Gwyneth Moreland Takes the Orchard to Town and Back with a Entourage of Nashville Icons

Gwyneth Moreland plays well with grown-ups. She of course is one, but she’s taken it on herself to bring on board her new record some of the headiest of musically fermented experts to play along with her. Her album features an image of orchard fruits in a fruit basket. The fruits are ripe from a combination of her intoxicating range and often unique voicings and the stripes-earned instrumental and verbal elicitations of players supporting her sonic apples and oranges. The tunes are her own fresh offerings, many co-written with husband Skyler Hinkle, all one form or another of that catch-all, Americana. To my ear and understanding, each tune grows in nuance and individuality.

Number one on the album, “Movin’ On” is jazzy, A tune appropriate for a swing band at the local VFW that night.

She has a personal way of delivery that is fresh like the analogy I paint of this musical marketplace. A straight-forward, personable, rich round volume varying in pitch as the work rests differently in the air fresh out of the apple basket wire and slats. I got to see/hear her perform in one of the many nicely idiosyncratic guest-room/suite concerts by artists from throughout the world at this year’s Folk Alliance International Conference in Kansas City.

The album comes across as fresh as she did in performance and could have dropped off a 1950’s fruit wagon on the way to Saturday market..

One of her colleagues on the album is the iconic Gene Parsons, one of the original Byrds, yes, the Byrds! and later the Flying Burrito Brothers. He can clearly be heard on one tune with his pedal steel undulating throughout the song, and his banjo paints a really jaunty picture on a couple of other outings. You can’t see the bright, bushy, white mustache while he picks away on that rootsy instrument. He’s quite incredible on the album, as is Steven Bates, the striking young picker and crooner on guitar. I was just listening to the Byrds on vinyl this morning.

David Haynes, who has played with almost everyone but mostly with Van Morrison over the years, comes in on bass mostly, his major piece, but also vocals, electric bass, mandolin, percussion, keyboard, guitar, and harmonica. He had been a teacher of Gwyneth and is a regular fixture in her music, live and on record.

All these folks, and then some, including brother Morgan Daniel and his smiling face on electric guitar and harmony vocals, are in evidence. Most of them live in proximity of each other in the lovely Christmas greeting-card setting of coastal Mendocino, CA.

Gwyneth, who is also a veterinary technician, and her husband and kids live in a country setting complete with sheep, horse, chickens, and other livestock. The setting is reflected in the rootsy quality of many of the songs on the album, the folksy evocation of the simple, yet rich and inwardly complex life in a place resembling wilderness in ways.

Some of my favorites are along those lines of her immediately previous cd, Ceilings, Floors, and Open Doors. This includes songs such as Slaughterhouse Gulch and Pine Box Sailor, both of which climbed the folk charts. I love the funky, rustic melodies here and simple, yet rich feelings expressed.

But, the just-out album Cider is a winning effort too and represents some refreshing changes or additions. My favorite tune on the new album is the dynamic, melodic “California Zepher,” about a heartbreak journey on that scenic Amtrak branch. For being a break-up song, its wonderfully lively and lyrical,

Take me down to Union Station/to my black coat put a pink carnation/Kiss me twice for love and luck/In my hands place your last few bucks/Honey babe I’m leaving you.

And then later:

Won’t you listen to the train coming down the tracks/It carries me away, won’t carry me back/I know I’m not the one you treasure/Gonna catch that train, the California Zepher/Honey babe I’m leaving you/All aboard the California Zepher.

The coastal-crested crooner is capable of creating her own traditions. Her song “Little Bird” has all the qualities and style of a tune handed down – or about to passed along – through generations.

Oh little bird, oh little bird/Why do you fly so high/Why don’t you come back and be with me tonight

I cannot and I will not fly down to be with thee/Your chains have released you and you released me

When you hear that, you’d swear you grew up with it. It has that quality of folk song that feels lasting, in the sustaining, often comforting way good folk songs can be.

Another of those I’m most attached to is “Broken Road.” Love the sound and sense of this.

Snake of light above me keep my feet upon the path/Keep my footsteps steady strong and hide my heart from wrath/Save a sack of grain for the horse for when it snows/And send word to my baby that I walk a broken road.

Gwyneth grew up around music played on vinyl offerings of Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee and Joan Baez and such by her artist parents, her father a metal sculptor and her mother a fiber artist. Speaking of family, her aunt is the famed TV and movie star, Oscar winner Donna Reed.

Moreland would hear the soulful music and look out over the misty redwoods and crashing Pacific below her.

As with her previous album, her songs are heavily influenced by her surroundings. As in title song, “Cider,” something of a cross between a song and a prayer, set in the bliss and uncertainty of the orchard (Now I lay me down to sleep?):

Of earthen gold the souls of trees/Apples grown stout by ocean breeze/Orbs of red so deep a hue/Our union they were witness to/Now they lie in ferment deep/For in our bed a baby sleeps

Hands that hold turn the press/Young and old that we love best/Branches bare and the cellar waits/Winters chill will not hesitate/These treeless souls are bound to sleep/What earth has wrought the earth will keep

Leaving prayer to end with a graceful benediction combined with a lyrical, and somewhat jazzy, lullaby, set to the beauties of her surroundings and those of us all …  And, softly propelled by harmonies, soft percussion, the rhythmic ups and downs of her voice, and  …  peace, she finishes with “Summer Song:”

River twilight hush sleeping down so low low/Rivers done with rushing creeping by so slow slow/Ain’t afraid of nothing got nowhere to go go/sunset’s all a-blushing putting on a show show