Music Matters Review
Issue 12 • October 1999
P.O. Box 425, Smithtown, NY 11787-0425
516/293-7774 • www.mmreview.com
Who We Are: The Music Matters Review is a quarterly publication focusing on folk, singer-songwriter, blues, bluegrass, Cajun, Celtic, zydeco and other music that is not so easily categorized. In each issue we try to bring you quality reviews of the very best music available as well as in-depth interviews and features-because music matters!
JANE VOSS: Farther Down the Road
1999, Ripple Recordings
Jane Voss’s liner notes tell where these songs rise from. "The songs presented here are pages torn from my life over the past ten years, a period in which things broke down and fell apart, and left me reeling, sometimes even wondering whether and how I would survive." But the last sentence of her lengthy acknowledgements, "My heart is full to bursting!" tells what the music sounds like.
The songs are filled with equal parts of hope and sadness, a place to visit when music is the only thing strong and deep enough to get you through. The lyrics often mix natural imagery with intensely personal feelings.
The music draws strength from traditional forms—gospel, blues and old-time country as well as the jazzy amalgamated beauty that flows from her long-time collaboration with pianist Hoyle Osborne.
Her powerful voice has the forthright twang of Iris Dement. It’s a veritable rollercoaster of raw emotion, swooping and soaring through defiance,
heartbreak and revival, indeed filling every phrase to bursting. Just try to sing along with her and you will realize how inventive a singer she is.
Hoyle Osborne's production is rich and varied, a gorgeous space in which to experience the completeness of this music. Voss has been
performing since the early 1970s and is highly regarded as a songwriter, but this is her first album of an original material. It is worth such a wait for music that in the words of "Farther Down The Road" leaves you, "...a little bit stronger/And a little bit farther down the road.”
— Michael Devlin
