We have brought you a lot of new songs this week, in a range of styles, but we have not – at least not yet – brought you a song that just, well, not to put too fine a point on it nor to take too long to get to the crux of the matter, what has been lacking is a song that just rocks. Well. That ends, now.
Sunset Road powers off Dore’s new album Hold The Spark, and it’s a gutsy tale of getting out whilst the going is good, not settling for a bad situation and taking control of one’s life. Or, as Dore sings it: “Chelsea bought a Chevy gathered all of her possessions / Grabbed the baby and a pack of Kools / She had fire in her dreams she had another destiny / She wasn’t waiting for the end of a bad B-movie / Shot on Sunset Road.” There’s no holding back this song which features the twangy guitar of Jason Wilber, who played with John Prine, and lead slide guitar from Chris Masterson of Steve Earle & the Dukes (and, yeah, naturally also The Mastersons).
Dore’s life has been full of incident – but we know our audience and, as aficionadas of popular culture, the story that’ll give the biggest zing is that Dore attended Wesleyan University, Connecticut where she played in psych bands and got married too young. She was soon divorced and took up with Oz, the cool rocker guitarist in her college band. She and Oz, who attended Wesleyan with Joss Whedon, inspired the character Oz and his relationship with Willow on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Florence Dore will be playing some dates in the upcoming weeks, but the only one that’s really of interest to Americana UK (and with apologies to the Vox Continental column) falls on March 11th when she’ll be playing Medley in Malmö, Sweden.
