Figure Eight Publicity

Amy Ray - Housing Works Bookstore NYC benefit on February 27

An intimate benefit evening with Amy Ray.

Join Indigo Girl Amy Ray to hear favorites and songs from her February 28, 2012 release Lung of Love.

For over 25 years, Amy Ray has been renowned as one half of Grammy-award winning folk duo the Indigo Girls. She’s also an activist, label owner (her label, Daemon Records, has been going now for two decades) and a tireless innovator, challenging herself and continuing to grow as an artist. With her debut solo album, Stag (2001), Ray turned in her acoustic guitar for a Les Paul and delivered a critically acclaimed album that showed her love of punk and rock and roll. With her succeeding solo albums, Prom and Didn’t It Feel Kinder, Ray continued to explore her voice and stretch herself as an artist; she collaborated with such kindred spirits as members of the Butchies (who are currently part of her recording and touring band), Brandi Carlile, and many others.

Lung of Love, out on February 28 on Daemon Records, is a milestone for Ray – it’s her most accessible, universal album to date. And catchy to boot. It’s also the first time in her career that she’s ever co-written with anyone — her producer Greg Griffith. (In the Indigo Girls, she and Emily Saliers write separately and bring their songs to the studio.) From her great power pop single, “Glow,” to a come-to-Jesus throwdown, “The Rock is My Foundation,” Ray and her guests, including Carlile, Jim James and Lindsay Fuller, deliver a batch of songs that sound like an instant classic.

Lindsay Fuller opens. Lindsay Fuller’s haunting Southern Gothic songwriting is unlike any other in her genre. Born in Alabama, the Seattle-based artist is the antithesis of the typical ethereal songstress. Her storytelling has been compared to Flannery O’Connor’s, while her voice to Johnny Cash, Nick Cave, Lucinda Williams and Gillian Welch – delicate and dark, “a burnished, soulful trill that sounds like the frame of a beautiful old church that’s about to collapse on itself” (The Examiner).

$25 tickets guarantee admission but not seating. Standing room is on a first come, first served basis.
$35 tickets guarantee seating. Seats will be assigned in order of purchase, startling front and center and working out and back.

Doors will open at 7:30PM.
All ticket sales benefit the Housing Works mission of fighting to end AIDS and homelessness.

The Live From Home concert series in generously sponsored by Whole Foods.

For Event Listings:

Who: Amy Ray and Lindsay Fuller

What: Live From Home with Amy Ray, a benefit concert for Housing Works

When: Monday, February 27, doors at 7:30pm

Where: Housing Works Bookstore Cafe, 126 Crosby St. between Houston and Prince streets

Phone: 212-334-3324

Price: $25 general admission, $35 guaranteed seating

Tickets: http://www.housingworks.org/events/detail/live-from-home-with-amy-ray

Press contact: Amanda Bullock, 212-966-0466 x 1104,events@housingworksbookstore.org

Housing Works Bookstore Cafe is one of downtown New York’s most vital cultural institutions, presenting an eclectic mix of events—from readings and concerts to comedy nights and storytelling competitions—featuring many of today’s most exciting artists. The bookstore is staffed almost entirely by volunteers and 100% of its profits go to Housing Works, Inc., which provides housing, health care, job training, and advocacy for New Yorkers living with HIV/AIDS. As an independent cultural center, it offers patrons a unique opportunity to join the fight against AIDS and homelessness simply by buying or donating books; eating at our cafe; coming to concerts, readings, and special events; or volunteering on our staff.

AMY RAY - free MP3 from her new album at Magnet.com

Check out a new track by Amy Ray from her solo band album “Lung of Love” at Magnet Magazine online! Amy’s new album streets Feb. 28, 2012 and features guests Brandi Carlile, Jim James and Lindsay Fuller.

Amy Ray's new 2/28/12 album called one of the "12 Things We Can Look Forward to in 2012" by After Ellen.com

Indigo Girls AMY RAY’s impressive body of solo material has won fans as diverse as Brandi Carlile and Jim James, both of who appear on her new studio album, Lung Of Love, out February 28, 2012 on Ray’s own Daemon Records imprint.

After Ellen.com has picked Lung of Love as their #3 thing to look forward to in 2012, right after Rachel Maddow’s upcoming book Drift and the film Jack & Diane. Preview the track “Glow” here: http://soundcloud.com/angiefigure8pr/02-glow-amy-ray

AMY RAY announces new solo disc, Lung Of Love, get the free single here

Download a new track, “GLOW,” HERE and feel free to share.

