Bluebird

Sarah White lives in a postal address area outside of Charlottesville, Virginia, called White Hall. She has lived most of her life in either Virginia or West Virginia, never more than a stone's throw away from the Blue Ridge Mountains. But she isn't a hermit. She isn't a disconnected member of society living in a wood shack evading technology or a person of poor length of bone who was found under a rock and is now being pushed on you as the poster child for "the new and truly authentic," as a reminder of what American music "really" is at its roots. Sarah went to college. She lived for some time in San Francisco and has travelled the world many, many times. And maybe why her music immediately strikes a chord is that it is informed by so many, many different, disparate musical traditions. BLUEBIRD isn't a folk record, although at times it makes you feel like Sarah has in her collection Hazel Dickens' or Smithsonian-era Lucinda Williams' records. It isn't a country record, but it makes you think maybe she was raised listening to Emmylou Harris. Finally, it isn't something that comes close to what you would consider rock, although the "rock" or "pop" sections of record stores is where it will end up. Like Marianne Faithfull's BROKEN ENGLISH record, BLUEBIRD is a fish out of water. And perhaps on this record Sarah has become, in one body and mind, the communion of Kris Kristofferson and Rita Coolidge, ala FULL MOON.