I just came from seeing Sandra McCracken in concert for the second time this week. Her new CD, Gravity | Love, came out on Tuesday, and I went with some friends to her release concert at Mercy Lounge. Kate York and Matthew Perryman Jones opened for her, and then she played for just over an hour with a full band. Tonight she played an acoustic set with her husband Derek Webb accompanying her as a part of a preview series for the Americana Folk Festival that she is playing next month along with artists like Mindy Smith and Patty Griffin.

I’ve heard Sandra sing several of the songs from her new record at the Square Peg Alliance in-the-round concerts at Radio Café recently, and I enjoyed getting to hear them again both with a band and acoustically in the same week.

Her new record was produced by Peter Collins, who has produced records for Jewel, Nanci Griffith, Bon Jovi, the Indigo Girls, Beth Nielsen Chapman, and many others. The song I was looking forward to hearing most is Portadown Station, which features a string arrangement by Kris Wilkinson with Sandra playing piano. I heard about this song about five months ago when I was working with Kris on a Nanci Griffith project, and it is one of my favorites on the CD.

Another one I was waiting to hear the studio version of is Chattanooga, a song I first heard her play about a year ago. In the chorus she sings // Can I drive you to Chattanooga / Where the city in October looks like fire / Changing lanes on this restless highway / Between this living and desire //.

The song that is my favorite lyrically at the moment is Shelter. The lyric that jumped out at me when she sang it Tuesday was about “the longing that makes me believe”.

Here are the full lyrics:

In the arms of a good Father
You can go to the deep water
Where the questions, we have left unspoken
Come out in the open
We will find shelter here

So I lay down, what I cannot hold in my hands
Every sorrow and hope spinning out of control
And here I find sweet resolution comes in letting go
And we will find shelter here

When I look back I can see,
And when I am old I’ll remember these things
Like a mountain of stone
And the longing that makes me believe…

There is a tree by the blue river
Where the shade stretches wide over
In this breaking we are hand and glove
Come with me my love
We will find shelter here
We will find shelter here…

Derek Webb made his last CD Mockingbird available as a free download at freederekwebb.com two weeks ago, and so far it has been downloaded over 35,000 times. Sandra mentioned Tuesday that she may be doing a similar thing with some of her music in December. I’ll post about it here when I hear something.

She and Derek are getting ready for another tour starting next week, and they’ll be on the road for a couple weeks. Check out www.sandramccracken.com or www.derekwebb.com to find out where they’ll be playing.