A Light To Come Home To is the shining opening song on the new album, Vandals, Thieves & Lovers, from Lisa Bouchelle, and it features two special contributors, with Amanda Shires on violin and Larry Campbell adding banjo and mandolin. It’s a song that touches country-gospel as well as a rock sensibility, all shot through with a strong folk feel; quite the mix. Lisa Bouchelle’s vocals are of the hard-to-ignore type, with an impassioned intensity, with the song itself extolling the virtues of having someone who loves you, or something you particularly cherish, waiting for you back home, wherever that might be.
As Lisa Bouchelle herself says, “All people, no matter their job or walk of life, need a ‘light’ to come home to after a hard day’s work. ‘Light’ isn’t necessarily a lamp that shines, but is different and personal for all people; a significant other, or a dog, for some a book and a cup of tea, or a cold beer, for some (often for me) my guitar that waits for me in my living room. It’s comforting to know that after you go out and ‘give it your all,’ there is comfort to return to afterwards that will serve to recharge our body and renew our spirit.”
For this album Lisa Bouchelle set out to build an all star team of musicians to work with; as well as inviting an all-star cast of artists to join her for the sessions Amanda Shires and Dylan guitarist Larry Campbell she called on the talents of Waddy Wachtel and Clay Cook), E Street Band saxophonist Jake Clemons, pedal steel virtuoso Doyle Grisham, drummer Rich Scannella, fiddle player Tim Carbone of Railroad Earth and bassist Hal B. Selzer who’s in Joan Jett’s band. Bouchelle says of the collection, “Instead of starting with bass and drums and building on top of that, we recorded my acoustic and vocals first. “I spend a lot of time touring on my own, and I wanted to bring that energy to the sessions, to make sure my voice and my guitar were the heart and soul of the songs so that everything else could radiate out from there.”
