Back in May, at the New Mexico Music Awards, bassist Terry Burns introduced me to vocalist/songwriter Julie Christensen, and although her name was unfamiliar to me, the fact that she was a former backup singer for Leonard Cohen, as Terry had told me in advance, was all I needed to know to take a listen to her latest album, 11 from Kevin: Songs of Kevin Gordon. To call it a “masterpiece”—there’s a word I try to stay away from—in no way overstates its quality.

Julie Christensen
11 from Kevin: Songs of Kevin Gordon (Wirebird Records)
A review
I have a lot of holes in my musical knowledge and experience. It’s part of what makes Musically Speaking worthwhile for me—the potential to be surprised—and boy howdy was I surprised and astonished by vocalist/songwriter Julie Christensen’s latest release, 11 from Kevin: Songs of Kevin Gordon.

I had never heard of Iowa native Christensen, despite her long career stretching from Los Angeles to Nashville and her iconic stature as the frontperson for Divine Horsemen, Stone Cupid, and other aggregations. The songs of Kevin Gordon, a Louisiana native, had never, to my recollection, crossed my path, either. I’m pretty sure that Kevin Gordon is thrilled that Julie Christensen recorded these songs of his. I know I am.

What I found were 11 exquisitely written songs whose lyrics have the heft of poetry, lifted on the wings of music. You can smell these songs, they are so vivid in their portraitures and environments. They cover a lot of ground. There’s a good dose of desperation, held off by the faintest light of hope and persistence, in “Find My Way,” “Fire at the End of the World,” and “Heart’s Not in It/Down to the Well.” The charm and simplicity of small town life is captured, with tongue just touching cheek, in “Crowville,” and there is the sly innocence of burgeoning sexuality in “Joey and Clara,” when a childhood friend takes on a new dimension. “Gloryland” fiercely condemns the use of religion to lead people into self-harm to the benefit of the manipulator, be it preacher, president, or mullah, while “Following a Sign” captures the lonely state of a drifter with genuine healing powers. What starts as a violent rant against the sun in “Gatling Gun” turns into a heart-swelling account of love-tormented memory (“The wild meadow of her mind/The bloom of her soft kiss”). Gordon is a genuine adept in constructing complex, affecting experiences from the sparest, resonating observations.

Then, there’s Christensen, who penetrates to the heart of every song, and in whose voice you can hear a deep correspondence with the material. Oh, and her incomparable phrasing mines the deepest meaning from the lyrics, turning exquisite songwriting into an incandescent experience. Listen to how she elongates the word “Runnin’ ” in “Joey and Clara,” capturing not only the physical action but the emotional action, too. Much of Gordon’s power is held in the choruses, and Christensen honors them with exceptional empathy, their recurrence building layers of feeling in every song. She’s fearless and all in, and she takes you with her.

On top of all that, there’s the crystalline production—by Brett Ryan Stewart and Christensen—and the remarkable band that creates compelling settings. The music is itself an album of Americana, where a passel of America’s musical genres happily coexist—country, bluegrass, C&W, rock, jazz, blues, gospel, folk (well, it’s all folk, isn’t it?). The four primary folks are Sergio Webb and Chris Tench on all acoustic and electric guitars (though Christensen’s electric guitar makes a couple of appearances), Gregory Boaz on bass, and Chris Benelli on drums and percussion. The choice of instrumentation—I especially like how the added horns on “Following a Sign” provide a heavenly fanfare for the drifter—is spot on, as are the mixing by Stewart and the mastering by Mark Chalecki.

11 from Kevin runs deep. It brings us face-to-face with the doubts and desperations that plague all of us at one time or another and offers to inoculate us against them with its art. It shows us how complex simple things really are (“Crowville”), and how simple things can birth complexity (“Joey and Clara”). It nourishes our capacity for tolerance and empathy (“Following a Sign”) while stoking our indignation against fraud (“Gloryland”). It lets us know we’re not alone (“Find My Way”). It intoxicates us with the heart of things.

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© 2022 Mel Minter