NASHVILLE – July 12, 2016 – Comin’ at you September 9 straight outta Nashville: The Time Jumpers’ radiant third album, Kid Sister, on Rounder Records. This treasury of 14 tunes—new and classic—is both a sweet tribute to the band’s late “girl singer,” Dawn Sears (the “Kid Sister” of the title), and a sparkling celebration of western swing and traditional country music.
For the uninitiated and yet-to-be dazzled, The Time Jumpers is a 10-piece band made up of superpickers who normally work recording sessions and/or tour with major artists. On Monday evenings, their usual night off, they convene at the 3rd & Lindsley nightclub in Nashville for shows that routinely pack the house and attract big name artists, many of whom join them on stage.
The band members are Vince Gill, vocals and guitars; Kenny Sears, fiddle and vocals (and Dawn Sears’ husband); Joe Spivey and Larry Franklin, fiddles and vocals; Paul Franklin, steel guitar; “Ranger Doug” Green, guitars and vocals and founding member of the Grand Ole Opry’s Riders In The Sky; Billy Thomas, drums and vocals; Jeff Taylor, accordion, piano and vocals; Andy Reiss, guitars; and Brad Albin, bass.
Gill produced Kid Sister with the entire band creating the arrangements.
Kid Sister track listing:
1. “My San Antonio Rose” (Freddy Powers)
2. “I Miss You” (Vince Gill, Ashley Monroe)
3. “We’re The Time Jumpers” (Vince Gill)
4. “Table For Two” (Vince Gill, Max D. Barnes)
5. “Empty Rooms” (Doug Green)
6. “All Aboard” (Paul Franklin)
7. “Blue Highway Blue” (Debi Smith Cochran, Billy Thomas)
8. “I Hear You Talkin’” (Cindy Walker)
9. “The True Love Meant For Me” (Vince Gill)
10. “Honky Tonkin’” (Vince Gill, Troy Seals)
11. “Bloodshot Eyes” (Hank Penny)
12. “Sweet Rowena” (Vince Gill, Pete Wasner)
13. “This Heartache” (Kenny Sears)
14. “Kid Sister” (Vince Gill)
The Time Jumpers will take selections from Kid Sister and other crowd favorites to the people starting Thursday, July 21, at Cain’s Ballroom in Tulsa, OK. From there, it’s to the Globe Performing Arts Center, Amarillo, TX, July 22; the Civic Center Theatre, Lubbock, TX, July 23;and 16 more dates, including a West Coast swing in September and October.
Kid Sister Album Bio:
Kid Sister isn’t just The Time Jumpers’ fond farewell to a fallen musical comrade. It’s also a luminous demonstration of how music alleviates pains of all sorts, whether death, heartbreak, separation, loneliness, or just the messy fallout of plain bad judgment.
The ‘kid sister’ of the title is Dawn Sears, The Time Jumpers’ infinitely versatile “girl singer,” who died Dec. 11, 2014 after 10 years of gracing the band and 22 years of touring as harmony singer for Vince Gill, now an enthusiastic Time Jumper himself. She was the wife of Time Jumpers bandleader and fiddler, Kenny Sears.
Gill and his wife, Amy Grant, were doing a Christmas show at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium the night Dawn died. “I remember it vividly,” he says. “I felt Dawn’s presence come through the Ryman at the moment she passed, I think to tell me goodbye or give me the finger, or maybe both. I didn’t know, but I felt something in the room that was beautiful. Then Kenny told me the following morning she was gone. I came home after the Christmas show and spent maybe two hours reminiscing about Dawn, listening to her sing, still not knowing she had passed. When I got the news, I sat down and realized I had to put this in some form of a song.”
Thus was born the album’s title track and emotional focus. In “Kid Sister,” Gill sings Dawn from this life to the next, marveling all the while on her remarkable presence and voice. “I smiled when you laughed,” he croons to her, “and I wept when you sang.”
The album was conceived and started in mid-2014, before cancer stripped Dawn of her ability to sing. And so the first two tracks feature her voice. On the sprightly “My San Antonio Rose,” the last song she sang before losing her voice, Kenny says there were certain vocal lines she wanted to do over but couldn’t. Knowing that, Gill suggested Kenny sing the lines Dawn would have been dissatisfied with, thereby turning an intended solo into a duet recording.
“I Miss You,” the other Dawn cut, first saw life as a song Gill co-wrote and recorded for his most recent album but didn’t use. On it, Dawn sang harmony. To give it a proper place in this group album, Gill stripped off the original instrumentation and rewrote some of the lyrics to reflect Kenny’s perspective on missing Dawn and had The Time Jumpers replay all the music.
Categories: Music