As I listened to this song, I thought, “Wow, this is one of the coolest songs I’ve heard in a while!” So I’m very please to share this song from Jeremy Bass called “Lift Me Up” from his upcoming album Winter Bare due out April 14.
Some really beautiful guitar voicings open to a dreamy vocal with some surprising developments.
The driving accompaniment in 5/4 leans into the urgency of the lyrics. It’s a bit off kilter, but the song is wrapped up in a warmth that put a smile on my face. I like this song! It’s daring and simple all at the same time.
Bass shares, “I don't like to think that every song has to be a literal expression of experience, but 'Lift Me Up' was a direct transcription of what I was living through at the time that I wrote it. I was lost and heartbroken, and this song was a prayer to whatever forces had landed me there to wash over me, not pass me by, and carry me through."
“‘Lift Me Up’ is the first song I wrote after months of not writing,” says Bass of his isolated existence in the winter of 2013 when he began working on Winter Bare, the first of his two upcoming albums. “It was on one of those dark nights when it was all I could do to keep myself from going crazy,” he remembers. “Winter has always been tough for me, and the winter of 2013 was especially hard.”
Just prior to the creation of Winter Bare, Bass was splitting up with his wife, selling the house they shared together, and toiling away for the third year straight on a debut album that he had become disconnected with by the time it was finally released late last year. Returning to single living in Brooklyn during the intense New York winter of 2013, Bass found himself secluded in an empty house, sifting through his memories.
“I was drinking, I had run out of money, I was nearly unemployed, and certainly unemployable,” he confesses. “But, I had a fireplace and my guitars.” Though Bass was in the grip of despair, he thought that maybe he could write his way out of it and actually change the course of his life in the process.
He has.
“By the end of the winter, I’d fallen in love again, and had a set of songs that wove their way through loneliness, despair and near-insanity, to love and longing, and ultimately hope,” he says.
Unlike Bass’ labored-over debut album, Winter Bare– which arrives on April 14th and will be followed up by an album of Bossa nova-inspired tunes called New York in Spring on June 2nd – is pure and to the point.
Musically, the album bares the influence of musical outlaws such as Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash, and Tom Waits, artists Bass was listening to as he taught himself to play mandolin and banjo, his “divorce gifts” to himself.
“I suppose it’s fitting that the songs on Winter Bare came out after a period of intense suffering in my personal life, followed by unexpected and incredibly joyful personal freedom, and musical exploration,” Bass concludes.
Find out more at http://www.jeremybassmusic.com/>
