City Blues

I prefer to create friction, post-country chanteuse Aubrie Sellers offers. Because if you re not pushing buttons, you re just making something pleasant, it s probably been done before... and it s not making anyone feel anything. In this world of pretty little girls who are seen and not heard and reality stars who are famous for nothing, the 24 year old songwriter ain t buying in. Laughing, she continues, I d rather my music be polarizing than everyone like it, because they rarely do. I think passion is a lot deeper than that. I want to go deeper, and be honest that life isn t just some party and going out. I mean, don t people feel anything? Not that New City Blues is some kind of morbid, maudlin affair. From the cutlery in the blender indictment of surface beauty Paper Doll to the Lone Star drive of Just To Be With You and the tumbledown melody of Sit Here and Cry, this is a high energy box cutter of emotion: 14 songs marked by the bite and punch of smart girls who know there s more to life than a cold beer and cut-offs. I tell people there s not a lot of happy songs, the Texas/Nashville hybrid cautions. But they re not unhappy songs, either. It s life... the way it is, and what s wrong with that? People doing these other songs, that may be exactly what s happening in their world; but from my experience, are people really going out and partying every night? Do they ever have feelings? There s a definite viscerality to New City Blues. From the yearning title track to the slow-building Loveless Rolling Stone, the sense of displacement marking so many young people uncertain about the future tempers the pools of guitar lines, the way her voice has just the slightest ache when she finds a note s center. My influences are all over the place: the Kinks, Screaming Jay Hawkins, Buddy and Julie Miller, Creedence, even Ricky Skaggs. Patty Griffin, Neil Young and Bob Dylan, some acoustic things. Led Zeppelin is my biggest rock influence and that goes right straight, for me, to Ralph Stanley. That raw bluegrass, the banjo, that s the same energy and intensity you get in punk. It s all music that s driven, that s haunted, that cuts and moves. To try to put a label on Sellers sound is tricky. If there s a slight drawl when she sings, it s where she comes from. But the sound I love trashy drums and telecaster guitars, but then that dreamy atmospheric Daniel Lanois kind of effect has an immediacy and an urgency, as well as a porous jagged edge that could only be described as garage country. It s so much more like more garage rock, that raw raging stuff. It s Ryan Adams and Dwight Yoakam, who are merciless and just keep coming even when they re quiet. So that fits... in a weird way. It s better than anything else I can call it. And never underestimate how important melody is to the woman raised on the road with her mother critically acclaimed progressive traditionalist Lee Ann Womack. The kinds of melodies I m drawn to I don t see coming from anywhere else. The feeling under a song comes from the notes and how they move from one to another; that s the real essence of a song. That s why I like a lot of bluegrass and Robert Johnson, the melody tells you as much as the words do. Aubrie Sellers was basted in music before she was even born. Her father Jason Sellers, now a top songwriter, was on the road with Ricky Skaggs, then had his own solo deal. The Grammy-winning Womack is a singer s singer, who s performed with or for Willie Nelson, Buddy Miller, the Fairfield Four, Steve Earle and Maya Angelou. All my memories are sitting on the bus, listening to my Mom play and sing. Always being on the way to somewhere else... and I loved it. The rootlessness comes honest.