High Atmosphere

High Atmosphere, the latest album in the remarkable career arc of singer-songwriter Diana Jones, hits with the force of a revelation, further deepening an unprecedented body of work that began in 2006. Nashville singer-songwriter brings the mountain ballad tradition into the present day. Jim Lauderdale makes guest appearance; Keith Secor (Old Crow Medicine Show) produced. Full press and promotion accompanies this release. On her new release, due out on May 2nd, 2011 on Proper Records and recorded entirely live with simpatico musicians (including Jim Lauderdale) at Quad studios in Nashville, this single-minded artist continues to hew to an austere, plainspoken aesthetic, yet its timelessly homespun frameworks are embedded with distinctly topical subject matter. As Bill Friskics-Warren pointed out in his New York Times profile, Jones "approaches the mountain-ballad tradition not as a curiosity or antique but as a renewable vernacular that's just as capable of speaking to the human condition now as it was 80 years ago." "The songs I write," says Jones, who has a second career as a portrait artist, "are informed by my experiences within a certain time frame, so they become a sort of world within themselves. For this new record, I was on the road a lot, trying to catch up to myself and the things that were happening in my life. This was very different from my previous experiences. Jones got the title from an old Rounder LP that her co-producer Ketch Secor (Old Crow Medicine Show) had given to her; it was called High Atmosphere, and the title song was a banjo instrumental, but the phrase resonated, and she subsequently made the connection. Also available: Better Times Will Come (PRPCD043)