Track Premiere – D.L. Rossi “Good Woman”

If tough knocks are the necessary path to meaningful music then D.L. Rossi is probably feeling he’s racked up enough now, and maybe it’s time for life to let him get on with the songwriting part of the equation.  Having started in bands at a young age, joining in with his older brothers, D.L. Rossi decided to pursue a career in music, initially behind his drum set.  The intervention of (successfully treated) cancer  encouraged him to kick up his pace a bit, and in his late twenties he released a debut album which rather shocked his social circle – coming from a close-knit church background he found that after releasing the record “I got completely booted out of the worship community. They were friendly but passive-aggressive about it – some people didn’t like it; others didn’t care. Some thought it could be threatening to some people. It was the first time I was choosing to be honest as a songwriter.”  In the wake of this he suffered a nervous breakdown, virtually gave up music, got a job in Starbucks, got married, had that fall apart and he says  “all of a sudden I was writing songs to cope with my life.”

The result is the new album ‘A Sweet Thing’, out on April 12th, which reflects on all this and on a recent incident of being caught up in a shopping mall shooting incident.  The first single from the album, premiered today, is  ‘Good Woman’  – a shuffled country ballad carried by a vibrant rhythm section and layered acoustic and electric guitars. It’s a love letter penned to the first woman Rossi dated after his divorce, and he says of it that “this song is about a woman I fell for in Nashville.  She was a strong as hell and worked her ass off and was extremely adventurous.  She had this great energy about her that you just wanted to be around.  At that same time, I was on the road listening to a lot of old school Country artists like Tom T. Hall, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and Hank Williams Jr.  The band I was guitar teching for would stay up late after shows with me and show me songs and tell me stories.   I grew up in Michigan and really didn’t get into those artists till the past two years.  I really wanted to write a song that came out of that alt-country school or pop but with a more modern lyrical approach that was progressive.  When we got into the studio my band and I just found this fun approach to this song and I love how it turned out. ”