Her voice compelling, her words a movie for the heart and soul, Jessi Alexander creates a world: "Bare feet on southern soil/Burning up in the August heat/Tall grass and butterflies/We're all prayin' for a breeze&" It's "Honeysuckle Sweet," the title cut of her extraordinary debut. The arrangement is insinuating and intense - a deft interplay of acoustic guitar and organ - and the singing is instantly memorable. A bittersweet evocation of Jessi's childhood, the song is also a universal rendering of our common longing ("I can close my eyes when I want to go back").
The hoped-for "breeze" of the lyrics might well be Jessi Alexander herself, one of the freshest discoveries in recent years. She's gifted with a remarkably supple voice. Honeysuckle Sweet heralds the arrival of a first-rate singer and writer, singularly direct, skillful, honest and profound. Every one of the cuts of her debut is written or co-written by Jessi, and these are songs that will last.
"Timeless." It's the perfect description of a Jessi Alexander song. And the perennial appeal of her music is both hard-won and heartfelt. Here's a woman who knows herself, and knows her heritage. Get her going, and she'll talk a wondrous blue streak about Emmy Lou and Loretta and Tammy, Buck Owens, The Band, Waylon & Willie, J. J. Cale, and Jackson Browne. And while her musical knowledge is encyclopedic, it's also visceral - she feels the power and pride and pathos of American roots music in her very cells. She knows country. And she knows what she's bringing to it.
"Country music is all about the song," she says, "the singer and the song. That's what I'm going for - the very purest essence. Hank and me, we're singing about exactly the same kinds of things - whatever the common man, the working class, is feeling. Real human experience. My aim is always to sing it like I've lived it."
Recorded in Memphis, Jessi and Gary Nicholson co-produced the album with Mark Wright as executive producer. Honeysuckle Sweet is rich and varied in its textures - check out the twang guitar on "This World Is Crazy," the mandolin and Fender Rhodes on "Unfullfilled," the pedal steel on "Run Right Back to You," the expert playing throughout. And the songs, the work of a master storyteller, are just as rich in evocative detail. "That's me on the pickup truck/Waitin' for some old boy to pick me up/He wants to change my zipcode and change my luck/With warm beer and stale cigarettes," Jessi sings on "The Long Way," and you can see the emotion, taste the tale. "I don't go in for broad topics," Jessi says, "I always go for the specifics, topics people can relate to, not just happy perfect lives." The specifics of yearning: "The milk is spoiled/The clothes need washin'/And the babies are cryin' down the hall." ("Unfulfilled"). The specifics of struggle: "When the sirens whine and shots ring out/And peace of mind can't be found" "This World is Crazy." It's in these close-ups on real life that the beauty, the honesty, the sheer authenticity of Honeysuckle Sweet can be found, and prized. "I've lived a country song," Jessi says of her own experience - and her music makes that message real.
A true daughter of the South, Jessi was born in Jackson, Tennessee the year Wanted: The Outlaws became country's first platinum record. Her father, a painter and musician, named her after the album's Jessi Colter, thus beginning a lifelong musical connection between the two. "My dad's now my biggest fan," Jessi smiles, "and music has always been the way we've communicated." The bond with her mother was equally strong, but her parents divorced when Jessi was three. Dividing her time between her mother's new home in Georgia and her father's in Memphis, the young girl sought solace from a difficult home life in music. Her small blonde head sandwiched between stereo speakers, she listened to everything - bluegrass to Led Zeppelin to the Eagles to Motown. Summers with her father were highlights, with the two of them hitting Beale Street and absorbing the sounds: "I remember sitting on B.B. King's lap, and I also remember, when my dad played harmonica, passing the hat at clubs, "she recalls. "Of course, that was a hit, because who could say no to a little kid?"
