Press release –
Accomplished singer-songwriter CAROLINE WILES released her sixth studio album Just Be You on April 24th, with a release concert on April 28th at Shawn and Ed Brewing Co., 65 Hatt St, Dundas, Ontario. The concert which features Bill Bell, Bob Doidge, Joe Gravina, Mike McCurlie, Vince Rinaldo and Karen Thornton, starts at 7:30 pm and $30 tickets are ON SALE NOW.
Ancaster, Ontario-based singer-songwriter Caroline Wiles’s new album JUST BE YOU – recorded at the famed Grant Street Studio in Hamilton, Ontario – offers clear, simple messages of heartfelt support to friends, family, and others who’ve faced challenges, among her longtime beloved, or dearly departed. Applying delicate fingerpicking, her Anne Murray-like voice, and glorious three-part harmonies; open tunings, swooping vocal lines, and unresolved chords inspired by Joni Mitchell; just plain guitar strumming, and various instruments added to colour the songs, Wiles has crafted a soulful work of steadfast hope in the face of life’s trials.
The opening title song, “Just Be You,” is a catchy, ‘60s-style R&B ballad, featuring Vince Rinaldo’s great Hammond B3 organ throughout. Written for Wiles’s daughter when she was 15 years old, it’s a song of good advice and encouragement, saying that “there’s nothing you can’t deal with if it comes your way.” Similarly, Wiles wrote “Gentle Like An Autumn Rain” soon after her first granddaughter was born, but it can apply to anybody beloved by any listener. Bob Doidge’s djembe drums propel the song forward, and the chord changes are similar to those of Joni Mitchell.
One of Mitchell’s open guitar tunings is found on the catchy, upbeat love song “Crush On You,” which also captures what she called “the dizzy, dancing way you feel” with a new romantic partner. Both the sentiment and the plentiful three-part harmonies would sound just right in a “Best of Fleetwood Mac” playlist. “Sweet Marie” uses the same tuning, comparing a friend, going through the difficulties and stresses of divorce, to a willow tree that bends but never breaks.
Wiles deploys another unique guitar voicing – using a capo but leaving the high E string open — for “To The River,” a fingerpicked song with accordion highlights, that paints a pastoral summer scene. In “Truly Beautiful,” it’s a gentle dobro and harmonica that provide the colour, to bring home the sentiment of being kinder to oneself. In “Strawberry Moon,” the mandolin plays that role, as Wiles testifies to a lifelong love, recalling the moonlit night they fell in love, saying “That was long ago / Honey did you know / There’s a full moon coming soon.”
All the songs are written by Wiles, except for two. “Wondering” is co-written with Karen Thornton – a talented local singer-songwriter – who also sang beautiful harmonies and played keyboards. The song considers an old love and how they may have fared, with the heart of it in the bridge: “I never stopped loving you.” “Into the Wild and Free” is co-written with Viviane Briand, an old grade-school friend from Wiles’s childhood in Québec. Briand shared a poem, which Wiles set to music, about her brother, who died from “a drug debt.”
One other drug casualty appears on the LP. A song of an exceptionally dark mood here, the minor-key “Cherry Blossom” tells the fictional tale (though inspired by increasingly common real-life incidents) of a troubled young stripper who plans for a better future but ends up dying from an overdose of tainted cocaine.
But even the darkest songs offer kind consideration for all in Wiles’s world. “I love writing songs for people in my life,” she says. “It makes them feel special, which brings me a sweet sense of happiness and purpose.”
