Maggie Herron - My Story in Song (2023)

A Hawaii institution for more than four decades, award-winning jazz Vocalist, pianist and songwriter Maggie Herron releases her most revelatory album with My Story In Song.

A polished and prolific singer/songwriter who has often mined her eventful life for material, Maggie Herron is no stranger to self-revealing recordings. With her seventh album, My Story In Song, the Hawaii-based jazz pianist has created her most personal and ambitious project yet. The album features a program of new material delivered with her trademark wit and emotional transparency. Sounding more pleasingly husky than ever and phrasing with rhythmic acuity, she delivers a beguiling set of melodies while wearing her heart on her sleeve.

In many ways My Story In Song is a companion piece to her last album, 2020’s Your Refrain, which earned Herron her fifth Nā Hōkū Hanohano Award for Jazz Album Of The Year (Hawaii’s premier music awards). Like that project, the new album features songs composed with her daughter, lyricist Dawn Herron, whose tragic 2020 death in a bicycle accident led Maggie to complete several pieces long in the works.

My Story In Song weaves together contributions by bassist David Enos, drummer John Ferraro, pianists Bill Cunliffe, Romain Collin, and Mitch Forman, guitarists Grant Geissman, John Storie, and Larry Koonse, percussionist Alex Acuña, bassist Darek Oles, and saxophonist/flutists Bob Sheppard and Andrew Neu. The result is an enthralling collection of songs that covers an array of moods and textures while centering on an unimaginable loss.

The album’s emotional core rests on two songs that Herron wrote in response to Dawn’s passing. “Density” is an aching but becalmed meditation on grief and loss featuring exquisite accompaniment by French-born pianist Romain Collin and Bob Sheppard. And “Modern Day Angel” is a gospel-powered celebration of Dawn with vocal arrangement by Take 6’s Mark Kibble and horn charts by Andrew Neu. “She touched many lives,” Maggie said. “As the song took shape I thought of other notable women who were humanitarians and inspiring.” The mother-and-daughter team covers a lot of ground, from the gently sublime “Sweet Lullaby,” which features another luscious Kibble vocal arrangement, to the rollicking, horn-powered “Devil’s In the Details,” a song that would have fit snuggly in the Ray Charles songbook.

“When I listen to the album the music has an undertone of gravitas,” Herron says. “I’ve written some cheeky blues tunes but Dawn was really the one who brought the levity. She was naturally a more fun person than I ever was. She was a comedian, literally, part of a comedy ensemble group.”

Herron’s songs tend toward moody and disquieting territory, like the rueful “Along Too Long,” which sounds like a forgotten Irving Berlin ballad. She’s joined by an ace LA crew on her two noir-tinged pieces, “No More Regrets” with pianist Bill Cunliffe, guitarist Grant Geissman, bassist Darek Oles and drummer Dan Schnelle, and “The Big Seduction,” a cautionary tale of Tinseltown’s destructive allure, which adds Bob Sheppard and trumpeter Kye Palmer into the mix.

Herron includes three songs from outside the family. The gorgeous version of “Dawn,” written by the great Mexican-born jazz vocalist, Magos Herrera, feels like it could have been written for Maggie's daughter, Dawn. Herron’s swaggering take on the classic blues “Never Make Your Move Too Soon” rides on a stream of brass, courtesy of Palmer and Sheppard. She closes the album with an exquisite rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”. While the song is occasionally deployed for cheap profundity and unearned sentiment, in Herron’s hands “Hallelujah’s” abject plea rings true, with her voice cushioned and buoyed by Duane Padilla’s austere string arrangement. Love, loss, grief and release, My Story In Song offers a portrait of an artist in full and a deeper look at one who keeps growing while facing life’s most challenging vicissitudes. It’s a work for the ages.