"How I Spent My Summer Vacation"

Dear amiga, Lissa Hattersley, member of Austin's venerated Greezy Wheels, has released her own cd, How I Spent My Summer Vacation. She's the lead vocalist and plays acoustic guitar. Most of the musical arrangements are hers. The songs include a combination of her own and covers of others', whom she admires. She did Our Own Vaquero the honor of covering his "The Nightworker's Song (Blue Time).


Here is more information about the album from the bass player, John Jordan. According to my search engine, references to How I Spent My Summer Vacation are popping up in various places, like here.


Lissa waited for the dust to settle from South X Southwest to have the launch party at the Cactus Cafe, and, dayem, I couldn't be there. By all accounts it was a wonderful and wild time.


There's so much I love about this album:

Little things -- such as how she starts off "Moonstruck Love," in her own sweet and clean melodic voice, "lahahlahlahha," that rolls right into "I love you." It's kept simple (meaning plain -- ornaments are functional, such as this roll of lahahlahlahha) and beautiful, while lyrically, vocally smart -- still, soft and sweet. That's Our Lissa -- 5 es's -- strong, simple, smart, soft, sweet.

The material doesn't all sound the same, which few singer-songwriter performances and recordings avoid, whether on stage or in the studio. There's also sense of humor here, as well as musical wit! The album is a unity because the organizing principle -- or principal -- is Lissa's own musical sense and sensibility. Part of it is Lissa's clean and unpretentious presentation.



This listener has her own identification with the material on How I Spent My Summer Vacation. A lot of us come from that emotional location where the cut, "Peace in The Valley," comes from. This song in particular carries us way back into our regional and historic family roots, all of which are contained within this great big baggy music tradition called "Country" that includes Appalachian folk and bluegrass, western, cowboy music, and then "swing" gets in there too. So many of us from the Midwest, the South, the Southwest and the West grew up with those kinds of musics, and those singers. Hank Williams is our patron saint, but Ernest Tubb is probably the guardian angel -- and what about Tennessee Ernie Ford and Dolly Parton? There are musical nods on How I Spent My Summer Vacation to these regional and historical roots.


Congratulations, Lissa! You and your friends are the best!

[Dayem, I hate blogspot's refusal to format as I style it.]