The Jump Blog

As long time readers are well aware I think Lori Mckenna is a devastatingly good singer/songwriter. She is on album #4 now (the stellar “Bittertown”) and still relatively unknown except by audiophiles like myself –though she does have some mighty famous fans like Zach Braff, and Faith Hill. She cranks out some of the best songwriting I have ever heard and her guitar playing is incredibly under-rated (she is a phenominal acoustic guitarist), on top of that she has a huge, rich, thick voice that compliments her songs so well.

With all of that she is still playing gigs on the coffee house circuit in New England, much like another great songwriter John Gorka. They slug away doing four or five shows a week selling their albums outta their cars while P. Diddy whines about not getting the yacht he wanted in the Riviera, Ashley Simpson lip-syncs her way to stardom and Usher would win a grammy for recordings of his bowel sounds.

So what’s the good news in all of this?

Lori Mckenna is about to actually start getting checks from ASCAP instead of little notices that say “sorry there were no spins of your songs recorded in our 1/10th of 1% survey of the music played.” Faith Hill recorded three Lori Mckenna tracks for her new album “Fireflies” (released yesterday), in fact the title track is a wonderfully touching McKenna song. If the A&R guys are smart they’ll release Hill’s version of “Stealing Kisses” [included in the April 24th B-Sides playlist, now available on Lori’s Website] as a single, and it will likely be a hit. Hill does a good job of covering the track and is convincing as the narrarator. “If You Ask” is the third in the trio and again Hill’s voice sounds very good and the song may have single in it’s future. Regardless, it’s sure to be a fan favorite and country audiences are going to eat it up.

Certainly there are checks with lots of zero’s headed Lori’s way. Not too bad for a plumbers wife and mother of four who didn’t play for an audience until she was 27.

So what’s my beef?

Just this: while Hill pulls these songs off they lose a lot in the translation. McKenna’s distintive delivery and diction on “Fireflies” makes it incredibly touching and memorable. From Hill’s talented but more vanilla voice the tune becomes “nice” but a little forgettable. This really goes right to the heart of why I started the B-Sides. God bless Faith Hill for wanting to do right by Lori McKenna and this will certainly help Lori’s career, but the fact is that these songs as done by Lori should have been enough to make her a superstar. Now the vast majority of country music fans (or just music fans) are going to identify these wonderful songs with the comparitively uninspired versions that Hill has put out.

Lori Mckenna is going to have to endure people in the audience whispering to their tablemates “Oh, I just love Faith Hill, don’t you?” Understand that this is in no way a dig at Faith Hill, she’s great. What’s more she’s supporting one of my favorite artists –even better. She does a great job on the album, and if you are a country fan there is a lot to like in her new disc. If you are a Lori Mckenna fan you will likely be wishful of McKenna’s gut wrenching vocal style and delivery.

But hey, it’s not all bad, and I’m sure happy that Lori is getting recognized. When I first heard her song “Never Die Young” in 2002 I stopped what I was doing and listened to it over and over agin for the rest of the afternoon, so I certainly have some long time fan bias. But I also think there is truth in what I say, and it is why I do the B-Sides, to bring these kind of artists to a larger audience. That said, I’ll let you be the judge. Below are side by side comparrisons from Hill’s new album and the McKenna originals.

Fireflies - Faith Hill
Fireflies - Lori McKenna

Stealing Kisses - Faith Hill
Stealing Kisses - Lori McKenna

If You Ask - Faith Hill
If You Ask - Lori McKenna

Faith Hill - Fireflies: Grade= A- for country fans, B for everybody else. She’ll have multi-platinum here and at least one number one, maybe two.

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