ADRIENNE YOUNG

Adrienne Young lives in Nashville, but everything about her suggests some other time and place: the teapot in which she brews her organic tea, the sunlight that spills through her windows over stacks of books and rustic jumbles of tapestries and instruments, her quiet passion and intelligence, and above all the sound of her music.

All of this comes into play on her first two albums. Plow to the End of the Road (2003) addressed such topics as sustainable agriculture, a subject made more fascinating by the eloquence of her presentation and by its obscurity among splashier if no less worthy causes. She tackled an even more esoteric agenda on The Art of Virtue (2005), inspired by Benjamin Franklin’s essays on the development of character and purpose.

You could not conceive of a less likely strategy for winning pop media attention — still, that’s exactly what Young achieved, from a Grammy nomination (most unusual for a debut indie release) to national radio exposure (via NPR) to numerous “best of” lists, including a “Best Country Single of the Year” citation from the Nashville Scene, third place in the Amazon.com list of “best folk recordings of the year,” and benediction from the Los Angeles Times as “the Americana find of the year.”

Expectations were high, then, as she readied her third album. And Room To Grow more than meets them even as it catches Young watchers by surprise.

The music is, predictably, stunning: tightly crafted songs that, like the feel of her home and the flow of her conversation, infuse her love for American tradition with high contemporary energy. Young’s vocals mirror weariness and hope on “Natural Bridge,” cross intimate valleys and climb the emotional peaks of “Room Enough To Grow,” simmer on the stone-country burner “High Flyin’ Dream,” yearn to go wherever the current takes her on “River and a Dirt Road.”

It is, in other words, another stretch down the path she began to carve out on those first two albums. But listen more carefully and you’ll hear that Room To Grow is also an unexpected detour into areas more personal than Young had previously explored in song.

In these new tunes and compelling performances, she asks probing questions — about love, responsibility, idealism, stewardship — but the person she’s interrogating is herself. This alone explains her insistence that this is her most “self-conscious, honest, and challenging” album to date.

Room To Grow was produced by Young herself. The first tracks were recorded in analog at Levon Helm’s studio in Woodstock, NY (Justin Guip, engineer). Additional tracks were laid at Sound of Music Studios in Richmond, Virginia (Bryan Hoffa, engineer), with final overdubs put down at Compass Studios (Erick Jaskoviak-engineer) in Nashville. The mixes, created by Grammy-nominated Jason Lehning, “finally gave us the lush yet authentic presentation I had imagined we were capable of,” says Adrienne. Graced by contributions from former Phish bassist Mike Gordon, Nashville alternative icon Will Kimbrough, steel guitar wizard Gordon Stone, and bluegrass/Americana songbird Dale Ann Bradley, Room To Grow turns Young's focus inward. Yet even with this introspective side, it advocates living life directly, not vicariously through the lives of anyone else — including Adrienne Young.

“I hope I can offer something more in my music than, ‘this is all about me and my perspective,’” she says. “In fact, I have a problem with assuming residence under the headline of ‘artist,’ because everybody is an artist, it’s the exploration and expression of creativity that most people get hung up on. It certainly is one of my primary intentions to inspire people to become active participants when they turn on the radio and hear our music, rather than mere observers of someone else’s creative process. We seem to, as a society, focus on celebrities when, in fact, we’d all have a much better time of it if we were goo-goo over ourselves instead, and the brilliant, vivid realities we all hold the potential to manifest with our imaginations.”

There’s the creative challenge of Room To Grow: How do you convey this message of self-liberation without assuming the artistic mantel yourself? Young’s Southern Baptist and Church of Christ roots have grown into Quakerism, devotion to a meditation practice, yoga, and Transcendental philosophy. “I’ve been trying to become more and more familiar with the silent observer, the seer behind all perception that doesn’t waste energy on judgment or attaching subjective critiques to every situation. Through the active process of ego identification, you can’t help but grow, as a person, artist, choose your noun — the end result is the same, you realize that we are all One. That there is really only one experience actualizing itself in infinite forms and that the evolution of your character is inextricable from your work. You can’t hide what you’re going through if you’re truly offering yourself to people in service to the greater good, so my only choice is to put heart and soul into my music, because that’s what this record is for
me . . . it’s my heart and soul.”

A seventh-generation Floridian, raised on the land farmed by her family generations earlier, Young graduated magna cum laude from Belmont University with a Music Business/Spanish degree. Endless and unfulfilling clerical jobs along Music Row motivated this triple-threat singer, writer and multi-instrumentalist to start her own record label, Addiebelle Music. She used her public exposure from the start to laud positive organizations and issues, becoming a champion for sustainable agriculture. In 2004, she became the spokesperson for the Food Routes Network (www.foodroutes.org), which currently has 44 chapters across the United States, actively nurturing Buy Fresh, Buy Local campaigns whose primary aims are to build and strengthen local food systems. Young is currently organizing a nation-wide tour that will raise awareness and involvement with the sustainable agriculture movement. “By creating infrastructures, community by community, for local growers to connect with consumers, we enable true food security, as well as the preservation of our regional diversity, cultural heritage and interdependence.”

Young plans to donate a portion of each CD sold to the American Community Garden Association (www.communitygarden.org), maintaining her commitment to organic agriculture, direct farmer-to-consumer distribution, and self-reliance. This “seed-fund” will eventually distribute non-GM seeds to community gardens across the USA and Canada, focusing especially on urban and inner-city agriculture.

The themes of Room To Grow are relevant to our time: human potential, self-acceptance, and celebration of all that the world has to offer, but the greatest paradox of this album is that in addressing these ideas Young enlightens herself as well.

“I’ve received so many emails and letters, talked with so many people after shows, about how they’ve drawn something from our music that has helped them to get through challenges in their lives,” she says. “The Universal Spirit has put this tremendous, precious opportunity — to comfort and connect with people on a soul level — into the hands of people who are fortunate enough to earn their living as artists. That’s not something I can take lightly. That’s where you say, ‘Okay, if I am this “artist” then I have to be willing to open doors I may not want to look behind, to travel places I may not want to go, but in actuality, it’s the same path that everyone is walking: the path towards enlightenment, which, as the I Ching says, one can never really be off.”

Room To Grow is a roadmap for those who are willing to share this journey with Young. It is also a tour de force, guaranteed to stir deep feelings, lift hearts, and set feet to motion. Use it as you will.

Adrienne Young web site