[Cover photo credit to Eric Hurm]
Righteous Babe Records is releasing the label debut from Lilli Lewis, All is Forgiven on December 1, 2023 on CD, digital download and via streaming platforms. All Is Forgiven was produced by Lewis and Mark Bingham with mastering provided by Kevin Blackley.
In the two years while All Is Forgiven was being written and produced, Lewis played four sets at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, produced the Black American Music Summit for Folk Alliance International, played an official showcase at AmericanaFest (where she also met Lucinda Williams at an event Lewis co-organized), and supported her childhood heroes The Indigo Girls on five shows in the Midwest and southeast.
Lewis loves being on the road, but the new album, her fourth with Producer Mark Bingham, is more about the journey of forgiveness one takes on the inside.
She describes her journey:
….not unlike a cliche country song: lost my job, lost my dog, etc. Despite all the magic that was hurling my way, it was a truly difficult time of isolation and sadness for me. I wrote the songs almost in a dreamlike state, and I didn’t find out until later that the songs were there to help me get back up.
After a year of communing with her audience through new songs, Lewis will take a break from touring. In fact, she has recently launched a GoFundMe to help her secure a portable therapy pool so that she can rehabilitate her body from the health complications of COVID era illnesses met with two years of life on the road. The songs helped her reach this decision.
She explains:
All my life I’ve felt I’ve had to prove myself for one reason or another. These songs have been teaching me to reach for gentler truths.
The album is Lewis’ first title with Righteous Babe Records whose label founder Ani DiFranco once called “a people-friendly, sub-corporate, woman-informed, queer-happy small business that puts music before rock stardom and ideology before profit,” and whose alumni have included Toshi Reagon, Anais Mitchell, Bitch and Animal, and Andrew Bird, to name a few.
