Slaid Cleaves...Everything You Love Will Be Taken Away(2009)[FLA

Slaid Cleaves (born June 9, 1964[1]) is a singer-songwriter born in Washington, D.C. and raised in South Berwick, Maine and Round Pond, Maine. An alumnus of Tufts University[2], where he majored in English and philosophy, Cleaves lives in Austin, Texas.
His full name is Richard Slaid Cleaves but Slaid is the name that he has used his entire life.
Slaid is now a full-time touring musician but like most musicians has held many day jobs; Janitor, warehouse rat, ice cream truck driver, rope-tow operator, film developer, groundskeeper, meter reader, and pizza delivery driver. He was even a human guinea pig. He was paid to be a subject in drug studies by a pharmaceutical company.
Slaid's musical roots extend back prior to his days playing in a high school "garage band" with his childhood friend Rod Picott. The two shared a love of music, especially Bruce Springsteen and named their band The Magic Rats, after a character in Springsteen's song "Jungleland."
He brought his love of American artists like Woody Guthrie, Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, Chuck Berry, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, Tom Waits, CCR, and more with him to Cork, Ireland where he spent a semester of his junior year of college. To help pass the time he learned how to play the songs on guitar and on November 18, 1985 he made his debut as a busker - a street singer - in Cork City, Ireland.
After several false starts he started to gain notice around Portland, Maine and in 1990 released his debut cassette, The Promise. Only a few songs off this album, "Sweet Summertime", "Lonesome Highway" and "Wrecking Ball" still occasionally get played in concert. The original tape has unfortunately been lost, and only copies remain.
That was followed a year later by Looks Good from the Road, recorded with his rock band, The Moxie Men, which featured Slaid on lead vocals and acoustic guitar, his brother J. on bass, drummer Mark Cousins and Pip Walter on electric guitar, acoustic guitar, and vocals. By the end of the year they were the darlings of the Portland press and touted as one of the bands "most likely to succeed"
However, Slaid's solo acoustic side took over and in 1991 he moved with his wife Karen to Austin, Texas. In 1992, he was a winner of the prestigious New Folk competition at the Kerrville Folk Festival, an award previously given to such artists as Nanci Griffith, Robert Earl Keen and Steve Earle.
He continued to work hard in Austin, playing various clubs around the city, touring, and continuing to hone his craft as a songwriter. In 1997, he recorded and released his first national album, No Angel Knows for the Rounder-Philo label, which has been his home ever since.
In 2000, he gained national prominence when he had an Americana charts hit with his album and song Broke Down . The title track was co-written with his childhood friend Picott.
He continued to gain notice [3] with his follow-up album, 2004's Wishbones, appearing on the ESPN2 show Cold Pizza
In 2006 he released Unsung, a collection of songs written by other singer-songwriters including Graham Weber, J.J. Baron, Michael O'Connor (who often tours with Cleaves), and Adam Carroll.
He tours nationally performing solo and with a band in many configurations.

It has been 5 years since the last offering from Slaid Cleaves, 2004’s Wishbones . That’s a long time for fans of one of Austin’s best singer-songwriters to wait. Needless to say, Everything You Love Will be Taken Away is not some hastily written, recorded and produced disc made on some big label deadline. Slaid is now working with a co-op label, Music Road Records, which he says allows him more control over his career. The label is the offspring of Jimmy LaFave.
The new disc was co-produced by Gurf Morlix, who also produced Wishbones. Most of the new songs were at least co-written by Slaid, with help from Adam Carroll on Hard To Believe and by Rod Picott on several as well. The thing that stands out to me in Slaid’s tunes is his voice, which is softer and lacks the whiskey soaked ‘growl’ of some of his contemporaries. It’s pleasantly different and a great fit to his music. A perfect example is the opening cut, my favorite on the disc, Cry, a great tune that easily gets stuck in your head. Fellow Austinite singer-songwriter Trish Murphy adds some beautiful harmony vocals on some cuts as well, helping make this disc a real vocal gem. The only cover tune on the cd is a subdued version of Ray Bonneville’s Run Jolee Run.
One of the signs of a well produced album to me is when the producers are able to find the right mix of music and vocals and highlight the strongest part of the music. Appropriately the music on these great tunes supports the great vocals without overpowering or stealing the spotlight from them. Some of the highlights are Black T-Shirt and Tumbleweed Stew, on which Slaid wonders, “Where can a good man go crazy? Where can a cowboy get stoned?”
Slaid grew up in Maine, and finds one of his biggest fans in noted music lover Stephen King, also from Maine. In an introduction printed in the cd, King relates how he first discovered Slaid:
“listening to a program called Rogue Calls on XM CrossCountry, a radio station that played country music by men and women who did not, by and large, wear cowboy hats…by fabulous performers that mainstream country music radio had never heard of: James McMurtry, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Cross Canadian Ragweed and Gurf Morlix. I listened to Rogue Calls without fail, and one day some trucker with a southern accent as thick as chickendirt called and asked if he could hear that ‘quittin’ drinkin’ song’. That song was of course was “Drinkin’ Days” by Slaid Cleaves and it went into me like a bolt of dry lightning….I thought it was the voice of a real American troubadour, and when I got home I made checking Slaid Cleaves out on the Internet my first priority.”
While five years is a long time to wait, I think all of Slaid’s old fans as well as many new ones will certainly be happy with Everything You Love Will Be Taken Away.
As Jim points out in the comments, Slaid had a 2006 releasse of cover tunes called Unsung. This is the first cd of his own compositions in 5 years.

Track List:

Cry (Slaid Cleaves)
Hard to Believe (Adam Carroll/Slaid Cleaves)
Beyond Love (Slaid Cleaves/Rod Picott)
Green Mountains and Me (Slaid Cleaves/David Farnsworth)
Run Jolee Run (Ray Bonneville)
Dreams (Slaid Cleaves/Rod Picott)
Black T-Shirt (Slaid Cleaves/Rod Picott)
Tumbleweed Stew (Slaid Cleaves/Ron Coy/Michael O'Connor)
Twistin' (Slaid Cleaves/Eric Blakely)
Beautiful Thing (Slaid Cleaves)
Temporary (Slaid Cleaves)

CD...MRRCD143

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