Album Premiere: Courtney Marie Andrews, Honest Life

It’s not uncommon for a female songwriter to draw comparisons to Joni Mitchell – if you’re a woman of a certain age with a guitar and a few folk songs under your belt, people try to connect the dots. What is uncommon, though, is to find an artist truly worthy of the association. Courtney Marie Andrews, an Arizona-born songwriter who now calls Seattle home, is one of those artists.

Her latest album Honest Life, out August 19 via Mama Bird Recording Co., has echoes of Mitchell’s early work, while effortlessly nodding to Andrews’ eclectic influences in country, rock and folk. Honest Life was a labor of love for Andrews, who gathered a group of friends to record the album before shopping it around to labels herself.

Of making the album, which you can listen to in its entirety below, Andrews tells American Songwriter:

“After living in Belgium for a few months, singing backup for a Belgian singer, I endured my first true heartbreak as a woman. I started touring when I was a teenager, and the lifestyle is ingrained in me. The songs evoke my life as a woman growing up on the road. It’s an American moving picture, an epic where I ultimately make it through, heartbreak and all, learning that life isn’t quite what I sought out for, but accepting that the unexpected is what makes it so great.

When I got back to the States, I finished up the rest of the songs. While bartending at a small town tavern, inspired by the mundane and quiet of the middle of nowhere, I had a new fire in me. I had searched for the perfect producer for months, but every time ‘synths’ and ‘session players’ were brought up, I found it hard to relate these batch of songs to those ideas. I basically put the ‘big bird’ up and decided to make the record myself, with my friends in Seattle. We played in dingy rehearsal spaces and houses until we felt the songs were right where we wanted them. I booked time at Litho in Seattle, and we went in and laid it all down in five days. We called up every great player in town we knew to add their flavor to it, and we called it a day. I then sent that damn record to every industry person I know for a year and a half, getting all sorts of ‘I can’t stop listening to this record… But is it country? Or is it rock? Or is it indie? Also, you’ve sang with all these famous people, but you’re not famous. So, I don’t know what to do. But man… I love this record.’ I went in circles with people until I finally went with the people who loved the record more than they loved the ‘industry.’ In the end, we gave this record the most ‘Honest Life.’ And I’m damn proud.”