Pieces of My Heart cover

Pieces of My Heart

Alice Gerrard

Album · 1994 · Copper Creek CCCD 0134

Pieces of My Heart (Copper Creek CCCD 0134) was released on 28 December 1994 and was Alice Gerrard’s first album under her own name alone; before it she had recorded duo albums with Hazel Dickens beginning in 1965 and with Mike Seeger. It was recorded at Overdub Lane in Carrboro, North Carolina, and has fourteen songs: six by Gerrard herself, among them “Belle of the Ball,” “Agate Hill” and “Love’s Not the Answer Sometimes,” and eight others.

Gerrard plays rhythm guitar on most tracks, and banjo on “Ruben (and Ruby).” The musicians vary by song: Jim Watson is on bass for most of them, Jody Stecher plays guitar or mandolin, John Worthington plays lead guitar and slide guitar, Tony Williamson mandolin, and Al McCanless fiddle. Kate Brislin sings harmony on several songs, including “There Ain’t No Ash Will Burn,” with Stecher on mandolin and Watson on bass.

The covers range from Bill Monroe’s “Rocky Road Blues” and the George Jones song “Flame in My Heart” to Cathy Fink’s “Names” and Sigmund Romberg’s “When I Grow Too Old to Dream,” to which Gerrard added a second verse. “Ruben (and Ruby)” and “Dying Ranger” are traditional.

Tracklist

  1. 1 Ruben (and Ruby) 3:15
  2. 2 Belle of the Ball 2:59
  3. 3 Jeweled Heart 2:39
  4. 4 Light At the River 3:59
  5. 5 Agate Hill 4:22
  6. 6 Dying Ranger 3:15
  7. 7 Rocky Road Blues alt version 2:33
  8. 8 Flame in My Heart 2:58
  9. 9 There Ain’t No Ash Will Burn alt version 4:26
  10. 10 Whole Lot of Used to Be 2:51
  11. 11 Love's Not the Answer Sometimes 2:57
  12. 12 Names 3:17
  13. 13 Life's Other Side Coming Down 4:01
  14. 14 When I Grow Too Old to Dream 2:13

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