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: I discovered a Big Star record in the collection of a college friend whose apartment I rented one summer. Being a Southern girl of a certain age, the jangly sweet and sad music seemed both familiar and revelatory. I loved Nothing Can Hurt Me’s descriptions of art punk Memphis of the 1970s and the footage of Tav Falco and Alex Chilton on local Memphis television, channeling the Sex Pistols on the BBC, thumbing their noses at the niceties of Southern propriety. What could have been an angry and bitter story is instead of bittersweet snapshot of Chris Bell and Alex Chilton—their dreams, muses, near misses and the gorgeous music they made.
Video after the jump.
