“CAPTIVATING” (MEMPHIS COMMERCIAL APPEAL) EDEN BRENT ALBUM COVER INCLUDES NOD TO MISSISSIPPI DELTA PIANO MENTOR BOOGALOO AMES

RAVES FROM NASHVILLE SCENE, WASHINGTON POST, KNOXVILLE NEWS-SENTINEL, MEMPHIS COMMERCIAL APPEAL

CONCERT TAPED FOR BEALE STREET CARAVAN SYNDICATED RADIO SHOW

Mississippi Delta pianist, songwriter, and emotive singer Eden Brent nods to her mentor Boogaloo Ames on the album cover of ‘Jigsaw Heart,’ out last week on Yellow Dog Records. There’s an Ampex 456 tape box front and center. “That’s Boogaloo!’” she exclaims. The cover art, as vivacious as Eden’s own spirit, is by fellow Mississippian H.C. Porter as part of her Blues @ Home series, which captures Mississippi blues musicians in their homes.

Abie “Boogaloo “Ames took Brent as an apprentice for 16 years, as portrayed in the 1999 PBS documentary “Boogaloo & Eden: Sustaining the Sound.” After they met when he played at her sister’s wedding, he took her under his wing. The duo played concerts together in the Mississippi Delta region and beyond, where Brent was raised and still makes her home and where she is now known as Little Boogaloo.

This month, The Nashville Scene wrote of her, "Her sophisticated command and creative breadth grow with each album, including the just-released Jigsaw Heart, which teams Brent with Nashville-based roots-music MVP Colin Linden as her producer... her live shows bring bawdy spirit and sprightly sophistication to her free-ranging mix of Americana, blues and jazz, driven by her superb keyboard technique and warm Mississippi drawl."

The Washington Post Express ran a feature on Brent, who made her New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival debut this year.

She taped a May concert for syndicated radio program Beale Street Caravan and also taped a video session for Birthplace Sessions, on the property of Elvis Presley’s birthplace.

Memphis Commercial Appeal calls her “captivating,” continuing, “her music combines Bluff City grit with Crescent City swing.”

Meanwhile, the Knoxville News-Sentinel said, "Plays and sings with soul and style. The uptempo tracks are a lot of fun, but Brent really shines on the torchier numbers, including the fine title track, and the easygoing songs... The latter includes some cool piano and slide guitar interplay that’s truly sweet."

THE PIECES OF EDEN BRENT'S 'JIGSAW HEART': HOW MISSISSIPPI LIFE AND MUSIC INSPIRED HER MOST DEEPLY-FELT ALBUM TO DATE

Eden Brent walked us through the fascinating pieces of her new Americana album 'Jigsaw Heart' (out this week on Yellow Dog Records), her most deeply-felt album to date. Here are some highlights:

+ "Back in the 70’s the IRS auctioned some of Jerry Lee Lewis’s belongings to offset his outstanding tax debt, and my Daddy was highest bidder on his confiscated home stereo. So, I used to listen to Floyd Cramer’s 'Last Date' on a record player that once to belonged to Jerry Lee Lewis!"
+ "'Better This Way' is the only song I’ve ever written that made me cry while I was writing it."
+ A local Greenville, MS bluesman cautioned Brent about her reputation, which lead to the rollicking "Everybody Already Knows."
+ The McCrary Sisters add vocals to "Opportunity," giving it a hint of Nashville gospel flavor.
+ Though a pianist by trade, Brent wrote "The Last Time" on guitar, for a friend who died in a car accident.
+ "Let's Go Ahead and Fall In Love" features sly double entendre verses inspired by the blues tradition.
+ "Locomotive" was inspired by how Brent's father met Johnny Cash in 1956 and Brent likens the beat to that of "Folsom Prison Blues," which Cash dedicated to Brent's father at a show. "'Locomotive'" has the same country two-step rhythm with a strong backbeat."
+ "Valentine" strips down the arrangement and lays bare the emotions; Brent was in tears by the end of the recording.

Eden Brent will perform at Iridium in NYC and at Hill Country Live in D.C. Complete tour dates here.

American Songwriter is streaming 'Jigsaw Heart' in its entirety.

Eden Brent on each song from 'Jigsaw Heart'

1. Better This Way

I wrote “Better This Way” in the afternoon of a bright sunny day with the curtains wide open and a lot of sunlight shining in my piano room. Ironically, it’s the only song I’ve ever written that made me cry while I was writing it.

“Better This Way” is a country waltz, and the piano introduction reminds me of something that Floyd Cramer might play. Back in the 70’s the IRS auctioned some of Jerry Lee Lewis’s belongings to offset his outstanding tax debt, and my Daddy was highest bidder on his confiscated home stereo. So, I used to listen to Floyd Cramer’s “Last Date” on a record player that once to belonged to Jerry Lee Lewis! I was just a wide-eyed piano student, but I remember how magical it felt listening to Floyd on Jerry Lee’s stereo and wanting to grow up to be a great piano player just like both of them are.

