Re-Release from Adelphi LP AD 2009
as download on GCD 2009
through Amazon and iTunes.
This one's a find!
Liz Meyer was part of the same Washington, DC folk/roots/country scene as Emmylou Harris and Bill & Taffy Danoff, and this album, which gathers recordings she made between 1975-77, is a testament to the vitality of that scene. It's also a pretty gritty, downright cool hard-country album, with a nice mix of covers and originals. She sings two Buck Owens songs, one by Hank Junior, and an earthy, rough-hewn rendition of Bill Anderson's Once A Day.
The most striking thing about Meyer is her tough, robust sound, both her affinity for true twang and her husky, throaty vocals, a tough-sounding voice that reminds me quite a bit of honkytonk heroine Melba Montgomery. More than half of the songs on here are Meyer's originals, including heartsong gems such as I Don't Know How To Say Goodbye and Someone You Can't Love, which is perhaps the album highlight.
Obviously it took Meyer a long time to get this record out, and she must have sat on these tapes for a while before assembling them into an album. The production is a little rough and so are some of the performances, but they are an excellent snapshot of the scene she was in, and among the guest musicians are Emmylou Harris herself singing backup on four of the songs, and superpicker Mike Auldridge playing dobro on two tracks.
Meyer moved to Europe in the 1980s and went on to record several albums, many with a bluegrass bent, and had several of her songs recorded by artists such as Laurie Lewis, Del McCoury, and the great Emmylou herself. Meyer passed away in 2011, after a long struggle with bone cancer, but she certainly left a great musical legacy behind, starting with this album of her excellent early work.
--DJ Joe Sixpack writing in slipcue.com
The passing of Liz Meyer, posted August 28, 2011 by Richard Thompson in Bluegrass Today
Liz Meyer, one of Europe’s adopted American bluegrassers, passed away on Friday 26 August [2011] after a decade-long battle with cancer.
In April 2009 doctors discovered severe bone dancer that led to a long stay in the Klinik St. Georg, Bad Aibling, Munich, Germany, from June of that year onwards. She had already beaten cancer six times prior to that. Sadly, in July Meyer had to return to the cancer hospital.
Born March 7, 1952 in Washington DC, the award-winning singer-songwriter had lived in the Netherlands since 1985.
Her songs have been recorded by bluegrass and folk acts in the USA and Europe, including Del McCoury, Laurie Lewis & Tom Rozum, Emmylou Harris, Kate MacKenzie, Acousticure, Red Wine and Nugget.
She has several albums that feature her own material also, starting with the 1982 release on Adelphi, Once a Day. Since 1995 most of her recordings have been on Strictly Country, the label that she helped her husband from October 1986, Pieter Groenveld, run. The first of these was Womanly Arts (SCR 37), actually recorded in Nashville. That was followed by The Storm for which she penned all but one of the dozen songs featured.
In addition to the two studio albums was the folk-orientated Regions of the Soul that consisted of live recordings of duets with guitarist Mark Cosgrove (actually released on the Strictly Music label) and the collection of recordings on-stage with the Czech group: Live at the European World of Bluegrass, 1999-2003.
She was a very pro-active and vocal promoter of the European World of Bluegrass (EWoB) and European bluegrass music in general.
During the past two decades Meyer produced more than 30 albums, including CDs by singer-songwriters David Olney and Jonathan Edwards and those in the European World of Bluegrass series.
She is a Leadership Bluegrass alumnus.
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