Laura Cantrell was born and raised in Nashville, and even though she was surrounded by country music, she never thought about being a singer or songwriter when she was young. She relocated to New York to attend Columbia University before the performing bug bit her. After graduation, Cantrell worked full-time at a bank, hosted a country radio show on WFMU in Jersey City, put together a band, kept writing songs and started making records. She used traditional country songs as a template for compositions of her own that stretched the boundaries of the music and won her a legion of loyal fans. BBC DJ John Peel called Not The Tremblin’ Kind, her 2000 debut, “my favorite record of the last 10 years, possibly my life.” Cantrell made two more albums in the 2000s, balancing well-chosen covers with her original material, but on her new album, No Way There From Here, she presents 11 originals with only one cover. Cantrell will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new feature on her.
Cantrell: Artist Kate Jacobs and community radio stalwart Nicholas Hill are still creating radio-free magic in this roughly bi-monthly podcast featuring song contributions from writers such as Freedy Johnston, Peter Holsapfel, Victoria Williams and Amy Rigby & Wreckless Eric. All songs debuted on the Song Club are brought to life by the stellar Radio Free All Stars band led by Dave Schramm and David Mansfield. I used the club’s semi-regular gatherings as the first airing of most of the songs on No Way There From Here and discovered each song’s potential in those early sketches. There really isn’t anything finer for a writer than a great band to play a new song with. Why not record it all and let some folks on the internets listen in on the fun?
