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04/28/2015

Lauren Sheehan and Zoë Carpenter: ‘Tillamook Burn’ – From OMN the Mag

BY TOM D'ANTONI // 

It’s a lovely thing when a family sings and plays music together, even more so when they record and perform as professional musicians. We have a happy group of them in Oregon: the Torres family, including father Bobby with two sons and a daughter; Janice Scroggins’ two daughters are fine singers; as is Thara Memory’s daughter, Tahira.

Lauren Sheehan and Zoë Carpenter are mother and daughter with a new EP called Tillamook Burn of Country/Piedmont Blues. Perhaps it is because they used to be neighbors of mine and I did a TV story on Sheehan in which I shot the two of them singing together in 2007, but there is something special that happens when the two of them sing.

Carpenter now lives in Washington, D.C., where she is Assistant Washington Editor for the Nation Magazine. She’s also written for Rolling Stone. Sheehan has continued to build on her past successes, an album every year or so of carefully considered soft-spoken Blues. It is obvious that the music here is that with which they have had a long familiarity.

They are joined by legendary harmonica player Phil Wiggins on his tune “Roberta”, bassist Laura Quigley (Misty River, Flat Mountain Girls), and mandolinist Greg Clarke on the traditional “Honey Baby Blues.”

If there ever was a heart-warming labor of love, it’s this album. Maybe it’ll make you want to sing with your family.

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