"BADASS" (ROLLING STONE) GRACE ASKEW TO RELEASE SUN STUDIO-CUT NOIR ALBUM ‘SCAREDY CAT’ AUGUST 11

FIRST ALBUM SINCE HER NBC THE VOICE PERFORMANCES ON TEAM BLAKE

Sixth generation Memphian and serial rambler Grace Askew stakes her claim with ‘Scaredy Cat,’ the new album recorded at Sun Studios, due out August 11. It’s her first album since her highly-touted and much beloved series of performances on NBC’s The Voice, for Team Blake, which vastly expanded the national fanbase that she earned from years behind the wheel of a pickup truck headlining shows; opening for Marty Stuart, Hayes Carll, Jesse Winchester, and Ray Wylie Hubbard; and touring with James McMurtry and Lisa Marie Presley.

‘Scaredy Cat’ highlights her smoky vocals with spare arrangements inspired by the grit and muddy Delta roots of her hometown, captured in single takes to tape. The songwriting feels as if she is letting you in on a secret world. Rolling Stone Country premiered the first single alongside a Q&A.

Askew has already earned considerable acclaim, most recently for her 2013 EP and single, both entitled “Empty Rooms,” written in New Mexico.

Huffington Post said, “Smoky with atmospheric blues and Resonator-guitar toned country licks, the EP's tunes creep under your skin and grab hold.”

Yahoo! Music called her "smoldering and searing," continuing, "Grace Askew was the fabulous 'bluntry' (blues + country) singer from 'The Voice' Season 4, the girl with the badass beehive, boots made for walkin', and velvet 'n' sandpaper vocals who would've been right at home on Jack White's Third Man Records roster."

Daytrotter raved about "her extraordinary voice," saying, "Mark our words, Memphis' Grace Askew will be the best thing to ever come out of 'The Voice…' Askew has officially taped one of the finest Daytrotter sessions of all-time. Just listen. She makes us believe in the beauty of hurt and the elixir of booze."

Here's her performance of "These Boots Are Made For Walkin'" live on The Voice.

Previously, Sing Out! Magazine said, "If Tom Waits had a singer/writer daughter in Memphis, it would be Askew with her gallery of lost souls on the graveyard shift. Gutsy, bluesy, and a bit boozy, she quietly sings with jagged languor and a skewed spirituality. Discreet percussion, guitar and, on occasion, wistful lap steel notes sagely frame her rough-hewn sophistication."

ONE MAN'S TRASH IS ANOTHER MAN'S DEPRESSION-ERA RESONATOR GUITAR

COUNTRY BLUES MASTER PAUL RISHELL'S 'TALKING GUITAR' RELIES ON VINTAGE RESONATORS, ACOUSTICS

For his new country blues album 'Talking Guitar,' Paul Rishell relied on a 1928 National Triolian resonator, a 1931 National Style O resonator, a circa 1956 Martin 00018, as well as several newer acoustics and resonators. He first acquired the Style O in the mid-1970s.

Rishell recalls, "I had it when I started playing solo gigs in '75. The guy who sold it to me told me that he found it somewhere down South in a garbage can upside down. He said the neck had rotted away, and he had replaced it and refinished the body. The body is in almost perfect shape."

Rishell added a Piezo pickup to his 1928 National. "If you boost the bass, it sounds great going through my Trace Acoustic Amp. I just got an old Peavey Reno 400 and the National sounds really big through that."

Paul Rishell – the W.C. Handy Award-winning blues master singer and guitarist who played with and learned from Son House, Johnny Shines, Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, Howlin’ Wolf, John Lee Hooker, and Buddy Guy, and Junior Wells – has come full circle in creating his new album 'Talking Guitar' (May 8 / Mojo Rodeo Records) returning to the music which inspired him to play the blues in the first place when he began honing his craft over 45 years ago. It is his first solo album since 1993 and his first all-acoustic outing.

Rishell has reached what Boston Phoenix writer Ted Drozdowski called "a place deep as resonant as Robert Johnson’s crossroads, where authenticity, soul, and a sense of purpose and commitment ring out in every note he sings and plays." Billboard Magazine says, "Rishell is a master of country/blues styles, particularly slide played on a National steel guitar."

Paul Rishell Publicity Photos & Album Art

Credit for all below: Eric Antoniou