NEW YORK — The uplifting single Forgiveness is generating airplay and acclaim for Jennifer Cutting, formerly of electric folk band The New St. George, and the way she continues to meld British and American folk/rock influences.
The tune — which features a vocal performance by British folk/rock legend Maddy Prior that is being hailed as one of her finest in years — will be part of a CD Cutting is assembling. The track was released last month as a CD single on Cutting’s Takoma Park, MD-based SunSign label, available via her Web site (www.jennifercutting.com) and local retailer House of Musical Traditions.
In addition to Prior, Forgiveness features Mary Chapin Carpenter’s guitarist John Jennings, who produced the New St. George’s 1994 Folk Era album High Tea, and Carpenter’s drummer, Dave Mattacks, famous from seminal British folk/rock band Fairport Convention. Cutting plays piano and Hammond B-3 organ.
“I played it as soon as I got it,” says Paul Hartman, an air personality at WTMD, the radio station of Maryland’s Towson University. Hartman, who is also editor of folk/world music magazine Dirty Linen, has followed Cutting’s career since the New St. George. “It’s certainly got some of the top people in folk/rock, and if the rest of the project lives up to the standard, it should be a dynamite CD.”
Seconding Hartman is House of Musical Traditions head Dave Eisner: “[Cutting] says it’s only a single, but it’s a piece of art masquerading as a single and literally transfixed me the same way [Paul Simon’s] Graceland did.”
For Prior, Forgiveness is a song of great subtlety and depth, with a gloriously emotive melody.” Cutting notes that she wrote it “almost as a visualization exercise in struggling to make sense of an overwhelming hurt.” The song came to Prior’s attention after it took first prize in 1996 at the prestigious Merle Watson Memorial Song Contest — in the gospel category.
Forgiveness, which will also appear on a future Prior album for Park Records in the U.K. and continental Europe, was finally recorded last August in England, propitiously during a rare total eclipse of the sun.
“Traditionally, an eclipse brings a benchmark to one’s life, and this was truly a benchmark event in my life,” says Cutting, who works as a folk music specialist for the Archive of Folk Culture in the Library of Congress’ American Folklife Center. “It was an all-star recording session, my most ambitious production ever.”
The session furthered Cutting’s continuing effort to bring together trans-Atlantic folk/rock influences. “There hasn’t been much cross-fertilization of British and American folk/rock musicians playing together, and for me, that combination is a musical whole that is greater than the sum of its parts,” says Cutting, an American who was schooled in England.
“I’ve spent many years in both countries, first studying British folk and folk/rock as an ethnomusicology grad student in London, and now working with traditional American music as an archivist here in Washington, D.C.,” she says. “From the English tradition comes those soaring, stately melodies and charming irregularities of phrasing; from the American tradition comes those steady, driving pulses and muscular rhythm sections. Put them together, and it’s pure ecstasy!”
Cutting, who also plays button accordion, has completed five songs for what she terms her “electric folk collection,” tentatively titled Johnny Has Gone Electric.
“Forgiveness is the only stately anthem," she says. “The rest of the material is a mix of uptempo folk/rockers , dreamier electric soundscapes, and traditional tunes involving jigs, with the arrangement dominated by my instruments: accordion and electric keyboard.”
Cutting, who is managed by Scott Miller at her SunSign Productions and self-published through Once and Future Songs (BMI), likens the work to “Celtic-tinged alternative rock” comparable to the Cranberries and Billy Bragg, as well as Richard Thompson, the pioneering British folk-rocker who has starred in Fairport Convention and as a solo artist. The New St. George, incidentally, took its name from a Thompson song.
Thompson and Fairport Convention recorded for the eclectic Hannibal Records, which Cutting cites as an “inspiration” and model for her current undertaking. Others include Donal Lunny’s Coolfin, the band of revolving all-stars fronted by the Irish folk music force.
“I’ve taken a page out of Burt Bacharach’s book and am recording each song with artists who I feel best express the vision of the song," Cutting adds.
“Instead of a fixed lineup, it’s kind of a global orchestra, bringing
together the best musicians from two countries in an atmosphere of open-minded
experimentation,” she says. “It’s the way I’ve always dreamed of making
recordings — and the end of a long voyage.”
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