Hydrangea

Kate Jacobs is a world traveling downhome country girl who lives in Hoboken, New Jersey. She is a storyteller who finds her stories in all sorts of places and from all kinds of people. On Hydrangea, her third album for Bar/None, she reveals that the most compelling stories are her own.

This time she's found them in the attic of her parents' two hundred year-old farm house: in diaries and journals that survived the journey from pre-Revolutionary Russia to the Hudson Valley, in an uncle's paintings, and in her own head and heart. In an era when artists often choose between the relentlessly tortured or the breathlessly confessional, Kate takes a deceptively simple route. Hydrangea is a family history -- colorful, sad, funny, a wide-screen snow swept epic at some times, an intimate kitchen table conversation at others. With her lilting melodies and country-tinged rock, Kate's stories go down as warm and easy as vintage Dolly Parton, but they have an emotional and musical depth that gives them staying power. These are tales meant to be heard again and again until they might just feel like your own.