2. Everybody Already Knows

Secrets are hard to keep in a small town. Everybody knows everybody, and gossip is a favorite pastime. During a brief love affair years ago, I hid my affections publicly, yet after only a couple of clandestine weeks, my secret romance was the talk of the town. To save my reputation serious damage, good friend and local bluesman Lil’ Bill Wallace whispered into my ear, “Baby, you’re messing up.” ‘Baby you’re messing up’ was his way of telling me that I was being foolish, and he was right. My behavior was foolish, and I abruptly ended the affair. “Everybody Already Knows” is a lighthearted recollection of romance and rumor in a small town and is inspired by the keen wisdom of the late Lil’ Bill.

3. Jigsaw Heart

Lots of songs mention broken hearts. My sister Bronwynne’s “Heartbreaker” asks the name of the game the heartbreaker plays, and my other sister Jessica’s “Broken Heart” asks “How many pieces does one broken heart make?” Counting all the pieces of a heart broken in sport was visual and memorable, and I borrowed that idea from both of them when I started writing “Jigsaw Heart.”

In my whole life, I’ve never completed a jigsaw puzzle because every time I tried, some of the pieces were lost or missing. I enjoyed poetically comparing pieces of a broken heart with pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. I particularly liked juxtaposing the two title words together, “heart” because it is emotional and “jigsaw” not only because it is intellectual but because it describes both the puzzle variety and the tool that cuts the whole into pieces. I liked the aural and visual collision of the two words, jigsaw and heart.

It took some trial and error to harmonize the initial 4-bar piano motif that recurs throughout the song. I’ve developed it more completely since the recording, and it will continue to develop as the song matures. The riff reminds me of the piano vamp in “South Africa,” but in “Jigsaw Heart” the texture of Dan Dugmore’s pedal steel hangs over the piano part in a beautiful but haunting way. Incidentally, Dan did some great playing on my sister Jessica’s album “Deerskin Jacket” about ten years ago. He sure gets around a lot. Or maybe it just runs in our family!

4. Opportunity

Other than Joan Armatrading’s original, the only recording I’ve got of “Opportunity” is a solo rendition by Bobby McFerrin. Both are terrific. The lyric delivers a powerful hard-luck story that plays like a movie in the mind, like reading a great short story can do. For this song, I recorded Wurlitzer piano with vibrato for the very first time ever, and it underscores the lyric with a slightly seedy, ghetto mood. Two of the McCrary Sisters, Ann and Regina sang groovy background vocals, and Regina played mean tambourine. I’m pleased with the way it turned out, especially after being a fan of the song for more than thirty years.

5. I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free

The first time I heard composer Billy Taylor perform “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free” was at a Delta Blues Week concert in the early '90s. Boogaloo and I were the opening act. The song was an uplifting hit with the audience that night, and eventually led me to Nina Simone’s melancholy recording. I hadn’t planned to record it myself until we were a couple of days into tracking Jigsaw Heart. At one point during the session, I got too far inside my own head, second-guessing myself and my instincts, and walked outside to take a break.  Wishing I could just let go and enjoy the studio session as much as I love playing for live audiences, I started saying to myself, “Why can’t I be free? I wish I could be free.” Then it came to me. “I wish I knew how it would feel to be free.” The mere thought of the song made me smile, and so I decided to record it.

6. The Last Time

“The Last Time” recalls one of my last visits with friend and musician George Allen who died in a fatal car accident a few years ago. Although I recorded the song on piano, I actually wrote it on guitar without thinking about chord progressions or theory like I do when I’m writing at the piano. Writing on guitar is frustrating because of my limitations but liberating since I barely know what I’m doing. It frees the creative process to just make music without over thinking it.

7. Panther Burn

I recorded Jimmy Phillips’s “Fried Chicken” for Mississippi Number One, and he also wrote “Panther Burn.” Whether Jimmy is in town or not, his songs are always on the set list at Delta get-togethers (which invariably turn into living room jam sessions) because he writes about the Delta. Around here, everybody with a guitar knows how to play his songs, and everybody without a guitar knows all the words. So I’ve performed “Panther Burn” in living rooms and on stages for years. This was the warm-up song at the recording session, and it’s such a great song, I decided to keep it. The groove is a straight-ahead rock beat, and Colin plays perhaps his best guitar solo of the whole album on this one.

