Claude Carmichael Releases Debut Album

Claude Carmichael took the long way to his debut album. He sang alongside Billy Joel on The Stranger, built a career in film music and picked up a Daytime Emmy before putting together this first collection of his own songs. You might expect a record with something to prove. Instead, Tennessee Hill finds him swapping stories about bad relationships, his daughter and the night a drive through the Tennessee countryside finally felt like coming home.

WEBSITE: https://www.claudecarmichael.com/

That last story gives the album its title. Heading back from the Bluebird Cafe, Carmichael spotted a silver crescent moon settling over a hillside outside Franklin. He’d already moved from New York, but apparently his heart needed a little longer to catch up. It’s a lovely starting point for a record, especially from someone who has spent so much of his working life helping other artists tell their stories.

Recorded and co-produced with Casey Wasner at Purple House Studio in Leipers Fork, these eight tracks draw on country heartbreak, old-fashioned romance and the occasional well-placed wisecrack. The subjects are familiar, sometimes almost stubbornly so. What makes them worth exploring is the person behind them.

Take “Instead of Me.” The song grew from something a friend wrote about her divorce: “the things you held onto instead of me.” That’s a line worth building a song around. You can supply your own list of things, which is probably why it stings. Carmichael originally wrote it for a woman’s voice and still hopes a female singer will take it on.

“Full Time Heartache,” co-written with Jeanie McQuinn, puts a classic country predicament to work: a little love on the side leads to a whole lot of heartache. With Travis Toy on steel guitar, it’s a cheatin’ song made for dancing through your troubles. Carmichael gave the recording a test run at a country dance bar in his native Virginia, where it got couples whirling around the floor. Sounds like it found the right crowd.

He also knows when to crack a joke. “The Bottom of a Well” takes its cue from the dark humor he admired in Leon Russell’s “Tight Rope.” “Too Many Yankees (Bless Their Hearts)” pokes fun at Franklin’s changing population, with the useful complication that Carmichael spent a third of his life in New York. He’s hardly in a position to pull up the welcome mat.

The sweeter songs come with fewer defenses. “Precious One” was written to help his daughter settle down at bedtime. “The Last Lullaby” reaches back to a youthful attempt at romance involving bare feet, overalls and a violin he couldn’t play particularly well beneath a girl’s window. Thankfully, Audrey Swank handles the viola here. That’s an endearing amount of trouble to go to for a serenade.

“Sonia Lee,” meanwhile, borrows a fellow songwriter’s name for a summer memory of his own. Those little borrowings and recollections give Tennessee Hill its personality. Carmichael has plenty of impressive names in his biography, but the album’s appeal lies closer to home. The barefoot kid with the fiddle, the dad writing a lullaby, the driver recognizing his own neighborhood: Those are the people you want to get to know. After years in the business, he’s finally introducing them.

Michael Rand