Karen Jonas - The Southwest Sky and Other Dreams

  by Helen Tipping

published: 6 / 10 / 2020

---

Review

Karen Jonas is an Americana singer-songwriter from Fredericksburg, Virginia. This is her fifth album, and the first studio only album with previous albums being a mix of studio and live recordings. Despite the Americana description, there is still a bit too much country going on for my tastes. Nevertheless she tells a good story, and all the songs are based on her experiences travelling around on tour, picking up characters she sees and weaving a story around them. The album works best for me when the songs are melancholy, and tip a stetson to Patsy Cline, rather than the staple country sounds. ‘Pink Leather Boots’, has less of a country sound to it and more of a bluegrass element. ‘Maybe You'd Hear Me Then’ is the stand out track for me. It earns the Americana tag, rather than C&W, and ‘Farmer John’, a blues song about the end of a relationship - as befits any blues song - with input from both protagonists in the split, also holds my interest. The album starts with the C&W tracks, and I think I would have turned off before some of the better tracks, had I not been obliged to listen to it all in order to review it. That would have been a shame, as I would have missed the more interesting songs.

Track Listing:-

1 The Last Cowboy (At the Bowling Alley)
2 Out in Palm Tree Paradise
3 Tuesday
4 Pink Leather Boots
5 Maybe You'd Hear Me Then
6 Be Sweet to Me
7 Farmer John
8 Barely Breathing
9 Better Days
10 Don't Blink Honey

Band Links:-

https://karenjonasmusic.bandcamp.com/
http://www.karenjonasmusic.com/
https://www.facebook.com/karenjonasmus
https://twitter.com/karenjonasmusic

Have a Listen:-