Fayssoux - I Can't Wait (2014)

Fayssoux thinks she sings songs, but she sings invitations. Invitations to a kind and lovely south that I've not found when her voice is out of earshot. Invitations to transformational emotions, to empathy and caring, to good humor and helpfulness. Invitations to feel something, to hear stories and smile together. Invitations to grace. Emmylou Harris, Rodney Crowell, Linda Ronstadt, Tom T. Hall and many others have accepted her invitations. Harris, who calls Fayssoux s one of my favorite voices, featured Fayssoux on classic albums including Pieces of the Sky, Quarter Moon in a Ten Cent Town and Blue Kentucky Girl. That s Fayssoux, duetting with Harris on 1978 s Green Rolling Hills and harmonizing on 2005 s Grammy-winning The Connection. Crowell adores her, and likens her voice to charm, elegance, whippoorwills and Magnolia dewdrops. Ronstadt writes glowingly about Fayssoux in her Simple Dreams memoir. Hall contributed vocals to Fayssoux s version of his and wife Dixie Hall s I Made a Friend of a Flower Today, which originally appeared on the Grammy-nominated Red Beet Records album, I Love: Tom T. Hall s Songs of Fox Hollow. In the early 1980s, Fayssoux stopped singing her invitations, closeting that marvelous instrument for more than a decade. But in 2008, she made her recorded debut as a solo artist on Red Beet with the exquisite Early. Now she s back with I Can't Wait, a gorgeous set of songs, five of which Fayssoux wrote and all of which are elevated by her singular, dusk-shaded invitation of a voice.