“When I think of recording ‘Bring Me,’ I think of Mike Lewis,” Pieta Brown says of the latest song from Freeway, her new LP set for release on Ani DiFranco’s Righteous Babe label September 20. Mike Lewis is the multi-instrumentalist known for his work with Andrew Bird (he’s currently the bassist in Bird’s band) and Bon Iver.
“I can see [Lewis] in the booth listening back. And my connection to Mike Lewis is really how the Freeway session happened,” Brown continues. “Mike had collaborated with me on a song from my last album [Postcards] and ever since, I had wanted to record a whole album with him. The Freeway session came together so fast, and that was really because of Mike. Mike was like the session overseer. He was the portal! The perfect connecting point. Mike’s understanding of me and Sean, and Jeremy as players and people is a big part of why the session happened so fluently.”
The names Brown so casually drops are Sean Carey (a.k.a. S. Carey) of Bon Iver fame and Jeremy Ylvisaker (Alpha Consumer, The Cloak Ox), who also worked with Brown on Freeway.
“‘Bring Me’ is the ‘oldest’ song on Freeway, I think; I wrote it a few years back one night in Australia after hearing Madeleine Peyroux sing at a festival where I was playing,” Brown recalls of her inspiration. “I was really affected by her performance that night, and I went back to the hotel after and this song came in. One of those direct landings. No thoughts. Came in really fast. And I remember for some reason I sent a demo I made on my phone to my friend Amos Lee right away that night, too, and he sent me a really sweet message back about it…which spoke to me. He’s not an easy sell when it comes to songs! So, that helped me hold on to the song, too.”
“Bring Me” is a gorgeous acoustic ballad that easily finds common ground between folk, country, and Americana. Treading in territory adjacent to Kacey Musgrave’s genre-blurring Grammy winner, Golden Hour, it arrives at a time when legions of potential fans are just a well-placed spin away.
“It was really meaningful to record it with Mike and Sean and Jeremy. I imagined it more layered than it is on the recording, but the take (which might have been a first take?) was so fluid and immediate and direct too, that the guys convinced me not to add too much from the outer realms,” Brown marvels of the track’s conception. “Jeremy made the perfect ‘drive-by’ sounds. Sean and Mike played so cool. I love the way Mike sings on the track. And I still think of Mike and Madeleine and Amos when I sing it.”
Listen to “Bring Me” below.
