The Test Drive: Lara Taubman – Ol’ Kentucky Light

Lara Taubman is set to release her new album titled ‘Ol’ Kentucky Light’ this Friday (September 16th) via Atomic Sound Record Company.

With parts of country, soul, and alternative road traveling music, Lara Taubman gives an emotional ride down that highway with a retro cool styled album filled with homages to the radio of the past and the indie of the future done the only way a true talent can: with style.

Check out our other features with Lara Taubman HERE.

About Lara Taubman

New York-based, Country, soul artist Lara Taubman delivers sobering subjects like mortality, mental health, spirituality, survival and finding hope in an exceedingly turbulent, traumatized world on her sophomore album, Ol’ Kentucky Light (out September 16th on Atomic Sound Record Company).

A follow-up to her aptly-titled debut, Revelation, Taubman continues to carry out the sentiments channeled by some of her earliest influences on Ol’ Kentucky Light — the classic country of Patsy Cline, the great gospel of Mavis Staples, The Staple Singers and Mahalia Jackson and the contemporary folk largesse, as filtered through Joni Mitchell. Nevertheless, Lara clearly didn’t just stumble upon her muse, and in revealing herself, she invests her music with both vulnerability and vitality in equal proportions, resulting in clarity and conviction.

“The risk an artist takes is inherent within the act of surrender,” she says. “Some artists prefer to hide out of fear that they’ll reveal too much about themselves. Music is a salve that allows me to excise my insecurity and discomfort. It heals me, and I hope that I can pass that resolve and reassurance on to my listeners and that they benefit from knowing they’re not alone.”

Indeed, certain songs bring those thoughts to full fruition, several offering a gentle caress accompanied by an easy saunter and sway (“Silver Lining”), and others that share an ethereal glow (“Darkness Before the Dawn”) and still others that veer from old school soul (“Mercy”) to songs that reflect confidence and commitment (“The Water”).

“Darkness Before the Dawn” is about going through hell before you get to heaven. Similarly, “Lamb to the Slaughter” was inspired by a long life of anxiety and the consequences of addiction.

“The emotions that started the writing for the album “Ol’ Kentucky Light” was a Matterhorn of addiction and anxiety. I was either going to die or surrender. “Lamb to the Slaughter” was the embodiment of that moment,” says Taubman. “The Water” is about finding closure in difficult relationships.” Lara says. “It expresses everything I needed to say when I wrote it a few years back. It was cathartic to write and even more so to sing it now.”

While the scars and dour impositions that Taubman faced are certainly her crosses to bear, on “The Other Side of the River” she sings about the beauty of being able to live to tell the tale. “I have spent – and continue to spend – a lot of time thinking about my death,” says Taubman, “but now in positive ways.”

“I wrote this song as I was coming out of a struggle with suicide, battling with it for most of my life. The scary thing is once it gets in you it stays like a virus. I’ve lived with it for a long time. Music rescued me from a lot of the bad thinking patterns and hopelessness. It has helped me find my personal power. It makes me feel useful in the world and to have control of my life for the first time. As the suicidal piece began to wane, I began to have the ability to choose my angels and my demons. Those are big choices to possess.”

“Come to Me” is about staying in flow to use forces greater than our everyday selves. As Taubman puts it, “Nature can always help us find our way.”

Produced by her seminal collaborators Steven Williams (drums) and Paul Frazier (bass), arranged by Etienne Lytle (cowriter, keyboards), Walter Parks (guitars, lap steel, shared vocals on “The Water”) and Steve Williams, with vocal production by Yvette Rovira, Paul Frazier and Steve Williams, the album was recorded at Atomic Sound in Brooklyn, engineered by Merle Chornuk, edited by Paul Frazier, and mixed and mastered by Eber Pinheiro.

Raised in the Jewish faith, Taubman considers herself non-observant. Although her forebears were tested in many ways, beginning with her grandfather who went off to fight in World War I at the age of 16. He eventually found success in the automotive business during the Great Depression. Her mother, born in Bulgaria, survived the Nazis only to have to flee the Soviets after World War II, and relocated as a refugee to Israel like many European Jews of that time. She moved to Virginia after she met and married Lara’s father.

Lara recalls that “Even though my home growing up was filled with opera and classical music and the classic rock of the 1960’s and 70’s, Southern folk and country music made a real impression on me.” “My parents also dragged me and my brother to temple every Friday night and I absolutely hated it, except for the music. Those ancient sounds really stuck with me but I didn’t realize it until the last ten years when I began making music.”

That’s hardly surprising, as Lara’s journey has taken her from Virginia to the Appalachians to Baltimore and eventually Vermont. After college she moved to New York and then to Arizona, California and Montana before eventually moving back to her beloved New York City.

On her life’s journey to making music, she had a long career in the visual arts as a painter and then as an art critic and curator. Her work as an independent curator and critic took her all over the world writing about shows of contemporary art for Artforum,
Art News, Flash Art, Sculpture magazines to name just a few. She also published essays for gallery and museum exhibits. She curated exhibits at The Heard Museum of Native American Art, Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Art in Embassies, curating historical exhibits from the Abstract Expressionist movement as well as curating and exhibiting the work of contemporary artists.

Granted, no transition is easy, Lara faced her share of inner demons and destructive forces that made the challenge to strike an equilibrium that much greater. Fortunately, she realized solace and security through song. It helped to heal the pain that tormented her for so long.

“I’ve discovered my destiny.” says Taubman. “While I continue healing, hopefully my journey can provide inspiration to others.” With the illumination of Ol’ Kentucky Light, it appears she’s accomplished that and perhaps much more.

“My job, my service in life is to call down and identify what it is I need to make and put it into the world,” says Taubman, but not without a caveat: “The entire world is in the shitter right now, so it’s easy to get distracted.”

Lara Taubman plans to follow up with an EP, re-record the songs from Revelation and tour as much as possible, now that her career is in full throttle.

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