8. Let’s Go Ahead And Fall In Love

During preparation for the recording, my sweetheart asked me if I had written a song for him yet. I hadn’t so I answered “no,” but his mild disappointment gave me the idea for “Let’s Go Ahead And Fall In Love.” It’s a risqué blues with predicable melody and chord progression, and I borrowed classic blues double entendres that are the song’s joy. On a live album Delta bluesman James Son Thomas introduces “Catfish Blues” by instructing the audience to “listen to the verses. Don’t listen to the music. Listen at what I’m saying.” With that in mind I had so much fun jotting down classic, sexy blues to consider referencing in the song. By the end I had coined a few new “classics” myself like “bring a little spackling, you can fill my hole!”

9. Tendin’ To A Broken Heart

For Ain’t Got No Troubles I recorded “Beyond My Broken Dreams,” a song co-written by my Mississippi friend Tommy Polk who is a prolific songwriter with all sorts of credits. He wrote “Tendin’ To A Broken Heart” with Nashville songstress Joanna Cotten and the keyboardist Johnny Neel whom I’ve met a few times before. (The first time I met Johnny was with Boogaloo in Clarksdale.) I wanted to record one of Tommy’s tunes on this album, and I chose this one because it fit the “jigsaw heart” theme of the album, and it’s beautifully crafted. It’s easy to identify a song written by professional writers because you can hear the craftsmanship in every single line.

10. Locomotive

Daddy went to hear Johnny Cash in 1956 when “Folsom Prison Blues” was a hit on the radio. Arriving early to the show, Daddy walked up to a fellow and said, “Hey, man. I heard Johnny Cash was going to play here tonight.” That fellow looked straight at Daddy and said, “That’s me.” Immediately Daddy requested his favorite “Folsom Prison Blues.” Johnny Cash dedicated it to him during the show, and I’ve been singing it with Daddy ever since I can remember. “Locomotive” has the same country two-step rhythm with a strong backbeat. It’s the kind of song that’s a lot of fun to drive but hard to stop without a good plan, which is why we faded the ending. It’s like trying to stop a runaway freight train or a high-spirited, half-crazy woman who runs over you and keeps going.

11. Get The Hell Out Of Dodge

Mike Powers at Yellow Dog Records introduced me to Toni Price singing “Get The Hell Out Of Dodge.” Writing about a romantic break-up as if it’s an old western shoot-out is wildly clever. What imagination! So long, partner. This town just ain’t big enough for the both of us. The comparison is hilarious, and the western imagery is perfect. Words like showdown, ricochet, lonesome dove and swinging doors all make this a delightful masterpiece, and a perfect moment of levity for the album.

12. Valentine

When we recorded producer Colin Linden’s “Valentine,” (co-written with Tom Hambridge) Colin and I were standing next to each other in the studio with only a microphone between us, very intimate and totally exposed. I can’t remember if we did one take or two, but the performance was so honest that when we finished, I was crying. The lyrics are simple and Colin chose a delicate arrangement of only guitar, bass, string section and voice. This treatment allows the beauty of the song to reveal itself rather than creating a grandiose frame to display the song.

HANK COCHRAN PROVIDES ROAD MAP FOR MISSISSIPPIAN EDEN BRENT TO DECAMP TO NASHVILLE FOR NEW ALBUM 'JIGSAW HEART,' RECORDED AT FAMED RCA VICTOR NASHVILLE SOUND STUDIOS

The seeds of Eden Brent's 'Jigsaw Heart' were planted decades ago. Country music great Hank Cochran, who grew up in neighboring Isola, MS had fans in the Mississippi Delta of his home, including her parents. Brent says, "In the mid-sixties, Daddy and Mama went to Nashville to record a demo, and Hank met with them and listened to a couple of Mama's songs."

The themes of Cochran's music provided a roadmap for Brent's own music. Of his hit "I Fall To Pieces" and her original song "Jigsaw Heart,' she says, "'The two songs share a common theme so it was natural for me to record the album in Nashville. I liked the title 'Jigsaw Heart' because the two words are contradictory and when thrown together evoke a very visual image, exactly the kind of image that country music and the Nashville sound express so perfectly." Brent recorded her new Americana masterpiece 'Jigsaw Heart' at Ben Fold's Ben's Studio, which was originally constructed in 1964 as RCA Victor Nashville Sound Studios. The studio has also hosted recording sessions by Chet Atkins, Waylon Jennings, Dolly Parton, Tony Bennett, George Strait, and The Beach Boys, among many others.

Fellow Mississippian Tommy Polk contributed the slow-burning "Tendin' To A Broken Heart" and he has written for country and blues starts alike, from Martina McBride and Crystal Gayle to Irma Thomas and Bobby "Blue" Bland. Brent sees a connection between the genres, saying, "I've always loved the honesty that blues music and country music share, that pure raw emotion that both so easily communicate. Everyone understands the message. It's music for everybody no matter what side of town they live on or what kind of job they have or where they did or didn't go to school. That kind of music came from my home in Mississippi, and Nashville made it famous."

