Caroline Herring CD Release concert – Singer/Songwriter – Friday, September 7, 2012 | Best of Atlanta Concerts | Atlanta Concert, Tickets & Performing Arts Resource

Caroline Herring

CAROLINE HERRING, a Georgia resident by way of Austin, TX, is a Mississippi native known for her lyrical and inventive songwriting, her soothing vibrato, and her elegant melodies. On Camilla, her sixth full-length release, Herring has created her most profound album yet, a collection of ten complex, modern, tradition-influenced compositions about love and hate and everything in between. Since her debut in 2001, Herring has gained a devoted following and has been embraced by tastemakers like NPR, Oxford American and A Prairie Home Companion. Herring has been compared to Lucinda Williams (Austin American Statesman), Joan Baez (Asheville Citizen-Times) and Steve Earle (Paste Magazine). Although the comparisons are apt, Herring has developed her own signature sound that comes to full manifestation on Camilla, a career-defining record. “I feel braver on this album, and I feel it represents me wholly,” she says.

Injustice is the main theme that holds all of Herring’s work together, but she never fails to inject light so that hope is the victor in all of her music. We hear this wonderful mix of reality and optimism on every song on CAMILLA. The album is filled with stories of people traveling long hard journeys who are ultimately rewarded by self-worth, resolution, or the promise of kindness. On CAMILLA we come to know a tired woman who is helped along the way by folks who “tie my traveling shoes”; a narrator singing of “a hard summer in the mountains” but comforted by the goodness of nature; a mother who finds that taking her daughter to Obama’s inaugurationis not easy but well worth the trip; another song shares the true story of a woman who survived the horrific fire-bombing of a Freedom Riders bus, witnessing the horror of burning bodies and the beauty of a twelve year-old white girl who brought her water despite the protests of the townspeople. In “Black Mountain Lullabye” and “Camilla” we hear from mothers who have lost their children but keep their dignity—and hope—intact.