Quality Americana

Today we take a look at the new album from Crow and Gazelle, a North Texas based folk duo from songwriters Chrislyn Lawrence and Mike McClure. 

“She was actually my booking agent back in 2005 out of San Marcos,” McClure said about meeting Lawrence. “We’ve known each other a long time and ran back into each other in 2018.” 

McClure said Lawrence would often be singing in the background while he filmed live streams during the pandemic. 

“She’s always been a behind the scenes kind of person and I drug her into the front of the scenes,” McClure said.

Lawrence has a long history of working with artists, from booking to video production and artist promotion.

“That sounds harsher than it was, but it kind of was like dragging me in through a compassionate nudge,” Lawrence said. “His encouragement and patience led to me being a little less afraid to be… to say seen and heard sounds really dramatic but it’s honestly kind of true.”

Lawrence was there behind the scenes in production when McClure released his last solo album before they started writing songs together.

“It was just this organic build,” Lawrence said, “us just continuing to open up to the idea that besides just being partners and in love could we make art together. That kind of shared both parts of ourselves and what we were going through as a couple and as humans together in a world that started feeling a little more chaotic.” 

Our Song of the Day comes from Truth Be Told, the second album they have released as a duo.

Lawrence described the union and art as “equal parts amazing and powerful and also sometimes difficult, but the good kind of difficult.”

Truth Be Told

McClure said their debut album together was more stripped down than Truth Be Told.

“We didn’t really know what we were doing,” McClure said. “We just started writing together and we had a batch of songs that we felt really good about, but we didn’t put a lot of instrumentation on the record. We just kind of had two voices and acoustic and very little else.”

With Truth Be Told, they were able to do a collaboration with Dylan Aldrich and Juan Salazaro from Skinny Elephant in Nashville. 

“They added some really cool parts,” McClure said. “It’s got a really nice soundscape behind it. Juan added steel and swelling guitars and just really created an atmosphere that went with the music. I just think it’s bigger and more comprehensive.”

“Bigger and bolder,” Lawrence said. “Although our second album isn’t necessarily a chapter two or anything, they are still connected in some way. They’re all songs about looking inside and trying to uncover things we were struggling with. They both have a deep spiritual undertone and sort of trying to get to the bottom of how we as people really can face the world in a way that allows us to be more open with each other and with ourselves to find healing through our relationships through just truthfulness, and real dialog, and trying to take off the masks of what we were handed.”

They held their first release shows in May and the album has placed on the Americana Music Association charts. Lawrence said the second album is heavier and more defiant, that the central character is teaching the world to shape itself with love.

Fall How It Will

“Fall How It Will” looks at the story of Adam and Eve through a different lens.

“How that paints the world and blames the woman and pretty much just calls us all worthless,” McClure said. “Just not accepting that as the truth. It’s moving away from that old kind of theology and moving into something more love aligned.” 

“More inclusive instead of exclusive,” Lawrence said. “We’re living through a time were there are truths coming to light, but as more truths come to light the harder the powers that be work to try to suffocate that. It’s this beautiful upheaval of people trying to look at what they’ve been told is true all the way down the line in so many different areas. The whole planet operates in an accordance of interconnection and diversity. It takes one thing for another thing to survive.”

Support the Artists

Crow and Gazelle have appearances coming up in Tulsa, Oklahoma and Yorkville, Illinois as well as their livestreams. More information can be found here.

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