Canadian Singer/Songwriter Ruthie Purves Smith Sets August 16 Release Date for Her New Album, Piano in the Field
SWALWELL, AB – Ruthie Purves Smith often writes songs about the downtrodden and the destitute—good folks on the wrong side of privilege. Take the title track of her new album, Piano in the Field, which releases on August 16 via her Ruthie Purves Smith label imprint, and tells the story of a homeless woman living on a skiff of land at the edge of the road near Purves Smith’s rural Alberta hamlet. The woman moved her son and worldly belongings to the field and then lost them one-by-one. First the boy, then her pickup truck and finally—when she herself moved on—the piano was left out to pasture. She just couldn’t get out from under what life had thrown her, a familiar theme in Purves Smith’s music.
Piano in the Field features Ruthie Purves Smith on lead vocals, with electric, acoustic guitars and banjo by Jonathan Lagore; steel guitar and Dobro by Mitch Jay; drums by Corbett Frasz; bass by Lisa Jacobs; keyboards and piano by Steve Fletcher; background vocals by Esther Purves-Smith, Sydney Zadravec, Lana and Keith Floen. Ruthie’s late father, Bill Purves Smith, makes a spoken word guest “ghost” appearance, with additional guest players Keith Floen on piano; Derek Pulliam on bass; and Dave Holloway on guitar. The album was recorded in Calgary, Alberta, Canada at Dog in the Window Studio, produced by: Derek Pulliam and Jonathan Lagore; and arranged by Jonathan Lagore.
Purves Smith grew up dividing her time between the city, the ranch and her family’s 100-year-old woolen mill in the sticks. Her parents were ‘70s back-to-the-land bohemians who would collect lichen in the woods and dye fleece in the bathtub before buying an old wool factory. They lived in a train station- turned house that they had bought from the province for a dollar. She grew up wild, spending a lot of time alone on the land: building forts in the willow trees, playing in the mud, learning bushcraft and wrangling horses. She often felt so much a part of the natural world that she would forget how to use language altogether. But it would all come back in the evenings as she listened to her parents sing and play guitar by the fireside, her dad’s tenor voice entwining with her step-mom’s birdlike falsetto.
Purves Smith got a guitar at age ten, a classical Espana model that was easy on her small hands. By the time she was teenager in the pink and aqua haze of the 1980s, she was touring prairie dive bars six nights a week in short skirts and big hair as frontwoman for the band Rodeo a Go Go. She played on the Saskatchewan country music television show, “Number One West,” with Brian Sklar and the Tex Pistols. Purves-Smith married the band’s saxophone player, settled down and had kids—but never lost the dream of making music and being on stage.
Fast forward a decade and Purves Smith got inspired to write her own songs after meeting noted Canadian songwriter Fred Eaglesmith. “He wrote about dogs, old ladies and tractors,” Purves Smith reminisces. “Something just clicked. I realized you could write about what you know.” She knew a lot by then—hardships, a tough marriage and lots of people who had fallen through the cracks in society. “By the time I found out you could write a happy song, it was too late,” she laughs. She had already found her calling. Her first album, Out in the Storm, tracked in the top 100 on MTV; but her second outing, Faster than the Speed of Dark, came out when she herself had fallen on hard times.
Purves Smith’s new comeback album, Piano in the Field, brings her full circle. While her songs are often stories about other people’s lives, they’re also metaphors for her own experience, and the difficulties of modern life writ large. “Call An Angel,” co-written with Fred Koller (who’s collaborated with Nanci Griffith and John Prine), underlines the growing wealth gap in our world. She sings, “Call an angel / call a cop / call in the army / to make it stop.” “Chelsea in the Walmart Parking Lot” is about Purves-Smith giving her last ten dollars to a tear-stained homeless woman she met outside the big box store. The album has two songs dedicated to her late father. “Cross Over to You” starts with a scene of Purves-Smith as a child on a rickety bridge, too scared to cross and in need of her dad’s help. It’s a song she wrote while he was still alive and she hoped he would sing harmony on, but he “couldn’t get his head around the song.” She later realized he meant that he couldn’t sing it without crying, which is often true for her now. “Leonard Cohen Cover” includes some old recordings of her dad talking and singing, a ghostly presence in the atmosphere.
Ruthie Purves Smith is back, living out her legacy spinning stories into songs.
Americana and country radio promotion for Ruthie’s new album is being handled by Bill Wence Promotions: billwencepro@earthlink.net.
Piano in the Field Track Listing and Song Notes by Ruthie
- CALL AN ANGEL by Ruthie Purves Smith & Fred Koller- This song is a co-write with my illustrious friend, Fred Koller. We wrote it 10 years ago at his antiquarian book store in Nashville. The days go by so fast, but timing is everything. Fred has written for or with so many great artists such as Loretta Lynn, Nanci Griffith, John Prine, Jeff Healey, John Hyatt to Don Williams, Kathy Mattea and The Smothers Brothers just to name a few!
- CHELSEA by Ruthie Purves Smith & Brady Enslen – This song is from a true story. Late one night I walked out of a Walmart, and, standing in the parking lot, was a beautiful girl crying. I asked if she was okay, and she said her fella had disappeared and left her abandoned alone. I gave her my literal last 10 bucks to catch a bus back to the bridge they slept under where she thought she might find him. A few months later, I told Brady the story, and this is what we came up with. Brady Enslen is a brilliant musician and writer.
