Distillation (CD - 2000)

(electric guitar, upright & electric basses, percussion, samples); Katryna Nields, Beth Amsel (background vocals).

Recorded at Sackamusic Studios, Amhearst, Massachusetts between October 1999 & January 2000.

Personnel: Erin McKeown (acoustic guitar); Dave Chalfant (acoustic guitar); Lorne Entress, Dave Hower (drums); Ed Mckeown, Katryna Nields, Ben Demerath, Beth Amsel (background vocals).

Virginia-born and New England-based, Erin McKeown's musical roots seem to lie somewhere in the deep South. Throughout her aptly named debut, DISTILLATION, you can hear echoes of Robert Johnson, G. Love, the Faulknerian landscape of the first couple albums by the Band, and most obviously, the rural mythos best explored, from entirely different angles, by those Louisiana-born Williams non-sisters, Victoria and Lucinda.

While nowhere near as helium-pitched, McKeown shares Victoria's fondness for odd, jazz-inflected phrasing, especially on the swooping vocal melody of the Tin Pan Alleyish "Didn't They?," on which McKeown soars and dives like a drunken seagull, or the Billie Holidayesque trills in "The Little Cowboy." What McKeown has in common with Lucinda Williams is her wry but essentially romantic, tradition-rooted but not bound lyrical stance. The countryish "La Petite Mort," with its sly sex-and-religion twining, would not have sounded out of place on CAR WHEELS ON A GRAVEL ROAD. minimize