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 shared two new songs “Fight” and “Fool” from the forthcoming album. Rolling Stone stated “Both songs depict scenarios in which the characters lay themselves bare, revealing pain even as they open themselves up for more. It’s a thread that continues through all of Violets as Camouflage.”
Listen to “Fight” HERE.
Listen to “Fool” HERE.
“Every day you wake up and you choose how to approach your life, your relationship choices, how you choose to love the person, whether it’s with an automatic level of forgiveness and understanding, or you wake up and choose that that’s not gonna be that day,” Bragg told Rolling Stone. “The song is aimed at uncovering these realities of a relationship that is falling apart and you’re making an attempt, at least, to choose the path that – even if you might be doomed in the end – you’re gonna fight your absolute darndest to make sure you haven’t just thrown in the towel before you were supposed to.”
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 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.” With the release of her song “The Right Track,” Nashville Scene named her an “Ace songwriter” and described it as “an upbeat shuffling tune in which Bragg reaffirms her trust in herself.”
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:
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
03/23 – Palo Alto, CA @ House Concert
03/28 – Los Angeles, CA @ Hotel Cafe
03/29 – Huntington Beach, CA @ House Concert
03/31 – San Diego, CA @ House Show
04/10 – Appleton, WI @ Rhythms & Brews at Stone Arch at Riverview Gardens
04/11 – Chicago, IL @ Haymarket Americana Series
04/13 – Cincinnati, OH @ Wyoming Community Coffee
04/19 – Knoxville, TN @ Blue Plate Special
04/20 – Hayesville, NC @ Peacock Performing Arts Center
05/04 – LaGrange, TX @ The Bugle Boy
05/30 – Houston, TX @ Anderson Fair
05/31 – La Grange, TX @ Old Quarter Acoustic Cafe
06/01 – Houston, TX @ Clear Creek Harbour Concerts
06/02 – Houston, TX @ House in the Heights
