It dawned on me only slowly that Kristina Train lived in Nashville, and I don’t feel like enough people understand how big a deal that is. Since falling for her voice and vibe on her career-making 2012 album Dark Black, I associated her with London, New York, and even her home town of Savannah, GA, never Music City. But last summer, Train stepped up on stage to sing with Americana rocker Aaron Lee Tasjan at WMOT’s 895 Fest. Soon after that, I confirmed that she’s been here for years and that she was getting set to release her first overtly country album.
So to help introduce that album, and Kristina, to you, I got Tasjan on the phone. I found out they have history together, and I wanted to know more. It turns out he was there from the start of her climb. Back in his New York days, Aaron was asked to pull a NYC band together when Train had been invited up from Athens, GA, where she was living and making music, to showcase for Blue Note Records. The audience was the same team that had signed Nora Jones a few years before, led by music icon and then label president Bruce Lundvall.
“Bruce walked up on stage and signed her immediately after the show, because when you hear somebody sing like that, you are coming out of your skin with how great it is,” Aaron Lee told me. “I also heard Norah Jones walk up to her and say that she’s one of the best singers she’d ever heard.” And Tasjan feels the same way. “Her singing takes my breath away, honestly,” he says.
Getting signed to Blue Note at 19 years old is but one of the career milestones I mention in my opening to Episode 348 of The String. Kristina Train released her Blue Note debut in 2009 to strong reviews and a chorus of comparisons to Dusty Springfield. Then came Dark Black from Mercury Records this time, a beguiling jazzified neo-pop album that earned this rave from none other than Bruce Springsteen: “You have to have it in your library. It’s one of my favorite records of, I don’t know, the past decade.”
She made other high-profile fans. Larry Klein, producer and ex-husband of Joni Mitchell, heard Dark Black and connected Train with none other than Herbie Hancock, who invited her on tour as a violinist and singer (he had then released the vocal recordings The Imagine Project and The Joni Letters). That occupied two years of her life, and she sang at Hancock’s 70th birthday celebration. Under her own name, she’s performed at Royal Albert Hall, Carnegie Hall, and the Nobel Peace Prize Concert in Stockholm. She’s been on some of the world’s most prestigious music broadcasts, including Later with Jools Holland and the BBCs Abbey Road Sessions.
So as I implied, there’s a poorly-kept secret weapon in our midst. And while she didn’t make her newest album County Line here, living in Nashville and getting in touch with her whole life story made the new countrypolitan album a natural next step, she says: “I am Savannah, Georgia, but I'm also New Jersey, and I was in London. So I have a cosmopolitan thing, but also like a Deep South thing. And to be able to express that in music is something that I've always wanted to do. So it does make sense to have a Dark Black and then a County Line. It's who I am, both albums.”
County Line has western air and atmosphere from its desert cover image to the grooves. Its opening title track is pastoral and wistful, propelled by sonorous piano. Then its next two tracks bring more tempo and confident melodies that disclose Train’s roots in classic jazz and mature pop. She claims her attachment to country heritage with thoughtful covers of songs by (or made popular by) Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson.
In a turn that’s both insightful and a lot of fun, Train delivers a truly original interpretation of Cher’s “Believe,” making it more blue and complex. She wrote a few of the originals with Kim Richey and Amy Winehouse collaborator Jimmy Hogarth, my favorite being the co-dependency song “What Does That Make Me” in a slinky 6/8 beat. The album’s a win for subtle production and restraint, so when Train’s voice hits the gas in songs like Waylon’s “(Don’t Let The Sun Set On You) In Tulsa,” it raises goosebumps.
Which is what Aaron Lee Tasjan says happens when he sings with her.
Kristina Train is planning a full tour in the fall of 2026. Find out more HERE.
