, on so much we disagree
I decided to surround myself with those who think like me
But all these colors that divide us, all these differences we spite
Maybe form our true foundation, and in the end will seem so slight

Easterling and Kimbrough wisely balance some of the record’s historical interests with real immediacy by including a few deeply-felt love songs set wholly in the present, the best of which is “Better.” In a gorgeous performance that radiates self-aware strength and vulnerability, Easterling lets a lover in on that most tender of all confessions: “I sleep better in your bed than I do in mine/I look better in your eyes than I do in mine.“ “One Microphone” (reprised in French at the end of the record) discovers a unique stage-based metaphor for love, while “Just Like Flying” is at least slightly more compelling than any song likening being in love to flying has a right to be, though not so good as to keep it from being one of the album’s weaker songs.

The finest moment comes with the convergence of the historical and the personal. Easterling tears her way through the album’s title track with such indignant energy that you’d presume the song’s basis in reality even without knowing the whole back story: The state cut a road through the South Carolina farm that has been in Easterling’s family for more than 200 years, destroying the house built by her great grandfather… then, in an apparently well-intentioned slap in the face, marked the road with the family’s name. The whole situation has Easterling understandably pissed off, so her biting delivery on “Blacktop Road” must have come naturally. Thankfully, she matches the attitude with an eminently well-crafted lyric that artfully invites listeners into the story, such that they’ll be able to get pissed off right along with her. Music as a shared experience.

I’m usually pretty picky about keeping the singer separate from the song, but the clarity and consistency of the narrative voice on BlackTop Road make it difficult to not feel like you’re learning quite a bit about Angela Easterling as a person during the 49 minutes spent under her spell. Above all else, the thing you’ll learn is that, regardless of what may come her way, she’ll be fine. There’s no stopping a talent of this magnitude. - C.M. Wilcox