Sally Spring
Mockingbird

(Sniffinpup)

First Appeared in The Music Box, July 2007, Volume 14, #7

Written by John Metzger

Sat July 7, 2007, 05:45 AM CDT

Sally Spring has been floating ever so quietly around the fringes of the music scene since the late 1960s when she moved from North Carolina back to Los Angeles, began performing at The Troubadour, and partied with the likes of Mama Cass, The Beach Boys, and The Monkees. In crafting her latest effort Mockingbird, which astoundingly is her first endeavor to receive national distribution, Spring surrounded herself with what essentially is a communal gathering of talent that bridges the two localities she has called home. Tift Merritt, Marshall Crenshaw, Caitlin Cary, Thad Cockrell, the dB’s Chris Stamey, Television’s Fred Smith, and The Byrds’ Gene Parsons are among the artists who came together to lend their assistance to the project. By tackling Gram Parsons’ Hickory Wind, Walt Aldridge’s Ain’t No Ash Will Burn, and the traditional Pretty Peggie-O, Spring hedges her bets by including a few ringers, but in truth, her own compositions largely succeed in holding their own against such lofty company. Not surprisingly, her material is rooted in the ’70s works of Joni Mitchell (Old Man as He Walks out the Door; Going to California) and Linda Ronstadt (Floyd Johnson; Blue, Blue Heaven), but the maturity of Spring’s writing combined with her subtly detailed, emotional delivery gives the songs on Mockingbird a presence that allows her to meet her peers on their own terms.

Mockingbird is available from
Barnes & Noble. To order, Click Here!

Ratings

1 Star: Pitiful
2 Stars: Listenable
3 Stars: Respectable
4 Stars: Excellent
5 Stars: Can't Live Without It!!

Copyright © 2007 The Music Box