EDEN BRENT MAKES NEW ORLEANS JAZZ & HERITAGE FESTIVAL DEBUT MAY 2 ON EVE OF NEW ALBUM 'JIGSAW HEART,' OUT MAY 6 ON YELLOW DOG RECORDS

Eden Brent – the Mississippi chanteuse and piano mistress called "irresistibly fresh" by NPR.org – will make her New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival debut May 2.

A former highlight of WWOZ's Piano Night during JazzFest week, Brent made her acclaimed 2010 album 'Ain't Got No Troubles' in the Crescent City. For her new release 'Jigsaw Heart' (May 6 / Yellow Dog Records), she traveled to Nashville, TN to record with renowned producer Colin Linden (Lucinda Williams, Lindi Ortega). The resulting album is an artistic high-water mark for the Mississippian, her piano-pounding prowess counterbalanced with vocals and songwriting that recall a grittier Norah Jones in their emotional depth.

Eden Brent "Everybody Already Knows," from 'Jigsaw Heart' (Yellow Dog)

"IRRESISTIBLY FRESH" (NPR.ORG) MISSISSIPPI PIANO POWERHOUSE BRINGS HER RENOWNED SKILLS AND A SET OF SOUL-BARING NEW SONGS TO NASHVILLE, WITH COLIN LINDEN PRODUCING

EDEN BRENT PICKS UP THE PIECES OF HER JIGSAW HEART ON HER THIRD
YELLOW DOG RECORDS RELEASE, OUT MAY 6

Take Eden Brent to a Nashville studio and you’ll still hear the sound of the Mississippi Delta. There’s no way around that. Say you’ve decided to drive from New Orleans to Nashville. Whichever way you go—straight up 55 or heading northeast on 59—you’re gonna cut across Eden’s home state of Mississippi. And that’s precisely the route Eden’s recording career just took, as her last album—Ain’t Got No Troubles (recorded in New Orleans in 2010)—gives way to her deepest, most personal album yet: Jigsaw Heart, recorded in Nashville but shot through with Eden’s Mississippi roots, out May 6.

To hear "Everybody Already Knows" and "The Last Time", please click here.

She chose to record this soulful slice of Americana at Ben’s Studio (Ben Folds), formerly the historic RCA Studio A, laying down the tracks live and with minimal isolation. True to life, Eden had to journey through Mississippi to get from New Orleans (the location of her last recording) to Nashville (the site of her new one), stirring up the echoes of her past and reaching out to her stable of longtime friends, including producer and guitarist extraordinaire Colin Linden (most recently of Bob Dylan's band as well as production work for a host of luminaries from Lucinda Williams to Lindi Ortega) to create this riveting, reflective new work.

Jigsaw Heart connects an array of American music styles they sure love down South—blues, gospel, soul, country and R&B—coming together in an immensely satisfying melting pot of sound. Her cherished piano-bench partner Boogaloo Ames would be proud of the three-time Blues Music Award winner and her masterful piano work on the disc, which begins with the blues and flowers outward from there. Notoriously eclectic himself when it came to song choices, Boogaloo would be thrilled by the breadth of styles and songs on her new album, starting with track one, Better This Way. This Brent original—with its achingly slow tempo and seductive fusion of blues, gospel and Nashville Sound strings—would surely have started Ray Charles to rocking left and right.

Better This Way is not the album’s only heartbroken concession to lost love. Jigsaw Heart—the album’s title track and emotional fulcrum—is a stunning original about picking up the pieces of broken love, with tears streaming and hope rising throughout Eden’s lyrics and the sublime pedal-steel playing of Dan Dugmore. Jigsaw Heart is one of a few songs here with chord changes and soulful piano passages that could have come from Randy Newman, or even Sir Elton. Another dreamy look back is The Last Time, a wistful tune with an intoxicating melody that again might earn Eden comparisons to Norah Jones.

Jigsaw Heart is no downbeat trip, though. Track two, Everybody Already Knows, sounds like a rockin’ classic everybody already knows, a roadhouse boogie-woogie and a joyful embrace of unconcealed passion. Locomotive speeds down the tracks with a train-track beat and some crafty wordplay about a woman’s loco motives. And Opportunity is a funky, gritty electric-piano tribute to one of Eden’s musical heroes, Joan Armatrading. She also takes the time to honor Nina Simone (I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free) and Texas-swing songstress Toni Price (Get the Hell Out of Dodge). It all leads up to the starkly beautiful romantic confession of the final track, Valentine, penned by Linden with Tom Hambridge (Buddy Guy).

"I tried to go in a slightly different direction," she said of her new album. "Nothing in particular made me take a new direction. I still love the blues. I would have to leave the Delta if I didn't. I just needed to stretch my legs."

She hasn’t left the Delta on Jigsaw Heart. She’s just out on a good, long walk, making new discoveries and sharing them with us.