3. PIANO IN THE FIELD by Ruthie Purves Smith – This is a big one. In 2017 I was destitute and homeless, having survived a terrible “me too” thing with a nasty promoter I had been working for. Broken and defeated, I returned to a tiny, half renovated shack in the country that I still owned with my ex-husband. He was working on fixing it up, but it had sat empty for 16 years, and was a shambles. My world was a mess. As I flailed in my defeat, I remembered a story I had heard many years before. A woman, with her young son, had taken all her worldly possessions, including an upright grand piano, to a little patch of land along a rambling country road, intent on starting over. She set up her life beside the farm fields. After a while, the boy was no longer with her, and the piano was sitting outside. She somehow lost her pickup truck, and would hitch hike out to the road to get to her spot. Eventually, she left everything where it sat and did not return. Her story became the metaphor of my life, and of the trauma we see so much of these days. Poverty, addiction, abuse, mental illness, and dire circumstances are tearing apart the fabric of our society. Still, something drives many of us to cling to hope, and drag our 1200 pound pianos with us as we desperately attempt to keep our lives and love alive. I called my sister, Esther, and talked to her about my situation, and the story of the woman. I sang her a few lines of the song I wanted to write, and she came back to me almost immediately with our song written. Sometimes, our greatest sorrow becomes our truest voice. The tiny shack is now my artist’s sanctuary.
4. CROSS OVER TO YOU by Ruthie Purves Smith – This is the song I wrote for my father. I actually wrote it years ago when he was still alive. (He passed in 2011) I thought I was so smart cause I was gonna get my dad to sing it with me on my second album. Ya know, everybody dedicates a song to their dead father, but I was gonna have him sing with me while he was still alive. Dad loved to sing harmony, and would sing along with anything or anyone when he could. I gave him the lyrics and a rough recording to practice with. After a frustratingly long time of me pestering him to come to the studio, he finally said, “Ruthie, I can’t get my head around your song.” I was mad and crushed. He sang with everyone but wouldn’t sing with me??!! The years went by, and I didn’t record it. Then he passed away, and I couldn’t sing it anymore. I would choke up…it was just too painful…and I came to realize what he meant about not being able to sing it with me. He could have said so, but he was a tough guy sometimes. I would never have played it or sang it again, but Derek Pullium, my producer/engineer, wanted one more song on the album. He asked if I had something, and, not sure why, I told him about this song. I choked through it for him, and he INSISTED that I put it on the record. I was barely able to squeak out a scratch guide track, and left it for him. He and Jonathan Lagore, my other producer, turned it into the joyous anthem you hear. I can sing it again… Love in a song reborn from loss!
5. LOOK FOR LOVE by Ruthie Purves Smith – Whatsoever you do unto the least of me, so you do unto me. Just love for all, as much as you can.
6. OWN TRUE LOVE by Ruthie Purves Smith – Every country singer needs a lovely little murder ballad. This song speaks to the complex intertwining love and revenge can create. I wanted to imply this with a sweet melody and a nasty story. Too often humans are not kind to each other, and many times it starts with a broken heart.
7. LEONARD COHEN COVER by Ruthie Purves Smith – When I was a child I was fascinated with the art on the back cover of Leonard Cohen’s 1967 album, ‘Songs of Leonard Cohen’. I could not understand how anyone could burn a beautiful woman alive like that. My mind always searched for a way that she might have escaped. The art is known as an Anima Sola, and is representative of the soul escaping the chains of purgatory in the Roman Catholic tradition. My song is about a woman, the human race, the Earth. The metaphor of the Divine Feminine in the Flames is the story of this album’s journey. It features my father talking and singing from a recording captured in 2007, & gifted to me by the amazing Valleau Brothers, Jason & Sheldon.
8. CAPTAIN KIRK by Ruthie Purves Smith – I was there in the line-ups at the movie theatre to see the first Star Wars in 1977. Years before I saw Captain Kirk on my friend’s colour TV…The Captain always figured out a solution to the looming disaster. Growing up in the TV world of outer space led to a belief that our society was growing kinder and smarter…we were evolving into a beautiful planet of love and understanding…except…Darth Vader showed up. We followed the wrong star show. I just wanted to point this out…
9.MAMA’S GOT WHEELS by Jonathan Byrd- Jonathan Byrd is a rare and special human. Among other things, he writes a darn good song. I figured I would cover this one as a tribute to my love of fast cars…while I still have just a bit of horsepower in me! I earned my wheels in miles.
- HEAVY FOR US ALL by Ruthie Purves Smith This little song is a tribute, musically, to 1980s Country Music. The ’80s are one of my favourite decades for good music. I wrote this little ditty in the aftermath of a terrible experience. I actually took it to a songwriting workshop with Mary Gauthier, and she really slammed it. She argued with me about the definition of the word ‘demise’, and picked it apart. I was pretty crushed, as I really admire her. I went home, and reworked the song. Her critique helped me write the chorus, and fixed the song. The hard stuff in our lives is good too.
- WATER UP THE CREEK by Ruthie Purves Smith – I wrote this song in the dark winter of 2012. I had been wildly influenced by my friend and guitar legend, Bill Durst, and wanted to write something bluesy. There was a lot of snow that year and it stayed on the mountains until June which led to massive flooding in the June rains of 2013…Calgary was substantially washed away. This song was a premonition.
Hi-res cover: http://www.markpuccimedia.com/Ruthie-Purves-Smith-Hi-Res-JPG-Cover.jpeg
Hi-res photo: http://www.markpuccimedia.com/Ruthie-Purves-Smith-Hi-Res-Photo-by-Cliver-McGiver-.jpg
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