This is the album that singer-songwriter Allison Moorer has been waiting years to make and if it’s not career-defining, it is certainly her most focused, personal, and revealing one. Her rich Southern emotive alto voice remains a remarkable instrument and her writing is sharper than it’s ever been. These ten songs on Blood serve as companion pieces to her highly anticipated autobiography Blood: A Memoir which will be released on October 29th. A unique hybrid tour will feature Moorer with special guest moderators in select cities for an evening of music and conversation around the new book. Those of us familiar with Moorer’s career realize that she’s touched on her tragic childhood in song, especially on her album The Hardest Part (2000) but she unveils the entire story for the first time on this deeply personal, cathartic, and ultimately soul cleansing work. The book is a detailed account of Moorer and her sister Shelby Lynne’s childhood growing up in a troubled home in southern Alabama, which ended with the well-documented murder-suicide of her parents in 1986.
Moorer would never have felt fulfilled in her mission as a songwriter until she completed the project, albeit more so the memoir than the album. (more on this later) The album serves as a song cycle, directly connected to the people, emotions, trauma, and state of mind that are detailed very vividly in the memoir. What emerges is that there was much more to her family than just the tragedy and darkness. There was love, there was a protective mother, there was a bond of sisterhood, and, of course, there was music. As mentioned Moorer has touched on the subject before but had to find the right moment and the right level of confidence to pore deeply into the subjects of abuse, alcoholism, intimidation, poverty and neglect that existed prior to the deaths. She enumerates her reasons for holding back in the memoir.
Fortunately, the album provides a balance. Shortly after their parents passing, Shelby Lynne found the unfinished lyrics to a song in their father’s briefcase, which Allison wrote the music for. “I’m the One to Blame,” is recorded sparely with just Moorer’s voice and acoustic guitar as a moving powerful confession, especially impactful knowing that they are her father’s words. He was a struggling songwriter who could never get a foothold which she addresses by taking his voice in “Set My Soul Free.” She addresses depression and heartbreak in “Bad Weather,” frightened young sisters clinging to each other in “Nightlight,” the stoic, persevering character of their mother in the rocking “The Rock and the Hill,” unfulfilled voids in “All I Wanted” and a hopeful plea in the hymn-like, piano-driven “Heal” (written with Mary Gauthier).
Her first attempt at this story was the song “Cold, Cold Earth” which appeared as a hidden, unlisted track on The Hardest Part. At that time, her long-time producer and guitarist Kenny Greenberg, who also produced this project, convinced her to add it. She revisits it here, it now having a bit more distance on which she can shed a new perspective. Hers is not a story of pity, but one of survival, understanding, compassion, growth and ultimately triumph. This is expressed best by her close friend and great songwriter Rosanne Cash who stated, “There are few writers – few people, in fact -who could examine with such profound bravery the immense suffering and trauma in her story, infuse it with a lyrical sense of timelessness, and make us feel grateful for the telling. ‘Blood” is both unflinching and redemptive: a song of loss and courage.”
Moorer never originally intended to write a companion but perhaps her Masters of Fine Arts in Writing form NYC’s New School in 2017 gave her the impetus and realization that she had some new tools. Moorer is a well-decorated artist with Oscar, Grammy and Americana Music Award nominations. She has little to prove musically. “I’ve been playing the see me/don’t see me game for 20 years,” she says. “And it’s always been an uneasy relationship. It’s been a difficult thing for me as an artist, and I’m not completely sure why. I thought when I wrote ‘Cold, Cold Earth,’ I was answering all the questions; but I’m not John Prine, I couldn’t do that in three verses.” Upon revisiting “Cold, Cold Earth,” she understood the depths of what happened in a more grown up way. “Just because my Daddy made the choice that he did,” she offers, “doesn’t mean he wasn’t worthy of compassion, consideration and contemplation, you know? He is worthy. I made my Mama the hero. I needed to do that, and she is absolutely for so many reasons, as is my sister. They all deserve that. And he deserves credit…understanding…recognition…compassion…and love.”
Now a twice-divorcee, mother to John Henry, essayist/blogger, off-Broadway veteran with “Rebel Voices,” the stage adaptation of Howard Zinn’s acclaimed Voices of a People’s History of The United States and wife to Americana mainstay Hayes Carll, Moorer has more life and “learnin’,” as she calls it. “It was important to make this record with Kenny Greenberg,” she says of the rock/roots guitarist/producer, “because he’s been there since the beginning. I trusted him, and knew he understood. He understood me, my story, my voice, my fears and especially my will to do the right thing by these songs. I couldn’t have done this with anybody else.”
Most of Blood is stripped-down musically because Moorer jokes that she didn’t have the money but in fact, it’s rather purposeful in order to create the requisite level of intimacy. She and Greenberg wanted to let the songs breathe. “As a singer, I’ve been through a lot of stages. I grew up in a house where you had to sing loud to be heard. When I sing now, there’s a quality of just letting go. Whereas before I was more studied and calculated, I’ve grown into my voice. I don’t even think about it anymore. When I open my mouth to sing now, everything besides emotion is an afterthought – the voice knows where to go.” Moorer now realizes that her story may be too big for one art form and feels the album is more than just a companion piece, that it says things beyond words. The album is spare, economical, and certainly dark in places but there’s a glimmer of light too. It’s as if each song sheds a little more skin or protective layer so that by the closing “Heal” the listener can almost envision this incredibly strong woman emerging, free with a fist in the air.
