Heather Little

By Now

Need To Know

Heather Little was a new name to this writer and to most of you. She’s only released one album, 2013’s Wings Like These. Yet, when viewing the musicians and vocalists in the liners, the likes of Audley Freed, Duke Levine, Jared Tyler, Paul Griffith, Eamon McLoughlin, Patty Griffin, Leslie Satcher, Crystal Bowersox, and so many others, someone much bigger than an obscure singer-songwriter had to be behind this effort. So, with her second album, By Now, in her own words “46 years in the making,” Little takes that huge ‘songwriter’s songwriter’ step that Gretchen Peters and Lori McKenna took, forging solo careers after penning so many great hits for country artists, prominently Miranda Lambert and Sunny Sweeny. Yes, those in musical circles were aware of Heather Little’s talents, long before the rest of us. In the liner notes Little proves gracious – “This project was brought to life by talents I only dreamed would ever grace the liner notes of a record with my name on it.”

 Before going further, another valuable element of credibility comes with the label itself, Need to Know as producers Brian Brinkerhoff and Frank Swart have more than proved their mettle with albums from the late Malcolm Holcombe, Nathan Bell, Terry Klein, Malcolm MacWatt, and others.

Little’s stories are both autobiographical and fictional, though it is often hard to tell the difference. Now in her third marriage, Little has done some living. Even the titles pique curiosity – “Five Deer County,” “Razor Wire,” “My Father’s Roof,” and “Gunpowder and Lead,” for example. One of those marriage dissolutions is described in the opening banjo driven “Five Deer County,” featuring Rusty Van Sickle on background vocals. One man’s obsession had its costs, not only in monetarily wise, but the leaving the mother behind with young children left an even bigger hole, which she capsulates in the last few verses – “…Little one number three is five months old/Daddy tags out early and he don’t’ come home…..I ain’t no ball and chain/I’d rather give him back his name/and let him have all he’s ever dreamed.”  The accordion imbued “Hands Like Mine” also takes on the grind that is a marriage. Written at a time when she thought her third one was about to break (and being wrong about it, thankfully), this one, like so many others, has that cinching last line – “They don’t make a ring/For hands like mine.” It’s the first of two featuring Patty Griffin on background vocals.

“Razor Wire” moves away from marriage and addresses those who are abandoned in an anguished plea to be more empathetic and merciful to those who need help (i.e., not such a hard edge). Drawn from her own experience, she recounts in the voice of a drug addict who went missing so often that her family stopped looking for her. In the second and third verses she rails against abandonment by family, both biological and chosen to the accompaniment of strings, piano, and Leslie Satcher’s harmonies. – “Be my razor wire stomping in circles like fool/And I’ll be looking for you too.”

 The ballad “Bones” as Little urges us, by way of her experience to learn from our mistakes and embrace the past rather than being secretive about missteps. She applies this same theme to her checkered history with lovers in “Better By Now” that features Ronnie Bowman on harmonies. It reminds me of recent show where the avant-gardist Laurie Anderson affected the audience with her statement – “Don’t hate yourself so much.” Little certainly has vitriol for herself and former partner in these lines – “I don’t want your hands/I don’t want your tools/Your knife is dirty and your plans are cruel…You carved a hole in the soul of me/And I filled it up with gasoline.”

That vitriol takes a 180 degree turn in “Landfall” where she shows so much love and respect in her heartfelt tribute to her late grandmother. In another with Griffin, on “This Life Without You,” she addresses a different kind of loss, two friends who struggled with physical and mental illness, one of them taking the easy route out, singing emotively over sparse, haunting backdrop of the emptiness that now prevails. She plies another kind of nostalgia in “Transistor Radio,” longing for a simpler time before the advent of the internet, social media, and cell phones. Her Texas drawl and Pahl’s pedal steel add to the yearning for the old days. The opening static and ending strains of electronica are a less than subtle touch. On the other hand, the piano and pillowy strings camouflage the devastating hurt of child abuse in “My Father’s Roof” which seems unfortunately autobiographical as well. She warns us to be wary of those who are what they are not in “Saint Christopher” (with Crystal Bowersox) while “Sunset Inn” reminds us that ‘home’ is mostly a state of mind, an immovable state as well.

The penultimate and closing track, also about domestic abuse, “Gunpowder and Lead” features Van Plating who also plays violin and was co-written with Miranda Lambert in 2006. However, this version, unheard in any Lambert rendering, contains a second verse, repeated in the chorus,  about a woman who decides enough is enough – “I’m going home gonna load my shotgun/Wait by the door and light a cigarette/He wants a fight, well now he’s got one…Slapped my face and he shook me like a ragdoll/Don’t that sound like a real man/I’m gonna show him what little girls are made of…His fist is big but my gun is bigger/He’ll find out when I pull the trigger.”

 Heather Little is not one to mess with – the epitome of that bumper sticker “Don’t mess with me/I’m from Texas.” She’s taken what are often trite and recycled country themes and turned them into not only literary songs, but ones that have indelible poignancy. My bet is that her next album comes soon and that long hiatuses are now in the rear view. This could well be the Americana album of the year, were her name more recognizable. Her time is now.

• Jim Hynes

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