"...Her neo-trad country rock had vision and bite. The original song ''Tallulah Send a Car for Me'' had a Lucinda Williams brilliance, while a cover of Ivory Joe Hunter's ''Since I Met You Baby'' was stunning. Powers has a skilled acoustic-guitar touch...don't miss her next time.""
"There's an authenticity at work here, a heart-tugging gravity and a lively intelligence to go along with the sass."
On Faith In The Shadows, Kerri Powers is a story-telling chronicler of the American Dream deferred. Equal parts honky tonk sweetheart, confessional folkie, and rocker/blues bad girl Powers sings of the down 'n' out underdog - characters with bruised hearts, self-destructive wanderlust (occasional emphasis on lust), and unanswered prayers who can't seem to get out from behind the eight-ball. The images throughout the record are well-oiled Americana but never become opportunistic or trite in Powers' hands: railroad tracks, TV preachers, Greyhound buses, alligator boots, fireworks, Remington shotgun shells, lucky pennies, broken dreams, etc... Her song's landscapes evoke the similar worlds of artists like Bruce Springsteen or Gillian Welch. And like them, her language alternates between the poetic and blue collar.
Her view of the people in her songs is non-judgmental but honest. Most of them are struggling; a few with their own flaws.
The opening track feels lifted from the closing credits of some unknown Clint Eastwood mystery/western: all twangy distorted electric guitars, steady backbeat strummed cowboy acoustic, and hovering B3 organ. The details of this tune live in the shadows. And like many of Eastwood's recent films, the omitted detail is what gives the song its power. All we know is something terrible has been done, and a desperate confrontation is near. Clues are dropped like so many mirages in the desert: dancing shadows, a found weapon, locked cabin dead-bolted doors, rationing bullets, lovers' misunderstanding, etc. With cryptic lyrics like: "My voice my face/A haunting cold embrace/ Could be your guilt/Could be my ghost/You'll never know/You'll never never know," Powers gives the listener lots of directions to go in. Tender, irreverent, and obscured religious references are regulars as well on Faith In The Shadows. Title character "Magdelene" searches for Jesus at the Greyhound bus station and steals your heart. In "Tallulah Send A Car For Me" Powers sings as Tallulah: "Can't wear my alligator boots in church/Preacher says all they ever do is drag in dirt/I think I got some dirt/On his clean white shirt." She's all whimsy and sass keeping her distinctive and plaintive tremolo howl in check. And in "Trying To Make My Way To You" Powers turns a born-again cliché on it's head: "Drag my soul to Galilee/Faith find me/...Call my soul to Galilee/Ooh, faith find me." She's turned the tables: Has she found Jesus? No no no. Has Jesus found her?
"...if you have an opportunity to see Kerri Powers live, take advantage of it while she's still playing small venues. I finally had a chance to see her perform earlier this year and was completely blown away."
"a collection of songs that owe as much to Raymond Carver and Flannery O'Connor as they do any songwriting muse...presented in a voice part Lucinda Williams and Jimmie Dale Gilmore, that haunts and penetrates."
"...extraordinarily sensual and compelling at the same time...a truly great artist."
"...truly brilliant."
"... she could easily become a star."
"Holy smokes - this is damn good Americana....a standout."
"...Kerri Powers, who’s just released Faith In The Shadows, puts me in mind of nothing less than Jesse Sykes breaking into Lucinda Williams'studio and stealing away with her band. Smokey vocals, big tremulous guitar sweeps: very good indeed."
After several times through this new CD what emerged from the music of this obviously intelligent and talented singer/songwriter was that this must have been exactly what was planned when the Americana genre was born. It has rarely been executed any better and seldom with any more honesty and truth than Kerri Powers brings to bear in these 10 tunes. What makes this disc so pleasing time after time is that it is balanced. Sometimes it will be the writing of Powers that will grab your attention as she paints word pictures that seem to take you to places not typically visited. Other times it will be her compelling voice and her ability to pull you into the tale gently or forcefully as the song warrants. Other times it will be the songs, presented in sparse format, assuring that production won't distract from the meat of the material. The songs cut a wide path through, blues, rock and country. Fireworks and Cheap Repairs has an undaunted feel. Sweet Crusade presents a sensual side and Nobody Minds My Drinking shows the alcoholic mindset at its highest point of denial. Crit Harmon has done a fine job producing this disc in such a way that it feels purely Powers in every way. It is a stellar outing top to bottom.
