Search - Clare Burson :: Silver & Ash

Of her musical objectives, indie songstress Clare Burson explains, "I've always leaned towards poetic simplicity and subtlety in my music--wanting to express as much as I can with the fewest possible words and musical flourishes."

Burson builds upon this aesthetic with SILVER & ASH, an album, performance piece, and songbook that imagines her grandmother's life in Germany, from her birth in 1919 to her escape in 1938. For this project, Burson visited her own childhood home in Memphis, where she conducted interviews with her grandmothers, and ventured to the childhood homes of her ancestors in Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, and the Ukraine.

The result of Burson's travel, research, and ancestral archeology is a stunning album of 10 original songs that inhabit and give life to her grandmother's story as well as Clare's own struggles with rupture, silence, guilt, empathy, and continuity. The album was produced by Grammy nominee Tucker Martine (R.E.M., The Decemberists), and created with the help of her band, Mark Spencer on guitar (Son Volt), Tony Leone on drums (Levon Helm), and Andy Cotton on bass. Burson's lush string arrangements and rich vocals - at times wistful, at times full of desperation, but at all times direct - come together to fill the 10 songs on SILVER & ASH with nostalgia and longing.

A classically trained violinist, and later, conversant in fiddle tunes, Burson began playing guitar while studying history at Brown University. After college and a year in Germany as a Fulbright Scholar, Burson returned to Tennessee where she recorded with T-Bone Burnett and played around town. Currently, Clare lives in Brooklyn, NY.