American
jazz singer Nancy Erickson Lamont has been familiar with the Seattle
jazz scene for more than 3 decades. Nancy grew up in Salem, Oregon,
where she attended Edmonds Community College. Together with the singing group of that school she was able to perform at the Montreux Jazz Festival and the North Sea Jazz Festival. She started her career at the end of the eighties and sang in the Seattle band After Hours.
Her Christmas album 'Urban Christmas' followed in 1993 and she also sang in the backing choir of various R&B and rock bands, as well as with soul singer Bernadette Bascom. But the following year she decided to take care of her family. It wasn't until 15 years later that she returned to music and in 2012 she won the Seattle Kobe Female Jazz Vocalist Competition.
This is her fourth studio album and for me a first introduction. The songs on it are inspired by her life experiences over the past 30 years. Each song is a vignette about motherhood, growing older, divorce, finding new love or the state of the world, written in different styles and infused with Lamont's warm voice and heartfelt storytelling.
Nancy is joined by Johnaye Kendrick (vocals, production, viola, violin, harmonium), Shawn Schlogel (piano), Chris Symer (bass), Michael Glynn (bass), Stefan Schatz (drums), Sean Jones (trumpet), Brent Jensen (sax), Jerome Smith (trombone), Derek Smith (clarinet), Jean Chaumont (guitar) and Josh Nelson (piano, keyboard and Hammond).
The album opens with 'Tick Tock', a somewhat changeable song, symbolic of the fear caused by the Covid pandemic. On 'Miles Between' she sings about the landscape in Washington state, after which she commemorates a deceased friend on 'Passages'. 'Ghost' is about her current husband, while 'Leo' was composed by Darin Clendenin about a former girlfriend.
The light-hearted 'Rainy Season Love Affair' is about a love between 2 women, after which 'G 'n' K' stands for initials of her daughter Kayla and son-in-law Greg. And “Did it Did or Did it Didn't” comes from a sentence the school principal said. The mysterious, mysterious 'The Lighthouse' was inspired by the 2019 film starring Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson.
This is followed by 'Haiku New Love', based on poems by her husband Dan. The intimate ballad 'Home' is about the deep bond she has with her husband, followed by 'Auf Wiedersehen, Goodnight', which she wrote after her mother died.
An album that musically lists her various life experiences.
Tracks:
Miles Between
Passages
Ghost
Leo
Rainy Season Love Affair
G ‘n’ K
Did it Did or Did it Didn’t
The Lighthouse
Haiku New Love
Home
Auf Wiedersehen, Goodnight