Grammy-nominated Kim Richey’s new album, Every New Beginning, features 10 tracks, written, or co-written by Richey with a coterie of characters, over the course of several years, and produced by critically lauded multi-instrumentalist and producer Doug Lancio (Patty Griffin, John Hiatt). With musical assistance from longtime collaborators like Dan Mitchell and Neilson Hubbard — who produced Richey’s 2013 album Thorn in My Heart — and newer friends like Nashville neighbor Aaron Lee Tasjan, who lends his irrepressibly sparkly musicality to the proceedings, Every New Beginning manages to continue the throughline of Richey’s nearly 30-year career while simultaneously adding a new chapter.
The songs represent the full spectrum of the Ohio native’s gifts as both a revered songwriter who can leap from melancholy to mirthful in a single couplet — whose songs have been recorded by the likes of Brooks and Dunn, Patty Loveless, and Mary Chapin Carpenter — and owner of one of music’s truly celestial voices. That voice is a widely sought after harmony instrument by scores of artists including Jason Isbell, Trisha Yearwood, Shawn Colvin, and Capt. Kirk himself William Shatner. Her music continues to loiter at the Americana intersection of country, folk, pop, and rock conjuring everything from Lucinda’s humanity, the Beatles shimmer, Tom Petty’s effervescent stomp and Joni Mitchell’s laser-sharp lyrical craft.