songwriting

Quite a few music venues in Nashville have a capacity bigger than the population of Glenarm, Northern Ireland, a seaside village about 30 miles north of Belfast. Nashville based songwriter and recording artist Ben Glover says growing up there was a good environment for a future performer.

In late 2016, Penguin books published Forever Words, featuring previously unseen poetry by the late Johnny Cash. The icon’s son John Carter Cash, who read one of those poems in an interview with WMOT, indicated at the time that some artists had begun to set some of the poems to music.

This has now come to pass, and this being the Cash estate, it’s not been done half way.

You hear the expression all the time: a “highly anticipated album.” But in the case of Mary Gauthier’s Rifles and Rosary Beads, there’s documentary evidence that the label applies.

Advance coverage by NPR, the Los Angeles Times, American Songwriter and many other outlets - not to mention the emotional subject matter of the concept album - suggests that when these story songs are released this Friday, Gauthier’s worldwide audience, and then some, will be paying close attention.