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December 4, 2019

This Song: Allison Moorer Interview and Book Signing at Waterloo Records

By: Elizabeth McQueen

Come to Waterloo Records Thursday, November 21st at 4pm for a live taping of the This Song podcast! Singer, songwriter and author Allison Moorer will join host Elizabeth McQueen onstage to  talk about a song that changed her life and about her new book and companion album, Blood. The event is FREE and open to the public. Find more info here!

Allison Moorer plays the Cactus Cafe Thursday night at 8pm. Get your tickets here.

More info about Blood — On October 25th, acclaimed singer/songwriter Allison Moorer will release Blood(Autotelic Records / Thirty Tigers) the first solo album in four years from the Academy, Grammy, Americana and Academy of Country Music award nominated artist. Blood is not only Moorer’s most personal and revealing work to date, but also her finest and most important.  Blood stands on its own as a complete work, but the album serves as a companion piece to her anticipated autobiography, Blood: A Memoir, being released on October 29th through Da Capo Press, an imprint of Hachette Books. Blood: A Memoir is a detailed account of Moorer and her sister’s (Grammy Award winner Shelby Lynne) childhood growing up in a troubled home in Southern Alabama, which ended with the well-documented murder-suicide of her parents in 1986. Much of what the public has known about the tragic event begins and ends there. For years Moorer had avoided going into the traumatic details of the abuse, alcoholism, intimidation, poverty and neglect, that existed prior to the deaths, and for good reasons which she addresses in the memoir. Moorer also addresses the fact that there was so much more to her family than tragedy, darkness and what people thought they knew. There was love, there was a protective mother, there was the bond of sisterhood and there was music. There was always music. The album Blood serves as a song cycle featuring ten tracks that directly connect to the people, emotions, trauma, and state of mind that are all detailed so eloquently in the memoir.


Episodes

April 30, 2020

This Song: Beth Ditto (Rerun)

In this rerun from 2018, Beth Ditto, former lead singer of the band Gossip, talks about how Nina Simone’s “Mississippi Goddam” helped her grapple with complex feelings about her home state, Arkansas. She also talks about returning home after heartbreak and explores making her first record “Fake Sugar.”

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April 16, 2020

This Song: Liz Phair (Rerun)

In this rerun from 2018, Liz Phair talks about hearing The Soft Boys “I Wanna Destroy You,” revisiting her 1991 Girly-Sound Tapes and 1993 debut album, and parenting realities.

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April 2, 2020

This Song: John Prine (Rerun)

John Prine explains how Bob Dylan’s “The Lonsesome Death of Hattie Carroll” changed his life and goes in depth about his own songwriting process for his album “The Tree of Forgiveness.”

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March 26, 2020

This Song: Thao and The Get Down Stay Down

Thao Nguyen from Thao and the Get Down Stay Down talks to host Elizabeth McQueen about the inspiration behind her new song “Temple,” and about what it was like to release music during a pandemic. She also shares how making the new album helped prepare her to address her sexuality publicly and to create a safe space in her life where she could exist as her full self.

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March 19, 2020

This Song: Kathy Valentine

Kathy Valentine, bass player in the seminal 80s all-girl rock group the Go-Go’s, recently wrote a memoir titled All I Ever Wanted. In this episode of, Kathy explains what “Sunshine of Your Love” by Cream taught her about herself when she was 9 years old,  describes how she found her creative process as an author and details how music and storytelling intersected in her new book.

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March 2, 2020

This Song: St. Vincent (Rerun)

In this episode, St. Vincent explores how music from early Disney films helped her lay the foundation for beauty and wonder in her life and work. She also explains why she approached the songs on Masseduction with a Disney-esque lack of irony.

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March 2, 2020

This Song: Metric

Emily Haines and Jimmy Shaw from  Metric talk about  hearing “Teardrop” by Massive Attack early in their musical partnership and how it inspired them, terrified them and helped them find a collaborative way of making music that still works for them today.

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March 2, 2020

This Song: Jackie Venson (Rerun)

In this episode of This Song, originally published last February, Jackie Venson talks about how “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina” from Evita changed the way she listened to music and thought about herself.

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