BRIDGEWATER — For the first part of her singing career, Taunton native Kerri Powers couldn’t decide if she wanted to be a folksinger, blues singer, or country-western singer. She found an epiphany of sorts, when she decided she just wanted to be Talullah Bankhead. We’re not sure how many coffeehouses the late, iconoclastic actress ever played, but Powers channeled her attitude into an evening of captivating music Saturday. These days Powers has found her greatest success, and most satisfaction, by simply combining all the facets of her musical heritage, a formula that fits pretty well under the wide-ranging Americana category. In another era, Powers might have just been viewed as rock ‘n’ roller, but with most of her shows performed in duo or small combo formats, sliding neatly into the Americana vein is no problem. Saturday Powers charmed a nearly soldout crowd of about 80 at the intimate Off the Common Coffeehouse in Bridgewater’s First Parish Unitarian Universalist Church, with a pair of sets that leaned heavily on her latest album, last year’s “Faith in the Shadows.” That title, along with the concert’s setting, might indicate a spiritual or religious theme, but the CD is actually more about searching for inner peace, and finding compassion and understanding for some of the many odd characters one encounters. And Powers freely admits she is one of the more unusual characters one will meet, particularly in her jaunty theme song “Talullah Send a Car For Me.” Saturday’s two sets, totaling about 95 minutes of music, were also interspersed with plenty of Powers wit and wisdom, and self-deprecating humor. The night felt like a gathering of friends in someone’s rec room, and no wonder, since Powers parents and many relatives had turned out. Powers, her husband and teenage son Nolan, now live in Connecticut, so these rare concerts in her former home area are a treat, but her warm and unpretentious stage manner added much to the show. How can you not laugh with someone who mentions she’s about to turn 43 next week, and “I love being in my forties: I can be as wild as I want and nobody cares..and if they do, I can always blame it on the start of menopause.” Powers latest batch of songs, on the album which was released about a year ago, has already garnered her some of her best accolades, and a couple of the tunes have been used on the soundtrack to tv’s “Rescue Me” with Dennis Leary. Many of the songs ride a dark and mysterious swamp-rock groove, and comparisons to Lucinda Williams are easy to make, but Powers’ work also contains broad hints of Patsy Cline, Judy Collins, John Prine, and even Tom Waits. In short, it is thoughtful music, yet possesses its own special musical kick. And Powers, who in days past might be guilty of showing off her magnificent vocal range too much, has evolved into a master of subtle nuance, slightly altered tones that tell so much more than words. The early set really had the audience transfixed as soon as Powers did her take on Ivory Joe Hunter’s old hit, “Since I Met You Baby,” which she turned into a slow and sultry blues, as electric guitarist Gary Goodlow added single note runs that darted around the melody. Much of the night’s fare would find Powers’ acoustic guitar strums contrasted with Goodlow’s exquisitely melodic electric tones and accents, creating a really transporting effect in the small room. A new song, “Josephine,” melded Powers’ country and rock influences, kind of like Lucinda singing with New Riders of the Purple Sage. The song “Low Down Low” offered some of Goodlow’s most surreal guitar shadings, as Powers compressed her alto vocal down to its lowest, grittiest soulfulness to chew on the lines. (And if that Powers tune, from the latest CD, isn’t a Tom Waits cut, it should be.) What is fast becoming her trademark, the “Talullah” homage, was done solo by Powers, who accomanied herself with lively finger-picking to make the tune a gleeful romp. “Diamond Day” is a song of a different stripe, evoking Patsy Cline’s open-throated emoting, and harkening back to 1930s style torch songs. Powers did another unexpected cover after that, transforming Neil Young’s “Down By the River” into laidback folk-rock, her vocal surpassing Young’s original with long, pulsating tremolo passages. That first set ended with “Buttercup,” a blues tune Powers wrote to showcase her slide guitar skills, and it did, in fact, resemble what you might get if Lucinda ever had jammed with Blind Willie McTell. “Magdalene” was the tart second set opener, a tune Powers wrote long ago about a woman she’d often see at a bus stop while jogging through East Taunton, a compact story-song with appealing country-rock aura. The stark emotion of “Nobody Minds My Drinking (But You)” is almost too piercing to describe, a potent confessional statement from Powers that ranks with some of John Hiatt’s best. The singer’s vocal sustains were yet another impressive tool in her repertoire on “Trying to make My Way to You,” as Goodlow added superb guitar accents. Another totally surprising cover was the Bee Gees’ old classic “To Love Somebody,” which Powers told us was originally written for Otis Redding. Her version of the familiar song deconstructed it down to slow blues, with Goodlow’s guitar sounding like a pedal steel providing tear-in-your-beer atmosphere. That treatment would have been notable even before Powers finished it with a series of gracefully executed vocal slides that enhanced its soul quotient. The night ended with a swamp-rocking ride through “Sweet Crusade,” with its mysterious lines like “love is going to find you in my room,” that suggests it could be the beacon of a new category: swamp-noir. For her encore, Powers made a nod to the Blind Boys of Alabama, doing their arrangement of “Amazing Grace,” which transposes the gospel hymn over the music to “House of the Rising Sun.” Once again, Goodlow’s guitar work was a revelation, and Powers’ vocal made listeners hear the old tune in an entirely new way. Talullah would be proud.