Jan Luby is a jewel of a singer-songwriter. Her new CD Nobody’s Girl showcases many of Luby’s organic, heart-felt translations of life into words and music. Luby infuses each of these songs with emotional honesty. Listeners will be certain to relate to what she is saying as they feel what she was feeling when she wrote and recorded these shiny true to life gems.
Luby’s classy opener “Bloom,” with trumpet infused vitality from Steve Bernstein, paves the way for further explorations throughout this disc of the simple but beautiful applications of voice and acoustic guitar with other nuanced instruments chiming in. “Bloom” is a mother-daughter talk themed song and it is only a hint of the many deeply personal lyrics Ruby showcases with her unique angles and vocal approaches on this album.
“Come Home” makes the most of Kevin Fallon’s adept mandolin picking style. Luby glides over this melody angelically, with a rasp in her timbre that vibrates with strength and vitality even though she sings in a gentle down tempo approach.
“Right Left Right” seems to focus on the levity of dancing with a clumsy male dance partner who couldn’t help stepping on her sore tender feet, repeatedly. Luby’s self-deprecating humor takes another turn when the man introduces himself as a former classmate she and her friend had played a mean prank on. It is her willingness to look at things from other points of view and to admit her own wrong that makes this song resonate on an emotional level. While the dance partner may have been eccentric to seek revenge, he forced Luby to look back on a time when she herself wasn’t very nice to someone.
“A Roof And Four Walls” features a forlorn violin from Kevin Fallon moodily shadowing Luby’s struggles with poverty and homelessness. Her voice is unaffected as she sings it like it is, and that straight-forward approach works wonders at bringing forward the bleakness of her previous economic hardship.
“Newer, Bigger, Better, More” humorously describes the hectic pace of bargain shopping and how shoppers can come to blows. Luby’s good-natured recounting and personable delivery brought this whimsy to visual life. Her title track “Nobody’s Girl” tells the tale of two girlhood friends who choose completely different paths during adolescence. These paths focus on how they came to deal with the opposite sex. Her friend “Cookie” grew up fast, got used, and became someone nobody had any use for. Luby cuts through the stereotypes of the bad girl and tosses into our consciousness the bitter reality of this very actualized woman and her hypocritical male classmates. Luby’s vocal approach here emphasizes the emotions going on inside this person without being ostentatious and without fancy artistic flourishes. It is what it is and it is a hard truth. Emotionally neglected children will grow up to be emotionally neglected adults.
“Christmas Eve/Visiting Hour” takes the listener inside a woman’s correctional facility where Luby plays Christmas songs and carols for the inmates every year. It is a mission this singer-songwriter takes seriously, and you can hear her compassion in every verse. You can hear in her soft, understated vocal how much the experience means to her as well as the women inside the barbed wire fenced containment.
“Everything We Do” is a protest song with a twist. The song doesn’t directly protest anything, but it certainly commemorates a protest Luby once took part in. Her warm reflection of an important time in her life looms large here as she presents how she and her sister protesters took part in a major human event that made a difference in the world.. “Comfortable Love” is Luby’s celebration of the man she chose to share her life with. Her affectionate delivery of each and every line make this man appear in the listener’s mind as a person of steadfast devotion. Luby’s tune also describes how what was once a passionate love in their youths has matured into a steady, reliable source of affection and support and thoughtfulness in their later years.
“Nothing To Show” finds guest musician Geoff Bartley picking out a bluesy melody with tender charm. From there, Luby gently applies her tender vocal to a chorus about personal debt, food stamps, and day care. Her good natured wonderings make her a sympathetic person as she translates her personal struggle into a universal theme for all parents who have found themselves struggling to raise children on a small income and limited public support.
“Right Here” finds Luby accompanying herself only on acoustic guitar, making a big, wide fulsome sound with just her two sweet instruments. Her voice comfortably rides along the rails of this easeful tempo. Her timbre is clean and her technique, again, is straight-forward, just what she needs to bring home the simple ringing truth of her words.
“Moon Folly” is a beautiful duet built upon Luby’s larger than life harmony with Michal Lauren. The lyrics are actually a poem by Fannie Stearns Davis, and the two ladies singing it bring it to gorgeous fulsome life.
“Don’t Look Away” features assertive strumming and an allusion to a haunting scene from the Thornton Wilder drama Our Town. Guitarist Geoff Bartley’s lead guitar stings with authentic emotional pain, and Luby’s voice is full of subtle tenderness as she mourns people living inside their own heads and trapped inside their own self-imposed cages.
“This Little Moment” sways on the easeful grace of Valerie Thompson’s pretty cello; notes dancing gracefully in the backdrop. Again, Luby’s warm vibe, conjured by her gentle affectionate approach, brings to shiny light her focus on a meaningful slice of life.
Luby has come up with something truly special here. She makes many aspects of womanhood very realistic in her gritty, unforgiving details and emotional honesty. The music that supports her hearty themes are full of many nuanced melodies. She, of course, wasn’t flying solo in all of them. In addition to the players named, she also featured Joe Potenza and Paul Shaheen on this disc she recorded in Boston studio Melville Park, and Tim Tompkins home studio in San Juan Bautista, California, and had mastered at Soundmirror in Jamaica Plain.
