Paula Cole Releases New Album American Quilt Out Today via Renew Records / BMG

 


 
Praised by Rolling Stone, No Depression, American Songwriter, Forbes and More
 
“A patchwork of Music From the Cities and the Mountains, the Fields and the Rivers”
 
Photo credit: Ebru Yildiz / Download Hi-Res Version
May 21, 2021: Today, Grammy-winning songwriter and producer Paula Cole releases her new album American Quilt through Renew Records / BMG. Cole has also debuted her original song "Hidden in Plain Sight" with Grammy.com. The song honors the story of women artists who created clues within their quilts and hung them in plain sight for other slaves seeking to flee to the Underground Railroad. “Hidden in Plain Sight” conveys something of a statement of purpose for American Quilt, given Cole’s propensity as an artist to give voice to acts of humble, everyday revolution. 
 
Stream or Download American Quilt
 
 
 
American Quilt has been acclaimed by outlets including Rolling Stone, USA Today, and No Depression. Forbes.com writes, "Cole is back with the powerful and gritty American Quilt... American Songwriter also praised album writing, "Throughout, the 11-track collection contains the folkloric roots of American music. Cole’s radiant vocals pull the underlying humanity of a nation divided."
 
Watch Cole's stunning live performance videos for “Wayfaring Stranger,”  “Black Mountain Blues,” and "God's Gonna Cut You Down."
 
With a musical catalog defined by honest and deeply personal lyrics carried by her powerful, radiant voice, Cole has always had a gift for discerning the underlying humanity in stories from her own life as well as those around her, and channeling those emotional elements into captivating music. On American Quilt, Cole applies this natural insight to American history and musical roots traditions by interpreting a selection of classic songs – each of which provide an entry point for rediscovering the overlooked stories and figures that populate America’s interwoven cultural lineage.
 
The album was produced by Cole, who was the first woman nominated (without collaborators) as Producer of the Year at the 1997 Grammy awards. She garnered a total of seven Grammy nominations that year and won “Best New Artist” for her second album and major-label debut, This Fire, with its timeless hits, “Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?” and “I Don’t Want to Wait” (later the theme song for hit TV series Dawson’s Creek). Today, as a visiting scholar at Berklee College of Music, Cole tells “all my female students, ‘Start thinking like a producer, think about how you want the whole track to sound, be a voice.’”
 
“Together these songs make an American Quilt,” says Cole, “a patchwork of heritage, a stitched-together-history of culture both painful and beautiful. I hope the listener will step inside the canoe and float down the Missouri River of their mind.  I hope they will hear the gospel of the country, and taste the liquor in the speakeasies.  I hope they will feel the freedom in the jazz of the cities, heed the call to morality in the spirituality of a day’s hard work, and the call to the Great Beyond from the Appalachians.”
 
As on previous albums, Cole was joined by a longtime “family” of musicians, including esteemed drummer Jay Bellerose and guitarist Kevin Barry, collaborators since the trio’s days at Berklee. American Quilt follows 2019’s acclaimed album of originals, Revolution, deemed by PopMatters as “an exceptional piece of work, a timely reminder of how soulful and perceptive a writer and singer Cole is and has always been.”
 
Track List:
 1. You Don’t Know What Love Is
2. Wayfaring Stranger
3. God’s Gonna Cut You Down
4. Wayfaring Stranger
5. Shenandoah
6. Black Mountain Blues
7. Good Morning Heartache
8. Nobody Knows You (When You’re Down And Out)
9. Blackbird
10. Steal Away / Hidden In Plain Sight
11. What A Wonderful World

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