Eilen Jewell with The Sacred Shakers

Once in a great while, you put on a CD by an artist you’ve never heard of before and time stops. The voice is new, yet timeless. The lyrics are original yet feel immediately familiar, lived-in, knowing. The melodies [expertly performed by a first-rate band carry an easy, memorable groove. This is the story of Eilen Jewell. It started after her 2005 self-released debut, Boundary Country, made its way into club-owners hands, onto a handful of radio shows and around the press circles of Boston, her current home base. Reaction to her music was swift. Many compared her talents to those of Lucinda Williams, Gillian Welch and June Carter Cash. The Boston Globe said, he slow organic sway of her melodies, and the sensual way she rubs against the low end of her register, will remind some of Gillian Welch. Also like Welch, her writing is both intimate and vivid, classically framed and closely observed. In an era dominated by artfully inscrutable songwriters, her songs come on like nakedness and thunder " and her keenly visual way of articulating deep emotion is palpable.

For The Sacred Shakers, there's nothing finer than old-time, country and blues-influenced gospel music. Think Hank Williams, The Carter Family, The Stanley Brothers, Son House, and Mississippi Fred McDowell. Beginning
in 2005, that music drew a small but ever-widening circle of some of Boston's finest musicians and vocalists together at the Country Gospel Brunch concert series. In short order, The Boston Globe described the group as "a local Who's Who of all-star roots musicians." And last summer, after hearing a single live performance by The Sacred Shakers, indie Signature Sounds label owner Jim Olsen encouraged the group to record their repertoire. On their eponymous debut, The Sacred Shakers offer new life to the gospel genre by revisiting the stripped down country and bluesy gospel material that inspires them.