Amy Ray, with her impressive body of solo material, has clearly established herself as the “rock” half of Grammy-winning folk duo Indigo Girls. While the heart is clearly the favorite in the pantheon of body parts romanticized in song (See: All Pop Songs), the lung is as overlooked and misunderstood as a gangly feminist at a beauty pageant. But in Lung of Love, Ray’s sixth solo album in a decade, the punk-folk icon gives the humble apparatus its due and delivers her most rocking, immediate album yet.

One of the most recognizable voices in pop music, Ray has never been an artist to rest on her laurels and Lung of Love is no different, featuring tracks ranging from distorted guitar rave-ups to an Appalachian come-to-Jesus throwdown. Street date is February 28, 2012 on Ray’s own Daemon Records imprint. Tour dates, including Ray’s first performance at SxSW in over a decade in March 2012, will be announced soon.

The former suburban Georgia tomboy has always been on the side of the underdog and the songs on Lung of Love continue in that vein. In the mid 1970s, Ray was a Georgia ‘tween, plucking out Partridge Family songs on her guitar and dreaming of becoming David Cassidy, the teen idol who got all the girls. She loved psychedelic hippies like Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, too. Ray began writing songs about injustice and the tragedy of unrequited love and playing her music in the schoolyard. “Even then, I had a sense that what I was writing was not for authority,” says Ray. “I wrote for me and my peers.”

Lung of Love is no different; it’s got a heart, a conscience and it’s current. The album finds Ray reunited with producer Greg Griffith, who worked with her on 2008’s Didn’t It Feel Kinder, but this time Griffith also acts as co-writer, the first time Ray has ever collaborated as a songwriter. (She and Indigo Girl Emily Saliers write separately, then come together to arrange and record.)

Another first: After all of the basic tracks were recorded, keyboardist Julie Wolf laid Moog, Farfisa, Rhodes, and Wurlitzer sounds on top-the vintage keyboards and synths both adding to the uniqueness of the record and creating a subtly unifying motif for the diverse songs.

Backed by her touring band of Griffith (Bass and Guitars), Wolf (Keys), and former Butchies Melissa York (Drums) and Kaia Wilson (Guitars and Vocals), the songs have an urgent, bright economy and a pop sensibility not heard on Ray’s previous solo outings. Guest vocalists pop up throughout the record, including Brandi Carlile, Jim James, and Lindsay Fuller.

Working in Griffith’s Greensboro, NC warehouse studio, Lung of Love was recorded to analog tape. The track “The Rock is My Foundation” benefited from live recording. Ray says about the recording, “We got together on a Sunday morning to record with a team of local players who really know mountain music. The warehouse where the studio is located also houses a couple or gospel churches. You could hear the choirs echoing down the hallways, so the whole scene was just really special and resonant.” Brandi Carlile joins Ray on the chorus.

On the more punk rock side, “From Haiti” is a song of respect to Haitians after the earthquake. It’s about people who had to contend with not just rubble and wreckage, but an historically paternalistic relationship with countries like the U.S. Against a persistent and percussive acoustic guitar strum-beat, Ray’s lyrics underscore the resilience of the people, rather than emotionally exploiting poverty and pain.

In the pop gem “Little Revolution” Ray waxes philosophical about the human desire to shut down in the face of pain — both personal and pandemic — which is, in the long run, more painful than facing it. It’s also a love song to someone who practices being open —- to experiences, to people, and to the pains of this world.

So back to that lung thing. Ray wrote the title song after being on the road, thinking about the struggle to rekindle love after absence. “I have a compass-morally, physically-and I am pulled in different directions,” she says. “I was thinking about how these opposite urges create stress and clumsiness in our lives.”

The lung, not the heart, stood out as the inspiring element in all that she did. “The lung of love is my singing voice,” says Ray. “That is what comes out of me; but always in a struggle with its own clumsiness and frailty.”

As a beloved Indigo Girl, Ray has long been known for her big muscular heart, as a solo artist though; she has indisputably found her voice on Lung of Love.

Amy Ray on the web:

http://www.amy-ray.com

http://www.daemonrecords.com/amy

http://www.facebook.com/AmyRayDaemon

https://twitter.com/#!/AMYRAY