Contemporary Americana artist Dusky Waters today returns with the new single “Southeasterly Wind”. The track delivers a fantastical forewarning of what may befall the powerful for their underhanded machinations and arrives backed by the signature trad jazz horn tones of Waters’ adopted home base of New Orleans, Louisiana.
“Southeasterly Wind” follows the April 21st release of the swaggering and celebratory single “Mae”, which was the first song that Jenn Jeffers wrote as Dusky Waters; a celebration of her paternal grandmother’s well-lived life, the song took its first form in the pew at her funeral.
In the years since writing “Mae”, the song has stayed with Dusky and joined others, including “Southeasterly Wind”, to build the collection that will be presented as the Pass It On album when it is released on June 9th. These songs are brought to life by a cohort of Crescent City musicians that have steadily become her long-term collaborators. These musicians are Analiese De Saw (viola, bells), Conner McCready (percussion, guitar), Tommy Henson (piano, organ) and Dylan James (bass). The current live band lineup is the conclusion of a musical journey that follows Jeffers’ life path from her birthplace of Little Rock, Arkansas, to New Orleans, Louisiana, via a stint in the Mississippi delta. Absorbing and exploring the sounds that she uncovered along the way, her songs ultimately uncover what it is to be a black, southern, millennial woman, negotiating the 2020s. Or, as Dusky succinctly puts it, “it’s about living, loving, and losing in Louisiana during the pandemic years.”
Pass It On is now available for CD and Vinyl pre-order here. The album features seven new songs that speak across time and place to express a modern woman’s experience of the deep South, a manifestation of the magic and mourning of the bayou state, and a hopeful ode to the power of self-actualization.
The album release will be celebrated with a special New Orleans show on June 16th at Zony Mash with support from local friends Joy Clark and Gal Holiday & The Honky Tonk Revue. Tickets and further info here.
Dusky Waters Online
