The new songs on Kalamazoo-raised songwriter Elisabeth Pixley-Fink's newest album, Heartskin," spanned the time she spent in Portland, Oregon, while working full-time and bike commuting. "The inspiration would show up on my bike commute... it would show up at my lunch breaks. I finished the song 'Your Song' in the basement of the school," she tells Cara Lieurance. "I was trying to have art and songwriting have a really vital role in my life." The album, she says, is "the distillation of a lot of different pieces of inspiration that came during that time" of exploring love and relationships.
As they listen to "Those Were The Days," "How to Stop Loving You," "The Fearless and the Pure," "Habits" and "Your Song," Pixley-Fink reveals how the band captured certain songs in one take at La Luna Recording and Sound in Kalamazoo with engineer Ian Gorman, featuring Mike Shimmin on drums, her brother Joel Pixley-Fink on bass, Samantha Cooper on vocals and violin, and Elisabeth playing guitar and singing. She also collaborated with producer John Hanson in Detroit for acoustic elements and overdubs, and her friend Alex Rosenblatt from the Portland band Family Almanac, on lead guitar.
Elisabeth Pixley-Fink's band will perform at 8 pm on Saturday, May 17 at the Lamplighter Inn in Kalamazoo, in a collaborative show with the Go-Rounds. Admission will be on a sliding scale at the door. More information is available at Pixley-Fink's website.
