NASHVILLE |FROM: MITCH SCHNEIDER/MARCEE RONDAN/LATHUM NELSON
MARIA McKEE TO RELEASE
‘HIGH DIVE’
APRIL 22 ON HER OWN VIEWFINDER RECORDS;
SPRING TOUR DATES TO BE ANNOUNCED
MARIA McKEE will release HIGH DIVE, her first new studio album in seven years, April 22 on her own Viewfinder Records. Vivid, complex and revealing, High Dive represents the singer, songwriter and musician at the peak of her strength and, for the first time, in full control of her work. MARIA plans to tour extensively with her band beginning early this spring.
Going back to her days as the charismatic front woman for the alt-country-punk band Lone Justice, MARIA always had someone to answer to. Describing the freedom of making an album for her own label, she says, “I have never felt more satisfaction in my life as a creative person, as a professional in the business. I certainly don’t want to malign the major labels, but at some point that system can be stifling, and you don’t really want to have a mentor put his arm around you and guide you along.”
Produced, mixed and mastered by bass player, arranger and occasional co-composer Jim Akin in her Los Angeles hometown, the long-awaited follow-up to 1996’s Life Is Sweet magnifies MARIA’s passion for musical diversity. The luminous and wide-ranging High Dive opens with the rush of liberation of “To The Open Spaces,” a giddy hymn to the open road, only to end with “Worry Birds,” a meditation on youth and opportunity lost that begins as a whisper and climaxes as a throat-ripping catharsis.
There are shifts in mood as well, not just from one track to the next, but also in the middle of performances. “I need to amuse myself,” she says. “I’ve got attention deficit disorder, in an artistic way, so I need to keep testing myself. This also means coming to terms with my past. You can hear that on this album; some of the songs, like ‘Constellation,’ aren’t that far from some of the Lone Justice stuff.”
Meanwhile, the songs on High Dive–many of which were written by McKEE on a sprawling Irish farm–are supported by engaging arrangements that vary from elaborate horn and string accompaniments on the title track, to simple piano trimmings on “No Gala.” Akin says, “In everything I did, the goal was to capture and compliment the range of emotions that MARIA projects,” he explains. “She has more dimension and a greater capacity to express herself than anyone I’ve known. It was a challenge to fully explore the colors and yet maintain a cohesive quality to the album.”
In addition to working on High Dive, MARIA has kept busy playing the occasional gig and contributing songs to such albums as the “Songcatcher” soundtrack and the 2003 Grammy-nominated Cajun music tribute Evangeline Made.
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