Search - Heather Eatman :: Candy & Dirt

Look out world -- here comes "Candy & Dirt," Heather Eatman's long awaited second record. Out as of late spring 99, it's got plenty of bright-colored pop. But underneath it's sugar coating, a sharp storytelling sense and striking point of view swirl together to deliver more existential grit than you'd find on the bottom of Charles Bukowski's shoe. While ALRIGHT and SOME GIRLS trade heavier content for pure ear-candy, USED TO BE A NICE GIRL is a bouncy radio-song about a hooker and TOO TIRED TO BE ELVIS imagines the King of Rock-n-roll's death scene, complete with a chorus of Percodan angels. The tale of a boy and his first job, DRIVING DARLENE concerns a young driver for a seedy car service who falls for his mysterious passenger. And in BLACK LINCOLN BOMB, a lost tourist panics over a slow, twisted cocktail lounge vamp featuring an impossibly demented slide guitar. "It's like Billie Holiday gone through the looking glass," Eatman says. Producer Stewart Lerman (Jules Shear, Sophie B. Hawkins, The Roches) wraps Heather's voice in arrangements that are timeless -- not trendy -- and powerful in their simplicity. As in her live appearances, her distinctive singing and guitar playing are defining elements that draw the map for the rest of the instruments. Other players on the album include: Steuart Smith (Shawn Colvin), Dave Tronzo (John Hiatt), Joe Bonadio (Duncan Sheik), Mike Visceglia (Suzanne Vega), and Bill Dobrow (Dave Navarro) as well as fellow recording artists Kevin Salem, Lee Feldman and Mark Johnson. Candy & Dirt is the first release on Impossible Records, Heather's own record label. ARTIST BIO: Heather Eatman is a singer and songwriter with spiky hair, a Kool-aid-red electric guitar and 50,000-watt smile ... and she's come to kick your ass. And she's traveled all the way from Jacksonville, TX to do it, too. That's where she was born -- not far from the Louisiana border, where the music turns raw and primitive. "That stuff really got into my blood," Eatman says, "Growing up in my house, we listened to Bach and Mozart, "West Side Story," Barbra Streisand -- but that devil music was definitely floating in the air the whole time!" "Candy and Dirt," Eatman's second CD, is full of pop injected with that deeper, darker magic. "I deliberately set out to make a record that would be tougher than the first one," Heather says, "Not in the sense of genre -- I wanted it to be a braver record. This record compared to the last one is like the difference between a nice studio portrait anda slightly blurry, but much more revealing paparazzi shot.'' Heather left Texas at age seven, eventually ending up in Pennsylvania, where she was a misfit who "felt like a kid from outer space." She spent much of her time in her room listening to the dog-eared vinyl LPs she checked out of the local library. "I gravitated right to the Rolling Stones and Muddy Waters records! Okay, the Muddy Waters record -- they only had one. But thank God for that one ..." she says. She had also started teaching herself to play guitar and was clumsily beginning to write songs. Deliverance came when, after enduring an unusually miserable high school experience, she was accepted on a much-needed scholarship to Parsons School of Design and moved to New York City's Hell's Kitchen. "I was only seventeen. I didn't know anyone, had no money -- and I was so happy!" Finally more at peace, she found herself delving into music to a degree that bordered on obsession. Soon she would start doing her own club shows. One night when playing at the East Village watering hole, CB's 313 Gallery, Heather was discovered by the tiny indie label, Oh Boy Records. The meeting resulted in her first offering, ''Mascara Falls,'' dubbed one of the top ten records of 1995 by the Washington Post. Overseen by producer Roger Moutenot (Yo La Tengo, Paula Cole, Lou Reed), the record garnered her critical attention, serious AAA radio play (with appearances on Vin Scelsa's "Idiot's Delight," and the nationally syndicated "World Cafe" and "Mountain Stage" radio shows), a West Coast tour opening for John Prine, and an electrifying appearance on ''Late Night With Conan O'Brien." Still based in New York City, Heather runs the business of her own label, IMPOSSIBLE RECORDS (of which "Candy & Dirt is the first release) out of her tiny, lopsided Greenwich Village apartment. But her favorite part of being a recording artist is still the songwriting. "I love the element of surprise in it -- the fact that I can't really control or predict what I'm going to write next." Heather looks forward to hitting the road in support of the new disk. She's earned a reputation for being an intense and surprising live performer warming up the crowds for Donovan, Jill Sobule, Billy Bragg, Roseanne Cash, John Hiatt, Patty Griffin, dog's eye view, David Poe, Amy Rigby, Freedy Johnston and Rufus Wainwright. She is regularly a featured artist at music festivals, including: CMJ, INTEL and SXSW. Most recently, she sang a stripped-down version of ALRIGHT on VH1's ''Midnight Minutes.''