Carrie Ferguson

RECORD REVIEW: Carrie Ferguson
Riding on the Back of the Wind
Northampton, MA
Produced by Scot Coar, Carrie Ferguson & Eric Ferguson
Recorded & mixed at Sow's Ear Studios by Coar
Additional recording by Eric Ferguson
Mastered by Jeff Lipton at Peerless Mastering
By: Christopher Wilkey
May 2010

Let me just say it: this album is great. It crosses musical genres like a cat's cradle. It's rootsy and rocking, swinging and soulful. The songs are well-crafted and catchy with sweet melodies and instrumentation that is artfully arranged. Ferguson's tales seem to leap from the speakers. They breathe. They speak. They fill the air with rich imagery and tasty zeal. They capture you and pull you into a world full of love and discovery, shaded by a touch of humor and loss. Listening to the album is like being at a backyard barbecue with all your friends, old lovers, family and coworkers. A party lit with string lights in the trees, fueled with endless food and a bottomless cooler of beer and soda. It's an incredible debut offering.

"Liar Liar"is full of pep and spunk. "Beautiful World"is warm and endearing. But "Girls Like Me"is a gem, a singalong radio chart-topper just waiting to happen. The chorus swells like a roller coaster - not one of the crazy new ones where you flip and jerk all over the place - no, it's like one of the old wooden ones where you feel giddy and light as you swirl around in a circle, dipping and swaying. When you put this record on, you're gonna smile. (self-released)

Christopher Wilkey - Northeast Performer Magazine, Record Review (May 1, 2010)

- Northeast Performer Magazine

RECORD REVIEW: Carrie Ferguson
Riding on the Back of the Wind
Northampton, MA
Produced by Scot Coar, Carrie Ferguson & Eric Ferguson
Recorded & mixed at Sow's Ear Studios by Coar
Additional recording by Eric Ferguson
Mastered by Jeff Lipton at Peerless Mastering
By: Christopher Wilkey
May 2010

Let me just say it: this album is great. It crosses musical genres like a cat's cradle. It's rootsy and rocking, swinging and soulful. The songs are well-crafted and catchy with sweet melodies and instrumentation that is artfully arranged. Ferguson's tales seem to leap from the speakers. They breathe. They speak. They fill the air with rich imagery and tasty zeal. They capture you and pull you into a world full of love and discovery, shaded by a touch of humor and loss. Listening to the album is like being at a backyard barbecue with all your friends, old lovers, family and coworkers. A party lit with string lights in the trees, fueled with endless food and a bottomless cooler of beer and soda. It's an incredible debut offering.

"Liar Liar"is full of pep and spunk. "Beautiful World"is warm and endearing. But "Girls Like Me"is a gem, a singalong radio chart-topper just waiting to happen. The chorus swells like a roller coaster - not one of the crazy new ones where you flip and jerk all over the place - no, it's like one of the old wooden ones where you feel giddy and light as you swirl around in a circle, dipping and swaying. When you put this record on, you're gonna smile. (self-released)

Christopher Wilkey - Northeast Performer Magazine, Record Review (May 1, 2010)

- Northeast Performer Magazine

Still reeling from serious heartbreak, sick of the dreary and cold New England winter around her and feeling the need to get out and do something different, Northampton singer-songwriter-pianist Carrie Ferguson got on a plane to sunny Los Angeles. Destination: her brother and sound engineer Eric, raring to record sis, who had a bunch of breakup songs ready to go.

That was three years ago, and the album that Ferguson began during that dark winter went through some transformative phases to become her new, brightly decorated, hopeful and sometimes gleeful debut solo CD entitled "Riding On the Back of the Wind." Ferguson celebrates the release of the disc with a show at the Iron Horse Sunday at 7 p.m.

The record starts with a catchy country-pop song (almost a quick-footed Cajun two-step) called "Let You Go" that deftly shows both sides of the album at once. It's a cheery song about being stuck, a giddy-up tune about how hard it is to move on.

