Rebecca Martin - The Growing Season

Rebecca had come down to New York from rural Maine and had a band called Once Blue with singer guitarist Jesse Harris. Their album on EMI still sounds playful and timeless, as if Blossom Dearie had recorded with Steely Dan. a series of projects followed: an album of standards, MIDDLEHOPE; a lovely album of her own songs, PEOPLE BEHAVE LIKE BALLADS; a collaborations with legendary drummer Paul Motion, that lead to a fine CD, ON BROADWAY 4 or THE PARADOX OF CONTINUITY. THE GROWING SEASON is an album of songs about motherhood, about living in the world and living in your body. There is an effortlessness about it, buoyed by the lighter-than-air rhythms of drummer Brian Blade, the supple rightness of Larry Grenadier's beautiful emphatic bass, the otherworldly chording's of guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel, all anchored by Rebecca's elegant songs, lovely, picked guitar and smoky, generous voice. It's a voice that seems to leave nothing out: sex and death and breakfast and wind in the trees and tax forms and laughter and night. All at once.