Artist: Ynana Rose
Album: Tea Leaf Confessions
Label: Self-released
Release Date: 11.16.2018
Ynana Rose is one of an emerging group of female coastal California artists including Southern Californians Alice Wallace, KP Hawthorn, and the Calico Band that mix classic country with Americana. Rose is a relative late bloomer, having written her first song at age 37, and a relative newcomer to recording. Nonetheless, she’s impressed enough folks to draw together musicians not only from California’s Central Coast but Seattle, Nashville, Portland, and Los Angeles for Tea Leaf Confessions, released on her own imprint. It’s an amalgam of classic and contemporary folk, country , gypsy jazz, and roots. She has ten originals and covers Left Frizzell’s “I Want to Be with You Always.”
Rose writes from a mature perspective, examining all aspects of love, whether it be for another, for the Earth, or the self-love required to heal and forgive. She spans emotions from joy to heartbreak, the pain of loss to the bliss in gratitude While today she is a married woman with two children, her upbringing was anything but conventional. Rose says, “I grew up in the ‘70s in the middle of the woods in Northern California….I was only child raised by a single mom, and we were totally off the grid. We lived on the side of a mountain with a pristine year round creek and a gorgeous sky. Mendocino County boasts redwood, giant oaks, the Pacific Ocean, and an untamed wilderness that thoroughly embraces the four seasons. When we had enough ‘C’ batteries, I was attached at the hip to a little black boom box that got one FM radio station, and it was country. The ‘70s and early ‘80s were a wonderful time in country music. I knew every single song and sung them to the trees as loud as I could. That music is hardwired into me.”
The backing musicians include familiar names like Nashville first call drummer Paul Griffith, fiddler Tammy Rogers (Buddy Miller, The SteelDrivers) and harmonicist Joel Tepp (Jerry Garcia, Bonnie Raitt, Little Feat). They are joined by an array of regional musicians. The album was co-produced by Rose and Damon Castillo, who plays various guitars. The instrumental configuration varies on each tune, with some featuring cello and accordion in addition to the usual.
As such, the tempos and styles vary too, but the constant is Rose’s gift for lyrical storytelling and her smooth articulate, emotive alto vocals. The opener “Stardust Firefly” is an acoustic tune meditating on mortality, from the viewpoint of elder speaking to the young one they must leave behind. With her background and rather cerebral outlook, it’s no surprise that Rose is a hospice musician. This role inspired “The Gift of Song,” a true story of enduring love. “Mendocino Sunrise” is not only about her home town but how a sense of place can help the healing process. “Love Song To a Hummingbird” was written at the request of a friend near the end of his life.
“Hard Work of Love” is a country waltz while “Sugar on the Vine” is a stomper. “Impossible,” a gypsy jazz tune, changes it up as Rose sings joyously about the far reaching aspects of love. Honky-tonk emerges in the tear-jerker “Leave Me Lonely,” imbued by Rogers’ fiddle and Bill Flores’ pedal steel. The story song closer, “Thin White Line” is abut finding peace in forgiveness.
Ynana Rose is a versatile, authentic vocalist and lyricist who comes across as a wise, gentle soul.
—Jim Hynes
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