Although she’s right here in Austin, upright bassist/singer-songwriter Melissa Carper has maintained a wealth of wanderlust across her career. It’s brought Carper some big opportunities, like founding her eponymous trio The Carper Family and subsequently landing a spot on Prairie Home Companion, all the while allowing her to brush up on her own tastes and soak up everything she can from jazz legends to mid-century folk and beyond.
On “Daddy” Carper’s latest endeavor, the boldly-titled Daddy’s Country Gold, Melissa sheds the pressure of bass performance to focus solely on vocals and production, allowing this auteur to blur her already-bucolic pallet of Western Swing and Country from contemporary to classic. The result is a twelve-song, vintage-capturing masterpiece of rustic styles, and you can dive right into the nostalgic sentimentality with the album opener for Daddy’s Country Gold, “Makin’ Memories”!
–Jack Anderson
–Photo: Aisha Golliher
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