New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Singer-songwriter SUNNY OZELL has announced the release of a new acoustic EP, LIVE AT THE VILLAGE, due out July 17. It is comprised of four songs lifted from her OVERNIGHT LOWS album (released earlier this year), along with a personally poignant cover of Los Lobos' "The Valley." The EP was recorded live at the historic Village Studios in Los Angeles and features raw and affecting versions of the songs.
The tracks on LIVE AT THE VILLAGE all hold a very meaningful sense of place both geographically and spiritually, with "Driving Highways" referencing the landscape of SUNNY's home state of Nevada, the English countryside of "The Garden," to the transience of travel and memory in "Comes And It Goes." The first single from the EP, "Hammer And Nail," takes its title and meaning from the Staples Singers song of the same name. The most overtly political song SUNNY has released, the track is an acknowledgement that change will "…take more than a hammer and nail/to keep the peace and finally tip the scales," and instead emphasises the importance of change from a local level. Much like SUNNY's earthy, soulful sound, it is very much a ground-up approach.
"When I'd finished making OVERNIGHT LOWS, I'd thought I was done probing these particular songs," SUNNY says of the LIVE AT THE VILLAGE EP. "But in taking another swing at some of my already completed tunes I was reminded that we're never really 'done,' and that it can be a total pleasure to keep exploring and expanding. It was such a joy to return to The Village recording studios in
Santa Monica late last summer to track some acoustic versions of a select group of my songs. I'd thought I would come away with some stripped down 'coffee house' kinda takes on the material; 'acoustic' has often meant to me 'soft' or 'delicate.' But what these two days of tracking produced was something of a surprise: genuine re-imaginings of the songs themselves, albeit performed with all-acoustic instrumentation."
Live At The Village tracklisting:
Hammer And Nail (Acoustic)
Driving Highways (Acoustic)
Comes And It Goes (Acoustic)
The Garden (Acoustic)
The Valley (Acoustic)
Recently, SUNNY intertwined her love of music with her love of medieval history and architecture, with a hugely popular series of videos in which she explores three churches close to her heart in Oxfordshire, while performing songs in them. Watch the Church Sessions series here: https://sunnyozell.lnk.to/TheChurchSessions
SUNNY's OVERNIGHT LOWS (released earlier this year) gleams with engaging melodies and intelligent wordplay performed with a sophisticated fluency in pop, jazz, soul and Americana dialects. In SUNNY's words, OVERNIGHT LOWS reflects the soul and simplicity of her passion for such inspirations as Bonnie Raitt,
David Byrne, Cassandra Wilson, and Aretha Franklin.
Players on the album include Jay Bellerose (Robert Plant, Aimee Mann, Alison Krauss), Tyler Chester (George Ezra, Maddison Cunningham), Andy Hess (The
Black Crowes,
David Byrne), Adam Levy (Norah Jones, Roseanne Cash), and Rich Hinman (Sara Bareilles). The album was recorded at Village Studios in Los Angeles, and engineered by Mike Piersante. "All That I Am," the album's first single, debuted earlier this year at AMERICAN SONGWRITER.
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