MEG HUTCHINSON Releases New Album BEYOND THAT Today

By: Sep. 24, 2013
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Award-winning songwriter, poet and mental health advocate Meg Hutchinson will be releasing a new studio album, Beyond That, today, September 24, 2013 on Grammy-winning indie label Red House Records. The album reunites Hutchinson with veteran Boston producer Crit Harmon (Martin Sexton, Mary Gauthier) for what is her most experimental and intricate production to date.

"Crit and I have worked together for a decade now. I wanted to build on that trust and that shared musical language and really encourage each other to find new sounds," she says. "I felt that I had reached a new landscape in myself and I wanted the album to reflect that." The result is an album reminiscent of David Gray's White Ladder where revelatory lyrics combine with a fresh contemporary production.

Premiere the video for "Only Just Begun" here
Meg's interview with "The Gatekeeper" Kevin Briggs on "Bob Edwards Weekend" will air July 26-28 on PRI Radio; listen to the interview here
Beyond That is available for pre-order now at Amazon and iTunes; Hutchinson is premiering
the first video from the album, "Only Just Begun," on her website here. You can also tune into PRI radio this Friday through Sunday, July 26 through 28, to hear Meg's interview with Golden Gate Bridge CHP officer Kevin Briggs on Bob Edwards Weekend. Briggs, who's been recognized for his suicide prevention work, is the subject of her song "The Gatekeeper" from The Living Side. Clickhere to find out how to listen in.
Hutchinson has been busy in the three years since we last heard from her. She learned to play the piano and established a home studio, giving her greater flexibility to explore new terrain. In her previous album, 2010's The Living Side, she spoke of wanting to unplug from technology and regain a stillness in her life. The songs on this album, at once ecstatic and meditative, are evidence that she has taken this message to heart.

The resulting songs are about coming home, about transforming desire, about how human love can open the heart for some greater purpose.

This new cycle of songs shows us another way. In "Only Just Begun" she contemplates how craving has been integral to survival, but that she hopes to move beyond this instinctual blindness. She sings, "My loves are many, my needs are few, billions of light years, it's taken me to get here." She closes the song with the lines "My best work has only just begun, our best work has only just begun." This seems not only a mission statement but a call to all of us to re-examine our lives.

In "Yellow Room" she writes of a dream she had where she was getting on an amusement park ride but instead was flung into outer space and given a breathtaking view of our planet.

"I was filled with the sheer beauty of seeing the earth from far away. Filled with this realization that we are all a family inhabiting this one tiny planet in the midst of a vast universe. In the dream all our human arguments were meaningless, and what I was left with was a profound sense of wonder and love."

As a result of the messages inherent in her earlier albums Come Up Full and The Living Side,Hutchinson has been invited to speak and perform as a mental health advocate across the country at prestigious conferences and teaching hospitals including Johns Hopkins University.

A chronicler of the human condition with a poet's lyrical sensibility, Hutchinson is a unique, fearless songwriter whose work is vivid and transformative. Look for US tour dates to be announced soon.

Tune in July 26 - 28 to PRI Radio to hear Meg on "Bob Edwards Weekend" or listen here

View the video for "Only Just Begun" here
Pre-order Beyond That on iTunes here and on Amazon here

MEG HUTCHINSON on the Web:



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