ARTIST: Cassandra Wilson
TITLE: Thunderbird
LABEL: Blue Note
GENRE: Jazz
BITRATE: 193kbps avg
PLAYTIME: 0h 49min total
RELEASE DATE: 2006-04-04
RIP DATE: 2006-03-08

Track List

01. Go To Mexico                    4:14
02. Closer To You                   5:49
03. Easy Rider                      7:03
04. It Would Be So Easy             5:10
05. Red River Valley                5:52
06. Poet                            5:27
07. I Want To Be Loved              4:03
08. Lost                            3:34
09. Strike A Match                  4:47
10. Tarot                           3:52

Release Notes:

Cassandra Wilson never fails to surprise and inspire.

Sexy, honey-velvet vocals wrapped around her own jazzy blue compositions or
inventive interpretations of others’ material led TIME magazine to name her
“America’s Best Singer” in recent years. On her new CD Thunderbird, which
Blue Note Records will release on April 4, 2006, she has collaborated with
red hot producer T Bone Burnett to surprise, yet again.

“Working with T Bone took the songs into a whole other place,” explained
Wilson. “He guided me into the deepest recesses of the material, and that
attention to detail and nuance allowed me to delve into my own innermost
emotions.” What’s emerged is a post modern and, at times, primal take on
roots music that begins with the title itself.

The legend of the thunderbird is an ancient myth that survives today in
some Native American cultures. In the eyes of the ancients, it was a
divine and magical animal sent by the gods to protect them from the powers
of evil. The thunderbird brought calm and growth to the region. For
Cassandra, the spiritual and magical aspects to this creature perfectly
described the environment from which these 10 songs grew.

Deftly combining her own compositions—the irresistible “Go To Mexico,” the
sultry “It Would Be So Easy,” the lovely “Poet” and the spiritual and
celebratory “Tarot”—with carefully chosen songs that spoke to her like
“Closer To You” by Jakob Dylan, “Easy Rider” by Blind Lemon Jefferson, the
traditional song “Red River Valley” and Willie Dixon’s “I Want To Be
Loved,” Wilson has woven her plaintive, delicious voice in and out of
these tales of betrayal, intimacy and wonder. T Bone contributed two songs
to the album in “Lost” and “Strike a Match.”

“With ‘Easy Rider,’ I had always heard the 'C.C. Rider' version of this
song covered, but never heard anyone do the Blind Lemon version, which
resonated with me,” Wilson says. “Jakob’s song ‘Closer to You’ was, to me,
the epitome of intimacy and I just had to do it, couldn’t help myself!”
she teases.

The instrumentation chosen for the songs was also a different experience
for Cassandra. The groundbreaking sound that Cassandra crafted with
producer Craig Street in the mid-1990’s on such classic Blue Note
recordings as Blue Light ‘Til Dawn and the Grammy-winning New Moon
Daughter, was defined by it’s sparse acoustic guitars. However, keyboards
play a much larger role in many of the songs on thunderbird, courtesy of
keyboardist (and sometimes electric bassist) Keefus Ciancia, who is also
the co-producer of the album.

“I hadn’t worked with keyboards for a long time,” says Cassandra,
referring to her co-producer as “an alchemist. Keefus is amazing. He’s a
texture person, very organic and between T Bone, Keefus and I came a lot
of the nuances.” Also on the album are uber musicians Marc Ribot and
Colin Linden on guitar, Mike Elizondo on electric bass, Reginald Veal on
acoustic bass and Jim Keltner, Bill Maxwell and Jay Bellerose on drums.
Gregoire Maret also plays harmonica on “Tarot.”

Ultimately, T Bone was the glue that kept it all together and it was his
“secret ingredients,” as Cassandra describes them, that added that aural
special something you just couldn’t put your finger on. So what were T
Bone’s “special ingredients?” “I can’t talk about those,” she says.
“Otherwise, he’d have to kill me.”