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On July 17th, Propeller Sound Recordings rereleased country music artist Laura Cantrell’s Humming By The Flowered Vine, originally released in 2005 on Matador Records. The “Humming album,” as it became known to Cantrell fans, is a pivotal work in Cantrell’s music career – her previous recordings Not The Tremblin’ Kind and When the Roses Bloom Again had been released in the UK by Glasgow-based indie label Spit and Polish/Shoeshine; in the US, they had been the first full-length, single artist releases on Brooklyn’s Diesel Only Records, run by Cantrell’s husband Jeremy Tepper, and they’d established Cantrell as an Americana talent on the rise. “With my first two albums, we’d had an intense five years – starting with Tremblin’ Kind’s release in January 2000, from our first appearance at Celtic Connections in Glasgow that year, we sprinted nonstop – touring all over the UK and Ireland, earning the support and friendship of BBC legends John Peel and Bob Harris, opening for Willie Nelson and Elvis Costello in the US, playing every kind of gig from local bars all the way to the Grand Ole Opry, it was a terrific blur of hard work and happy accidents,” Cantrell recalls. “We were thrilled when the opportunity came to work with Matador. Making ‘Humming’ represented a creative leap, working with producer JD Foster and engineer Andy Taub at Brooklyn Recording. Having recorded my previous albums with my gigging band, largely in home studios, these sessions were expansive, with additional musicians like Dave Schramm, Joey Burns and Jon Convertino from Calexico, Amy Helm and Fiona McBain of Ollabelle. As the musical possibilities and sonic palette bloomed, I hoped my songs and voice would hold up in new surroundings. When I felt challenged or unsure, Jeremy was confident and excited, and his enthusiasm kept me steady through the process.”
The Humming By The Flowered Vine reissue features two songs by Dave Schramm, “And Still” and bonus track “Hammer and Nails.” Cantrell recalls, “I’d loved Dave’s ‘Hammer and Nails’ since he’d released his acoustic album with that tune as a title track a few years earlier, and I’d played it a fair amount on Radio Thrift Shop. I remember in the recording studio being really proud of our version, then realized as we finalized the track list we’d need to leave it off the album for time. I’m so happy it will be available to everyone finally, it has a depth that resonates even more so now.” Humming also features some of Cantrell’s best songwriting up to that point – “Bees,” her tribute to legendary BBC DJ John Peel which was also featured in the BBC television series Skins, “California Rose,” about pioneering country artist Rose Maddox, personal reminiscences like “Khaki and Corduroy” and “Old Downtown” – and her arrangement of “Poor Ellen Smith,” based on the version published by Ethel Park Richardson, Cantrell’s great, great Aunt, in her 1926 book American Mountain Songs.
In her 26-year career, Cantrell has explored many facets of a musical life: singer-songwriter, touring musician, radio host (she is currently the host of “Dark Horse Radio,” a program devoted to George Harrison on SiriusXM’s The Beatles Channel). Since 2000, Cantrell has released six studio albums and a compilation of live performances on the BBC. She has toured extensively in the US, UK and Ireland, and was a favorite of pioneering British DJ John Peel, who called her first album,Not The Tremblin’ Kind, “my favorite record of the last ten years, and possibly my life.”
Cantrell’s music has been celebrated in the press, including features in The New York Times, O magazine, Elle, The Wall Street Journal, The Sunday Times of London, and Maverick magazine.Cantrell’s music has been featured on NPR’s “All Things Considered,” “On Point” and “WeekendEdition” and the BBC’s Women’s Hour. She has performed on A Prairie Home Companion, “Mountain Stage,” and the Grand Old Opry, and appeared on the television programs LateNight With Conan O’Brien, and BBC One’s The Andrew Marr Show.
Cantrell continues, “Reflecting on it now, Humming became the end of an early chapter – we found out I was pregnant with my daughter Isabella after a run of shows on the West Coast in October of 2005 – she was born in 2006. And Jeremy had just created Outlaw Country at Sirius in 2004 and was building that. Our time of flying across the Atlantic four times a year and crisscrossing the UK in splitter vans hit a natural pause as we shifted focus to our daughter, and the next 20 years flew by. I think Jeremy (who passed away in 2024) would be pleased to see Humming By The Flowered Vine remembered on its 21st birthday, and I’m proud of it and the work we did together in this chapter of our musical lives.”
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