New York, NY (Top40 Charts) After years of inspiring rock music's greatest love songs, legendary muse Pegi Young heads out on her own with songs of love, loss and forgiveness. With her new collection, Raw, Pegi is ready to share her journey with listeners. The collection will be available February 17th via Baltimore Thrush Records and today is available for pre order. In advance of the album's release, the second single, an impassioned cover of Ray Charles' "Do I Ever Cross Your Mind" premiered yesterday with NPR Music.
Alison Fensterstock called the album, "...a searching, tough and vulnerable memoir that bravely explores all the corners of heartbreak, from blunt-force anger to sorrow to brief winks of humor."
Stream "Do I Ever Cross Your Mind" via Soundcloud:
https://soundcloud.com/user-655136660/do-i-ever-cross-your-mind/s-eO4Zi
Raw is now available for pre-order via Amazon and iTunes (includes instant downloads of "Do I Ever Cross Your Mind" and "Too
Little Too Late").
Pegi Young's compelling and personal new album Raw is a mix of original songs written with storied Muscle Shoals musician Spooner Oldham and artfully executed covers.
Young wrote most of Raw in the wake of her 2014 separation and divorce from Neil Young, to whom she'd been married for over thirty-six years. Recently, Pegi spoke with Rolling Stone about her album and what she's been doing with herself lately. "Writing [Raw] was very cathartic for me," Young says. "What happened was real, but I also look at this record as having a universal quality to it. I'm certainly not the only one to go through a late-in-life divorce, and I'm not going to be the last."
The songs aren't all expressions of anger. The first track to be released from Raw is "Too
Little Too Late", a raw and poetic psalm of regret. The album's emotional palette ranges from "Gave My Best to You" and Pegi's take on "These Boots are Made for Walkin'", both conveying resilience and sass, to a gorgeous stripped-down version of Don Henley's "The
Heart of the Matter," which explores the grace of forgiveness. As a whole, the album is a journey from shock to rage, from sadness to strength, but not necessarily in that order.
Young says, "I've begun to look at this record as a soundtrack to the seven stages of grief," she says. "And each song could be sung by either party."
In addition to Spooner Oldham, Young's band The Survivors features Muscle Shoals-based guitarist
Kelvin Holly (a veteran of
Little Richard's band), drummer Phil Jones (Tom Petty, Joe Walsh), and bassist Shonna Tucker (Drive-By Truckers), who've added soulful muscle to the sonic texture.
Excited about the prospect of sharing her new music and playing out live, the singer/songwriter/philanthropist/environmentalist and new grandmother jokes "I just might be eligible to win a nomination for 'Oldest Best New Artist Award' this time out."
Pegi Young & The Survivors will tour in support of Raw next year.
