[Cover photo credit to Jamie Gemmiti]
New Hampshire-based singer/songwriter Heather Pierson will be releasing her new album, Back to the Light, on September 27th, 2024. Pierson is also a pianist, song leader, and performer with an enthusiasm for New Orleans Jazz, Blues, vocal chants, instrumental piano, and Folk.
For Pierson, this results in multi-genre songwriting. In over twenty years on her own record label, Vessel Recordings, she has released fourteen albums and several singles of original music.
We are very pleased to premier the song “Gutter” from her upcoming album today on Wildfire Music + News. The track will arrive this Friday, August 23rd, 2024.
“Gutter” is a spare and unassuming song, delivered in a matter-of-fact way, but with the richness of traditional vocal approaches and imagery. Consisting just of vocals and strumming, the song nevertheless tells a colorful story as the narrator speaks of their descent into a “gutter view” of the world, and their final determination to rise back up, as well as parting ways with a companion who’s guiding them into dark places. The song can be experienced as a relationship story, or equally as a story about struggling with one’s own shadow personality as one seeks one’s better self. It begins from a place of isolation, but in a rural setting, building on the earthy imagery of barns and insects. But in that setting, the narrator asks someone to “leave me alone with my fears” which leads to an up-and-down relationship with drinking, metaphorically, or in reality.
The turning point in the song comes when the speaker determines to break with this descent, “sober up” and find a new view of the world. From that perspective, they can see their companion’s impact, and the value of being “free at last.” “Gutter” is a classic example of a song where simplicity is not simple to create. It takes removing wordiness and removing, in this case, even instrumentation, until we are left alone with a confessional experience. By interpreting the vocals with Jazz accents and an Old Time feel, Pierson makes the track feel even more universal, something that previous eras, as well as our own, can relate to. Whether it’s taken as a break-up song, or a song of descent followed by renewal, there’s little possibility of “Gutter” missing the mark. It’s both frank and appealing.
Heather Pierson shares:
Written on my little tenor banjo in 2023 in a hotel bathroom in New Orleans, inspired by the never-ending procession of gutter punks tying one on and then sleeping it off on every sidewalk in that city.
On her upcoming album, Heather Pierson performs lead vocals, piano, Wurlitzer, B3, and tenor banjo, Shawn Nadeau brings bass and harmony vocals, Craig Bryan performs drums, percussion, and harmony vocals, and Leah Boyd performs harmony vocals on “Back To The Light” and “Joy Came Back.”
After a period away from music, in 2010, Pierson released her first record in seven years: Make It Mine, mastered by Grammy award winning mastering engineer Bob Ludwig. She quickly followed up with several more solo records: her second instrumental piano recording, The Open Road in 2012, The Hard Work of Living in 2013, which includes her New England Songwriting Contest winning song “A Hard Man To Please”, and Motherless Child in 2014.
In 2015, she teamed up with two other musicians for The Heather Pierson Acoustic Trio, with Shawn Nadeau on upright bass and Davy Sturtevant on assorted strings and cornet. The trio’s debut EP, Still She Will Fly, was released in May 2015. The trio’s full-length debut, Singin’, was released in June 2017.
Pierson’s current trio includes Shawn Nadeau on bass and Craig Bryan on drums, performing originals, Jazz and Blues standards. They are also known for their Charlie Brown Christmas tour, wherein they present their interpretations of the work of the late great Jazz pianist and composer Vince Guaraldi.
Other projects that Pierson is involved in include Heather’s Piano Peace project, a “growing online library of improvised piano music for mindfulness, relaxation, study, and rest.” She and Bernice Martin also launched their community singing project, Heart Songs & Circle Songs. This project’s most recent album, Open Channel, was released in May 2023. They are currently at work on a third volume of their songbook series, and a recorded collection for children, Songs For All Ages.
In 2021, Heather reunited with friend Leah Boyd (Garajh Mahal/Lightsisters/Shambhala) to form a new duo, Peaceful Means, creating and sharing “original and choice cover songs nurturing nonviolent consciousness.” Peaceful Means began performing throughout northern New England in 2022 and are currently working on their first studio recordings. In late 2023, they ran a successful Kickstarter campaign to fund their 9-song debut album, which was released on April 5, 2024.
2022 is also saw the re-emergence of one of Pierson’s projects, a group called The Potboilers, an “immersive, collaborative, spontaneous, multi-genre musical experience” whose motto is: “Groove plus melody equals joy.”