"And I think we had some fun/I know we ate a lot of food/I thought you were the one but I guess I had me fooled," sings Ferguson, a description that certainly hits close to home with anyone who's been in a happy-for-a-while relationship (so happy and freewheeling that you gain weight from all the romantic meals and snacks)...and then been dumped. Yet whatever melancholy is in the lyrics, the music is grabbing it by he arm for a spin on the dance floor. Hope is taking the lead.

"I like it that some of the 'sad' ones maybe have a little bit of cheerfulness to them and the 'upbeat' ones maybe have a little bit of pain," said Ferguson in an interview earlier this week.

"Radio Waves" is another example of the record's interesting blend of emotions, a song that's weary yet finger-snappingly funky, with one of the album's hookiest choruses.

Ferguson's plan with her brother Eric was to go out to Los Angeles for one week and work around the clock to finish the album. They began by recording in his bedroom studio in a makeshift sound booth that consisted of U-Haul moving blankets and a borrowed keyboard.

But thanks to a generous loan from their parents, they were also able to spend two days in two very different professional recording studios.

"The first was in a ware-house, had no windows, had a very colorful and comfortable dingy punk vibe, an awesome sound booth, and a couple of recording rooms crammed with equipment," Ferguson said.

"The second was in a somewhat famous jazz pianist's back yard next to a carp pond and rock garden. It had huge sliding glass doors between the rooms, grey leather sofas and an amazing grand piano."

Ferguson says she felt out of her element in L.A.

"It seemed to me out there that everybody was always texting and checking their cell phones, even in the studio there would be four guys clicking away in between takes."

Eric spent about eight days frantically editing the recordings, sometimes while eating breakfast, but the siblings ran out of time and Ferguson returned home to unhurriedly continue making the record with her friend and engineer Scot Coar.

"In contrast, Scot's studio, Sow's Ear, is in a little neighborhood on the edge of Easthampton," Ferguson said. "It borders a huge meadow and there are bears and coyotes and fireflies and peepers. Scot has a cell phone but he doesn't check it."

In the two years it took to rework and finish th album, Ferguson moved past the heartbreak phase and as her outlook changed, so did the concept of the record, which was once named after her tough but wistful song "Small White Rock" (now the album's closing track).

The resulting "Riding On the Back of the Wind" has more than its share of memorable songs - the moody rocker "Mars" (partially inspired by Ray Bradbury's "Martian Chronicles"), the haunting "Mermaid" and the rollicking "Girls Like Me" are just three diverse examples - and prickly,honest lyrics stick out all over the place. "I was so much in love with you/but you were not in love with you," Ferguson sings over a sad seesaw piano part on the song "Paris."

At her Iron Horse concert, Ferguson and her band will play the entire 11-song record from beginning to end. She'll be joined by Jim Henry on guitar, dobro and mandolin, Paul Kochanski on bass, J.J. O'Connell on drums and Amy Olsner on backup vocals. Also in the group will be two of Ferguson's bandmates from her old group Plump, Chris Scanlon and fiddler Emily Brienes.

Ferguson, who's been writing and performing for 20 years, knew it was time to finally make her own full-length album.

"I've always wondered, 'Will people - other than my friends and folks in the Valley - like my music? What will it do? What can it become?' And for various reasons I'd never quite managed to fully ask the question...so, now I am," Ferguson said. "I', just so psyched about finally getting the music out there," she added. "I feel like this recording is really me. There's humor and melodrama and worry and queerne - Daily Hampshire Gazette

Still reeling from serious heartbreak, sick of the dreary and cold New England winter around her and feeling the need to get out and do something different, Northampton singer-songwriter-pianist Carrie Ferguson got on a plane to sunny Los Angeles. Destination: her brother and sound engineer Eric, raring to record sis, who had a bunch of breakup songs ready to go.

