Rebecca Frazier’s lifelong journey between mountains and coastal waters is the backdrop for bluegrass singer, songwriter and flatpicking guitarist Rebecca Frazier’s new album, Boarding Windows in Paradise, releasing today via Compass Records.
Produced by Bill Wolf (Tony Rice, Grateful Dead, Peter Rowan) and featuring a constellation of bluegrass stars, Frazier’s first collection of new material since 2013’s When We Fall marks a creative rebirth of sorts for the artist, who says the title speaks to life changes she experienced during those 11 years, and the resilience it takes to weather storms — literal or metaphorical. One of many generations raised along Virginia’s coast, Frazier is well-acquainted with the fierce power of disruptive weather systems — and their restorative beauty — and sought to capture that juxtaposition musically.
She does so via a combination of songs that finds her both exploring new territory and revisiting old favorites. In addition to the already-released singles “Make Hay (While the Moon Shines)” (co-written with Jon Weisberger and Bob Minner), “Available,” “High Country Road Trip” (co-written with Rorey Carroll) and “Borderline” — her cover of Madonna’s first top-10 hit — Boarding Windows in Paradise contains four other tracks Frazier wrote or co-wrote, along with the traditional “Saro Jane” and her transformation of the Roy Orbison hit, “It’s Over.”
“The song is resurrected,” Americana Highways contributor John Apice says of the latter, calling it “no longer a vintage classic but a redefined, masterly performed cover.”
No Depression’s Amos Perrine, who declared Boarding Windows in Paradise “A+ all the way,” called the album “a nourishing adventure in upending notions of what bluegrass should be, evolving it into what it can be.”
To aid in that evolution, Frazier and Wolf enlisted several guests, including banjoists Béla Fleck, Ron Block and Scott Vestal, mandolinist Sam Bush, fiddler Stuart Duncan, bassists Barry Bales, Byron House and Erik Alvar, dobro player Josh Swift, and harmony vocalists Shelby Means, Trey Hensley, Adam Chaffins and Isaac Eicher. Frazier plays banjo on “Saro Jane,” and on “Borderline,” she’s accompanied by Love Canon, which specializes in turning ‘80s hits into bluegrass tunes.
The Nashville resident recorded that track in her native Virginia with the Charlottesville-based band — dobro player Jay Starling (son of Seldom Scene legend John Starling and member of Leftover Salmon), banjo player Adam Larrabee, bassist Darrell Muller, mandolinist Andy Thacker and guitarist Jesse Harper — with harmony vocals by Means, Chaffins and Andrea Zonn, plus Frazier on guitar and Duncan contributing additional fiddle.
Apice compares her vocals on the song to Alison Krauss’s, and says of the album, “It’s never silly, cliched, or a novelty. It’s bluegrass as a serious musical medium.”
On his The Old Grey Cat blog, Jeff Gemmill praises, “Boarding Windows transcends its bluegrass origins to become an all-encompassing sonic odyssey that’s a guaranteed good time.”
Boarding Windows in Paradise can be heard on all major streaming services; the album can be ordered through the Compass Records web store or via Frazier’s website. Frazier is supporting the release with a series of performances (see dates below).
About Rebecca Frazier
A bluegrass luminary herself, Frazier gained notoriety as the first woman to grace the cover of Flatpicking Guitar Magazine. In 2018, she also became the first woman to earn a Guitar Performer of the Year nomination from the Society for the Preservation of Bluegrass Music of America, an honor she received again in 2019. Frazier is widely known for her work with Colorado-based outfit Hit & Run, the only band to score the bluegrass-world trifecta of winning Rockygrass, Telluride and SPBGMA festival band competitions.
Tour dates
Sept. 20 – Deer Creek Coffeehouse, Darlington, Md.
Sept. 21 – Berlin Fiddlers Convention, Berlin, Md.
Sept. 21-22 – Maryland Folk Festival, Salisbury, Md.
Oct. 9 – The Spot on Kirk, Roanoke, Va.
Oct. 10 – The Tin Pan, Richmond, Va.
Oct. 11 – Easy Wind Farm, Burgess, Va.
Oct. 12 – Avalon Theatre, Easton, Md.
Oct. 13 – The Purple Fiddle, Thomas, W.Va.
Oct. 20 – Clubhouse on Highland, Birmingham, Ala.
Oct. 24 – White Horse Black Mountain, Black Mountain, N.C.
Oct. 25 – Muddy Creek Café & Listening Room, Winston-Salem, N.C.
Oct. 26 – The Down Home, Johnson City, Tenn.
Nov. 7 – Charleston Pour House, Charleston, S.C.
Nov. 8 – Eddie Owen Presents: Red Clay Music Foundry, Duluth, Ga.
Nov. 17 – Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, Nashville, Tenn.
