Dori Freeman’s voice brings me a slight encroaching envy, a longing of sorts: wishing I had been blessed with the talent she possesses - the lullabies I could sing to my babies and oh, the love songs I could croon to my devoted! Admittedly though, as soon as I start listening, those notions of mine become short-lived thoughts and I’m quickly drawn to the decadence of a talent that is impeccably reminiscent of all the things magnificent and amazing about the inspired genius she has been blessed with. Her voice, fathered by and nurtured wholly with the influence of her family’s musical roots, rouses a crescendo fullness that collects itself flawlessly among the stories her songs tell and the melodies they’re accompanied by. Heavy with Appalachian influences, Freeman’s sound also gives mind to a couple of her influencers, Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris.

Although Dori has been performing and singing with her father, Scott Freeman, and grandfather, William Gayheart, since a young age, she’s just recently started her solo recording career. After a 2014 message sent to Teddy Thompson convinced him to produce her, she released the self-titled, Dori Freeman, in 2016 and quickly followed its release by Letters Never Read, in 2017. Her upcoming album, Every Single Star, gives mind to a serendipitous exodus from the harrowing heartbreak and anguish we all felt while listening to the stunningly emotional Letters Never Read. While Every Single Star still finds itself possessing a few songs pronouncing the unrequited yearning for a love that Dori knows will never be fulfilled, we also find its songs telling stories of friendship, love, motherhood, and the catharsis of happiness.

In anticipation of her Every Single Star September 27, 2019 release date, Freeman made public its first single, “Another Time.” Singing about the exquisite bond, extraordinary understanding, and enveloping commitment women so often find in each other. She puts into words what it’s like to be so drawn to another’s soul that one questions whether such a strong connection is a cause brought about by the fast friendship found when meeting such a kindred spirit or if this adoration and connection developed and grew from times beyond the present. Dori’s lyrics, “Sometimes I feel like I’m crazy inside/ Thoughts I don’t mean to think pulling the tide/ You never doubted a word that I said/ But smiled and told me of the ones in your head,” epitomizes the familiarity with another that most of us long for; once it’s found the bond and affinity in such a relationship is almost unexplainable, yet Dori finds just the words to describe the elegance of it all.

The album’s opening track, “How I Feel,” calls on the minutiae of all that could be measured as the frivolity of our everyday lives and makes note of all this singleness as a sadness aroused while missing someone. While it would have never occurred to me to place such significance on the mundaneness of the overlooked parts of my day, the instances Dori’s lyrics bring relevance to start my mind to sonder and contemplate the different narratives of each of our lives. The song starts with “One shoe on the side of the road/ One bag in the wind blowing cold”…“One can in the back of the fridge.” These words strung together are indeed indicative of heartbreak and lost longing, but Freeman quickly turns them all into a story of devotion for her lover - knowing upon his return the yearning she feels in his absence will be nullified and forgotten. Starting off to the notes of the melancholy steel guitar, but quickly accompanied by a contented steady drum tempo, “How I Feel” launches Every Single Star into a jovial direction that piques my interest to hear more!

Midway through the album it’s another whining guitar intro that invites us into “You Lie There.” I’ll not spoil your experience by re-writing the lyrics here, but instead invite you to listen to a song that contains such simplistic interpretative stanzas that I can’t help but cry over all the things the lyrics to this song could describe in anyone’s life: the battle between maintaining one’s self-esteem or kowtowing to everything you feel you need to do to make someone need you…want you, the suicide of a loved one and the incessant wondering if you did enough/ were enough/ tried hard enough, trying to earn the love of a parent who never seems to give a damn - leaving you to wonder if they even “fell for you”/ wanted you from the very beginning. Dori’s mournful and obviously dispirited vocals pushes the story of this song straight to my heart and leaves me wondering what in the hell she went through to bring such heart wrenching lyrics into this world.

And then, “I’ll Be Coming Home” speaks to the internal battle so many mothers fight everyday - spending time away from their children and missing parts of their lives or fulfilling careers that sometimes take them away from a life they never thought they’d miss any part of. Dori has stated not enough attention is brought to the stories of motherhood, the sometime struggles that come along with it, and the challenge of maintaining a profession while being a parent. In this song she writes about the need to do what must be done to make a living, but always lamenting that she has to be pulled away for fragments of her daughter’s life to make said living.  Any one of us who has ever missed our baby’s first word, our son’s spring band concert, or a daughter’s first art show, knows the anguish that accompanies being torn between it all.

It’s apparent that Dori Freeman has the nature of an artist who sings, writes, and composes her music with absolute meraki. Every song on this record is a story of adoration, passion (or its absence), heart-break (or overcoming it), and most importantly life! As I navigated my way through the mazes of Every Single Star, curiously meddling through every song to pull from each my own definition and reality. Freeman’s ability to structure such laconic lyrical compositions on certain songs and lead into a very verbose story-telling experience on the next, coupled with a voice that so adeptly stirs up emotions with the slightest pitch change, a keening yet fragility to it all, makes this album come together as one of my favorites of 2019. As with Dori’s first two albums, Every Single Star, was produced by Teddy Thompson; was mixed by Sam Evian and features musical contributions from Nick Falk, Zak Hobbs, Richard Hammond, Eric Finland, Alex Hargreaves, and Teddy Thompson. The album can be preordered at https://music.apple.com/us/album/every-single-star/1473024116 and will be available on its release date.

For more about Dori Freeman:

http://www.dorifreeman.com

https://www.facebook.com/dorifreemanmusic

https://www.instagram.com/dorifreeman/

All Photos Courtesy of Kristina LeBlanc