ARTIST
A-Z
Laura Cantrell
Famously, Peel himself said of Cantrell: "My favourite record of the last ten years and possibly my life is an LP by a New York woman born in Nashville called Laura Cantrell. It's country, and I don't know why I like it, but it has the same sort of effect on me as Roy Orbison had in the '60s."
The daughter of two attorneys, Laura Cantrell moved from her native Nashville to New York to study law and accounting at Columbia. She started singing while at college, and ended up befriending John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants, with whom she sings on the band's 1992 release Apollo 18.
In fact, BBC producer Andy Rogers said of her first session with Peel: "at the time she was still working - quite bizarrely in banking or personnel or something - in a big city corporation in New York. John heard her album and played it into the ground."
Her debut album in 2000, Not the Tremblin' Kind, caught the attention of Peel, and in the end she recorded five sessions for the man - 3 at Peel Acres and 2 at Maida Vale.
She has since released 2 LPs, the last of which Humming by the Flowering Vine (2005) is dedicated to Peel's memory.
SESSIONS
- 01/02/2001 (Peel Acres)
- 04/06/2001 (Maida Vale 4)
- 01/10/2002 (Simon Aske)
- 08/05/2003 (Peel Acres)
- 23/12/2003 (Peel Acres)
FESTIVE 50 TRACKS
- Queen Of The Coast (Number 42 in 2000)
- Somewhere Some Night (Number 21 in 2000)
- Too Late For Tonight (Number 7 in 2002)
- Two Seconds (Number 27 in 2000)