Shawn Colvin Announces New Amazon Original Album, The Starlighter

(Press Release) GRAMMY-winning singer-songwriter Shawn Colvin has announced the upcoming release of the Amazon Original, The Starlighter, a new album of songs adapted from the children's music book "Lullabies and Night Songs." The record will be released on February 23rd via Amazon Music. Today, Colvin has shared a new video for the song "The Starlighter," which is currently streaming via Rolling Stone who stated, "The LP's title track is accompanied by a dazzling music video crafted by Jordan Stone and Martin Hughes in Victorian pantomime-inspired animation, while at the same time echoing the spirit of the original Sendak illustrations."
 
Watch Shawn Colvin's "The Starlighter" HERE.
 
The Starlighter will be released exclusively for purchase on Amazon Music and streaming through Amazon Music Unlimited and Prime Music. Pre-order for the album is now available at www.amazon.com/thestarlighter, and fans will immediately be able to stream and download the title track from the album, “The Starlighter.”
 
"The Starlighter" video is based on Victorian paper theatres and the illustration style of children’s books from the same era, and was created by the Manchester, UK/Los Angeles-based motion design studio WeFail. Each scene contains over one hundred layered illustrations, and every element in the video was drawn using a digital tablet before being animated by hand. Shawn Colvin’s character in the video consists of 30 individual hand-drawn pieces, each digitally painted before motion design was applied to create the complete figure. 

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​As an eight-year-old girl growing up in Vermillion, South Dakota, Colvin's mother and father presented her with "Lullabies and Night Songs," a children’s music book that joined famed 20th century American composer Alec Wilder’s arrangements with the fantastical artwork of "Where the Wild Things Are" author and illustrator Maurice Sendak. In 1998, on the cusp of becoming a parent herself, she returned to its pages for her album, Holiday Songs and Lullabies, which featured updated takes on several selections from Wilder and Sendak’s book. 
 
Now, another 19 years later, she has revisited the book once again for her newest release, The Starlighter, Colvin’s tenth solo effort overall. The album finds the GRAMMY-winning singer, songwriter and guitarist reaching into her past in the service of crafting a fresh and thoroughly unique offering—one that resonates with the warmth and tenderness of poignant familial experience and remembrance. The Starlighter’s 14 tracks are a mix of traditional numbers and children’s standards, all of them culled from the pages of Wilder and Sendak’s transformative book.
 
The selections from "Lullabies and Night Songs" that Colvin chose for The Starlighter 
run the gamut from traditional fare like “Hush Little Baby” and “Raisins and Almonds,” to “Minnie and Winnie,” with prose by 19th century Poet Laureate of Great Britain Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and “Cradle Song,” including lyrics by celebrated English poet William Blake. As for how she went about choosing which pieces to adapt, Colvin admits it wasn’t easy. “There wasn’t a dud among them,” she says. “But we wanted to give the record some dynamics in terms of the feel, so we made sure to choose some upbeat songs, because I sort of tend toward the melancholy, slower, more hypnotic tunes.” 
 
The Starlighter arrives on the heels of two recent, acclaimed releases from Shawn Colvin. In June 2016, Colvin and longtime friend Steve Earle united on the duo album, Colvin & Earle. An expanded 20th anniversary release of A Few Small Repairs, Colvin’s seminal breakthrough album, was also released in September 2017. Colvin marked the occasion by undertaking a seven-week U.S. tour in which she and her band performed the album in its entirety.
 
Colvin also announced today March tour dates with Lyle Lovett. For more information or to purchase tickets, please visit www.shawncolvin.com or www.lylelovett.com.
 
The Starlighter track list:
01. The Starlighter
02. Raisins and Almonds
03. Go Tell Aunt Rhody
04. Minnie and Winnie
05. Sleep, Baby, Sleep
06. Many Millions Years Ago
07. The Huntsman
08. The Cuckoo Is A Pretty Bird
09. Night
10. The Journey
11. Bobby Shaftoe
12. The Nut Tree
13. Hush, Little Baby
14. Cradle Song
 
An Acoustic Evening with Lyle Lovett & Shawn Colvin:
03/01 - Bensalem, PA @ Xcite Center at Park Casino
03/02 - Torrington, CT @ Warner Theatre
03/03 - New London, CT @ Garde Arts Center
03/04 - Peekskill, NY @ Paramount Hudson Valley
03/06 - Orono, ME @ Collins Center for the Arts
03/07 - Brownfield, ME @ Stone Mountain Arts Center
03/08 - Troy, NY @ Troy Savings Bank Music Hall
03/09 - Portsmouth, NH @ The Music Hall
03/10 - Burlington, VT @ Flynn Theatre
03/11 - Huntington, NY @ The Paramount Theatre
03/14 - Geneva, NY @ Smith Opera House
03/17 - York, PA @ Strand Capitol Theatre
03/18 - Pittsburgh, PA @ The Carnegie Music Hall
03/20 - Cincinnati, OH @ Taft Theatre
03/21 - Athens, OH @ Ohio University Templeton Blackburn Auditorium
03/22 - Akron, OH @ Goodyear Theatre
 
For the first time ever and for a limited time only, Prime and non-Prime members who haven’t yet tried Amazon Music Unlimited, can get three months just $0.99. Learn more:  www.amazon.com/unlimited.
 
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