Laura Kepner-Adney of the Laura Jean Band has recently focused on bringing her voice to the forefront and writing very personal music.
This is the case with her band’s 11-track album, “Shadow Ridge,” which the Laura Jean Band will celebrate on Sunday, Dec. 15, at Club Congress.
Kepner-Adney will be featured on guitar and vocals during the album release show. She will play with her regular band members, Robin Hanshaw on bass, Julius Schlosburg on drums and Clay Koweek on pedal steel and lead guitar.
They will also be joined by Cassie Van Gelder, who will add harmonies and play the keyboard. This is the first time she has performed with the group. Fellow Tucsonans, Cathy Rivers and the Last Transmissions, will support the act.
Kepner-Adney’s band is formerly known as Laura and the Killed Men. This group was known for its Appalachian sound, which included prominent four-part harmonies.
Under its former name, the band opened for Mavis Staples, went on a 12,000-mile cross-country tour, and performed in Alaska.
The Laura Jean Band was formed about a year ago. Kepner-Adney has been working with Hanshaw for the last 10 years. Kepner-Adney worked on the band’s latest album with her former collaborator and bandmate Sam Golden, who owns Holiday Heart Studio in St. Louis.
At his studio, she previously recorded the nonfestive holiday song “I Won’t Be Home for Christmas.” The song was released as a single last year and now appears on “Shadow Ridge.” The video for this holiday song was shot in the Monsoon Room at JoJo’s Restaurant.
“I had gotten this Glen Campbell album at a garage sale, and it was a Christmas album,” Kepner-Adney said.
“You could listen to it in August, and it would feel like Christmastime. I wanted to evoke this same feeling, make it sound like a Christmas song, but have it actually be about how your life is not all about Christmas… It breaks apart stereotypes of Christmas, everyone coming together, but then it devolving into capitalism. You get your family together, but it’s never perfect, and everybody wants something they don’t get. It’s not always all it’s cracked up to be.”
The new album crisscrosses genres, including folk, country and southern rock. Kepner-Adney said the “Americana” label best fits the band.
The artist said she doesn’t fit perfectly into the country category even though she plays country songs. She said the term “Americana” best fits her band’s sound.
“It’s just this perfectly broad term that spans roots, folk, and country. Southern rock can even be in there,” Kepner-Adney said.
The song “Country Enough” pokes fun of her plight. She said she works to prove she’s a country artist — especially in Tucson.
This is the first album that Kepner-Adney has written almost entirely by herself.
“The album, itself, is my concepts,” said Kepner-Adney, who is inspired by Sierra Ferrell, Molly Tuttle, Sarah Jarosz and Jaime Wyatt.
“It’s my melodies. It’s my lyrics. It’s my ideas, and then a lot of credit should also go to Sam Golden. He plays bass. He sings backing vocals. He did all the strings, some of the keyboards. We just collaborate really well. He helped make it everything that I wanted to make it, that I couldn’t do on my own. I should also say that Clay adds some pedal steel to the album.”
She said “Shadow Ridge” was challenging, but the process allowed her to grow as a musician.
“It’s been really freeing,” she said.
“I love collaborating. I love writing with people. I think you can never generate anything that’s as good by yourself as you can when collaborating with the right person. This has been this process of trusting myself and telling myself that even if it’s a little silly or a little stupid, it can still be good. It’s learning to trust yourself, and it’s taken me a very long time, but I made something that I’m super proud of, and I’m excited to put it into the world.”
She also has a background in graphic design and created the album art, which features wallpaper from her childhood home.
“It was just a way to bring more of myself into it…. I did all the design for the album as well, but the backgrounds for it are just straight-up wallpaper from the house that I grew up in, that my parents still live in now… Because this album is all mine, I wanted it to feel as much like a self-portrait as it could,” Kepner-Adney said.
Although the genres and subject matter vary, the project is cohesive.
“I wanted to make the album feel like a place, that if you’re going to sit down, listen to the whole thing and close your eyes, you would be in a place that has variety to it but all feels like it’s one thing,” Kepner-Adney said.
The title track “Shadow Ridge” came from the artist’s trips to perform at Loews Ventana Canyon Resort.
“Shadow Ridge is a neighborhood in North Tucson, up near the foothills,” she said.
“I drive past there on my way to a gig that I sometimes play at Ventana Canyon in the lounge, and there’s this cool old sign. It looks like it’s been there since like the ’50s or ’60s. It says ‘Shadow Ridge.’ When I was coming home one night, I saw that sign, and it just sparked this little melodic moment that I decided to turn into a song.
“It references a bridge and a tragedy. It reminded me of Bobbie Gentry’s ‘Ode to Billie Joe.’ I wanted to incorporate some element from it into my song. Working with Sam at Holiday Heart Studio, I said, ‘I want a Jimmie Haskell string arrangement just like on ‘Ode to Billie Joe’ for this song, just to evoke that feeling, this eerie sense of love and loss.”
Another song, “Henrietta and Delphine,” came from Kepner-Adney’s experiences shopping at estate sales during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“There were these two estate sales that I went to that I was particularly inspired by,” Kepner-Adney said.
“You really get to know someone’s life and their story. I learned these women’s names. Actually, one of them, I just wanted to know more about her. She was so compelling. I did some research. Every song has elements of truth and then storytelling to make it more interesting. The song became about these two women and then about the larger picture of women from that era in society and the roles they were expected to play.”
She purchased an industrial mixer and a rhinestone brooch from those estate sales. For the “Henrietta and Delphine” video, the musician incorporated pictures of her female ancestors from both sides of her family.
“There are photos interspersed in there, just paying tribute to the women who came before me,” Kepner-Adney said.
Laura Jean Band
WHEN: 7 p.m. doors, 7:30 p.m. show. Sunday, Dec. 15
WHERE: Club Congress, 311 E. Congress Street, Tucson
COST: 21 and older, $12 in advance and $15 day of show plus fees
INFO: 520-622-8848, hotelcongress.com, laurajeanmusic.com
