CMT Blog: Archive

You know that moment on a road trip when the other person totally opens up and starts talking about stuff that you'd never bring up otherwise? That's kind of how I feel about Catherine MacLellan's album, Church Bell Blues. She's an excellent road trip companion, even if she's just a voice coming out of the stereo. I found myself really listening to what she was saying - or should I say, singing about - and I never minded hearing those same stories again and again. Like my favorite songwriters, her own bad decisions aren't off limits. As Shawn Colvin once wrote, "Friends say, ‘Well, you know, you got a song out of it.'"

MacLellan is a Canadian singer-songwriter who is musically like Mary Chapin Carpenter and Patty Griffin, or for the Canadians out there, similar to Jann Arden and Lynn Miles. Her dad, Gene MacLellan, was also a songwriter ("Snowbird" and "Put Your Hand in the Hand"), and she has said that she remembers watching him craft his songs in the living room. She's been turning heads in the folk community over the last year or so, but soft-spoken country fans would be wise to check out her music too, especially those with a long drive ahead.