Thursday, May 12, 2011

When the levees broke

If you do the math -- she was born in 1991, Hurricane Katrina happened in 2005 -- Sarah Jarosz was 14 or 15 years old when she wrote this song. This is "Broussard's Lament", which is available on her album Song Up In Her Head. Note not an auto-tune or Nashville professional backing musician in sight (the two youngsters with her playing strings are friends of hers from Austin).

Since I mentioned Sarah in the context of The Greencards...

Note that she's 16 years old in this video. She spends some time bobbing her head learning the song as Kym solos the mandolin part for her, then once the whole band joins in she's right there, having learned the song just from hearing it one time through. Her smile when they give her a solo could light up a stadium. Her smile at the end makes you want to pat her head and say "Good girl!". Now you might start to understand why I say being mean to Sarah Jarosz would be like kicking a puppy...

Next time I do a video from Sarah it'll be from her new album, Follow Me Down, which is to be released on May 16. I've heard two songs from the album, one I wasn't too enamored of, the other at first I thought was some old-time mountain banjo song until she mentioned that she'd written it after reading a poem by Edgar Allen Poe. The latter is going to end up here.

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

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