Americana Artist Deborah Crooks to release 3rd CD “Little Bird” Nov 5, 2013
Little Bird, East Bay Artist Deborah Crook’s third full-length album, will be released on November 5, 2013. Crooks wrote the album’s 11 original songs with noted San Francisco jazz artist and composer Art Khu (Jacqui Naylor, East Bay Symphony Orchestra) arranging and producing the new collection.
The East Bay Express described Crooks’s 2010 EP release, It’s All Up to You, as “…a more diverse take on Americana with a distinctly female tone, and quite charming.” Working with Khu, Little Bird finds her diversifying her Americana palette that much more and reflecting her global perspective. Crooks wrote the songs during the past four years in which she also made two extended trips to India, dabbling in Carnatic vocal studies and leading writing groups, before resettling in her native San Francisco Bay Area.
Crooks’ earthy voice and Khu’s masterful guitar and keyboard playing form the basis of the album, whose songs incorporate a variety of influences including reggae and funk, straight-ahead rock and roll and Americana songwriting.
“It was great to work with Art, who brought a whole different sensibility to the arrangements,” said Crooks. “I’ve got an eclectic set of interests and influences and Art can pretty much play anything. The whole process allowed me to broaden my range and reinvigorate my band.”
Khu and Crooks were joined in the studio by Crooks’s longtime band mates and collaborators Mike Stevens (drums) and Ben Bernstein (bass), recorded at Lost Monkey Studio in Hayward, CA and Art Cave Studio in San Francisco.
The songs on Little Bird are at once spirited and self-aware, detailing the perils of a fickle heart (“Bittersweet Valentine”), examining unconscious behavior in all its varieties (“Little Bird”) and celebrating the human instinct to choose love again and again (“Looking Down the Road,” “Turn the Key”) despite the obstacles.
Crooks will be previewing songs from Little Bird at a string of dates throughout California as well as at MEOW Con in Austin, TX, Oct 24-26, 2013, where she’s a showcasing performer.
Listen to a sampler of Little Bird via SoundCloud: soundcloud.com/deborah-crooks/sets/little-bird-cd-2013
About Deborah Crooks
Crooks, who was born and raised in California, has recorded three full-length albums and two EPs, including 2008’s Adding Water to the Ashes and 2011’s ‘2010.’ When not traveling, Crooks performs extensively throughout California and the Western US, and was named to Music Connection magazine’s HOT 100 Live Unsigned Artists & Bands in 2012. A published writer as well as songwriter, her essays and articles have appeared in several anthologies including “Bare Your Soul: The Thinking Girl’s Guide to Enlightenment” and “Making Connections” among many other sites and publications.
Deborah Crooks – Little Bird Track Listing
1. Like an Earthquake
2. Looking Down the Road
3. Everclear
4. Show Me
5. Bittersweet Valentine
6. Committed Lines
7. Little League
8. Maybe
9. Find My Way
10. Turn the Key
11. Little Bird
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