That was three years ago, and the album that Ferguson began during that dark winter went through some transformative phases to become her new, brightly decorated, hopeful and sometimes gleeful debut solo CD entitled "Riding On the Back of the Wind." Ferguson celebrates the release of the disc with a show at the Iron Horse Sunday at 7 p.m.

The record starts with a catchy country-pop song (almost a quick-footed Cajun two-step) called "Let You Go" that deftly shows both sides of the album at once. It's a cheery song about being stuck, a giddy-up tune about how hard it is to move on.

"And I think we had some fun/I know we ate a lot of food/I thought you were the one but I guess I had me fooled," sings Ferguson, a description that certainly hits close to home with anyone who's been in a happy-for-a-while relationship (so happy and freewheeling that you gain weight from all the romantic meals and snacks)...and then been dumped. Yet whatever melancholy is in the lyrics, the music is grabbing it by he arm for a spin on the dance floor. Hope is taking the lead.

"I like it that some of the 'sad' ones maybe have a little bit of cheerfulness to them and the 'upbeat' ones maybe have a little bit of pain," said Ferguson in an interview earlier this week.

"Radio Waves" is another example of the record's interesting blend of emotions, a song that's weary yet finger-snappingly funky, with one of the album's hookiest choruses.

Ferguson's plan with her brother Eric was to go out to Los Angeles for one week and work around the clock to finish the album. They began by recording in his bedroom studio in a makeshift sound booth that consisted of U-Haul moving blankets and a borrowed keyboard.

But thanks to a generous loan from their parents, they were also able to spend two days in two very different professional recording studios.

"The first was in a ware-house, had no windows, had a very colorful and comfortable dingy punk vibe, an awesome sound booth, and a couple of recording rooms crammed with equipment," Ferguson said.

"The second was in a somewhat famous jazz pianist's back yard next to a carp pond and rock garden. It had huge sliding glass doors between the rooms, grey leather sofas and an amazing grand piano."

Ferguson says she felt out of her element in L.A.

"It seemed to me out there that everybody was always texting and checking their cell phones, even in the studio there would be four guys clicking away in between takes."

Eric spent about eight days frantically editing the recordings, sometimes while eating breakfast, but the siblings ran out of time and Ferguson returned home to unhurriedly continue making the record with her friend and engineer Scot Coar.

"In contrast, Scot's studio, Sow's Ear, is in a little neighborhood on the edge of Easthampton," Ferguson said. "It borders a huge meadow and there are bears and coyotes and fireflies and peepers. Scot has a cell phone but he doesn't check it."

In the two years it took to rework and finish th album, Ferguson moved past the heartbreak phase and as her outlook changed, so did the concept of the record, which was once named after her tough but wistful song "Small White Rock" (now the album's closing track).

The resulting "Riding On the Back of the Wind" has more than its share of memorable songs - the moody rocker "Mars" (partially inspired by Ray Bradbury's "Martian Chronicles"), the haunting "Mermaid" and the rollicking "Girls Like Me" are just three diverse examples - and prickly,honest lyrics stick out all over the place. "I was so much in love with you/but you were not in love with you," Ferguson sings over a sad seesaw piano part on the song "Paris."

At her Iron Horse concert, Ferguson and her band will play the entire 11-song record from beginning to end. She'll be joined by Jim Henry on guitar, dobro and mandolin, Paul Kochanski on bass, J.J. O'Connell on drums and Amy Olsner on backup vocals. Also in the group will be two of Ferguson's bandmates from her old group Plump, Chris Scanlon and fiddler Emily Brienes.

Ferguson, who's been writing and performing for 20 years, knew it was time to finally make her own full-length album.

"I've always wondered, 'Will people - other than my friends and folks in the Valley - like my music? What will it do? What can it become?' And for various reasons I'd never quite managed to fully ask the question...so, now I am," Ferguson said. "I', just so psyched about finally getting the music out there," she added. "I feel like this recording is really me. There's humor and melodrama and worry and queerne - Daily Hampshire Gazette