Acclaimed Nashville singer/songwriter and “Americana Queen” (Noisey) Mary Bragg will release her new album Violets as Camouflage on March 1st via Tone Tree Music. Self-produced and self-engineered at her home studio, the fourteen-song collection was recently hailed by Billboard as “the most intensely personal Bragg has ever written.” Both beautiful and blunt, it’s the work of an artist only just beginning to embrace the full range of her talents. Today Bragg released the video for her latest single “Fixed,” a tender, string-flecked track which takes on the skewed self-perception that many women grow up battling. It debuted on PopMatters who stated “[Bragg] plunges into emotional depths that have never been explored.”
Watch “Fixed” HERE.
“The album as a whole addresses many of the things in life that are not as they seem,” Bragg told PopMatters. “We cover up harsh realities with little white lies we tell ourselves to make a situation more palatable (‘A Little Less,’ and dare I say ‘The Right Track’); we believe relationships are bound for failure when perhaps it’s just state of mind that might need to be altered (‘Fight’); we can be inadvertently deceived by people we love, whether it’s their fault or our own, thanks to the stories we make up in our heads (‘Thought You Were Somebody Else’).”
Her most vulnerable, honest, and powerful album yet, Violets as Camouflage is the follow-up to 2017’s critically acclaimed Lucky Strike. Hailed as a “sublime distilling of Southern grit” and one of the year’s best by NPR Music, Bragg dipped her toes into a kind of radical honesty that she had only hinted at before, and it connected with audiences in profound and deeply personal ways. A Georgia native who grew up “where it’s not super common to come right out and say what you feel or talk openly about your intimate emotional experiences,” it was the first time she started to fully understand the importance of directly addressing really personal issues and hardship through song. It emboldened Mary to trust her gut in a whole new way on Violets as Camouflage where she reaches deeper than ever before, bares her soul, and opens herself up to the possibility of complete and total heartbreak in order to forge a strong and lasting connection.
The album’s lead track “I Thought You Were Somebody Else” is also out now, a languid, seductive tune that feels both classic and modern at once. It’s an ideal entry point for a record all about the stories in our heads, the little voices that delude us into hearing what we want to hear or weigh us down with self-doubt and insecurity. Rolling Stone stated “Like the long-lost ballad Patsy Cline never got to croon, ‘I Thought You Were Somebody Else’ mixes classic country twang with broken hearted sentiment and light touches of pedal steel.” The Boot called it “A sorrowful, sparse song…lyrics floating along with a light drum beat, mournful guitar and Bragg’s soaring vocals.”
Track List:
01) I Thought You Were Somebody Else
02) A Little Less
03) Faint of Heart
04) Fixed
05) Fight
06) Fool
07) Trouble Me Anytime
08) You Rescue Me
09) The Right Track
10) This Feeling
11) Runaway Town
12) Sad Stories
13) The Highest Tower
14) More Than You Do
Tour Dates:
01/18-01/20 – Santa Rosa Beach, FL @ 30A Songwriters Festival
01/25 – Nashville, TN @ Douglas Corner
02/13-02/16 – Montreal, QC, Canada @ Folk Alliance International
02/18 – Burlington, VT @ Radio Bean
02/19 – Lyndonville, VT @ York St. Meeting House
02/20 – Ayer’s Cliff, QC, Canada @ Brigitte’s Ranch
02/22 – West Stockbridge, MA @ House Concert
02/23 – New York, NY @ Rockwood Music Hall
02/24 – Washington, DC @ House Concert
03/07 – Decatur, GA @ Eddie’s Attic
03/08 – Athens, GA @ Hendershot’s
03/09 – Swainsboro, GA @ Sudie A. Fulford Community Learning Center
03/21 – Nashville, TN @ Trimble House
03/29 – Huntington Beach, CA @ House Concert
03/30 – San Diego, CA @ House Show
04/10 – Appleton, WI @ Rhythms & Brews at Stone Arch at Riverview Gardens
04/11 – Chicago, IL @ Haymarket Americana Series
04/20 – Hayesville, NC @ Peacock Performing Arts Center
05/04 – LaGrange, TX @ The Bugle Boy
05/30 – Houston, TX @ Anderson Fair
06/01 – League City, TX @ Clear Creek Harbour Concerts
