Chimes After Midnight

Singer-songwriter Ruby Friedman says of her new Label 51 Recordings album Chimes After Midnight, "I'm giving voice to remarkable people who time will erase otherwise, ordinary men and women who changed history. Like chimes after midnight, theirs are the voices you would not hear - people in the dark."The Portland-based Ruby Friedman Orchestra's album comprises 10 new compositions penned or co-authored by the pyrotechnic-voiced Friedman. Most of the tracks were co-produced and arranged by Friedman and multi-instrumentalist Ben Landsverk, the co-writer of "Honeystomach (The Flight of Connie Converse)," "Flower Whore," and "When the Hangman." Connie and Graham Yost (creator of the hit shows Slow Horses, Silo, and Justified) are co-executive producers of the album.Co-writers also include Nashville-based musicians Adrienne Smith and Philip White ("Music Row"), California-based DJ/producer Kr3ature ("From the Storm"), and Nicholas Allan Johns, who is a member of Friedman's Los Angeles band ("Four Day Muse"). Friedman is supported on the record by top players from L.A, Portland, Nashville, New York, Rome, and Athens. The album was mixed and mastered by Steve Baughman in L.A.Chimes After Midnight is the successor to Friedman's highly regarded 2016 album Gem, which was praised in Magnet by veteran critic j. poet for it's "quiet songs of devastation." In the interim, she has released the tartly funny single "Ain't Got Your Money" (featured on the Disney + series The Mighty Ducks); the stormy Los Angeles radio hit "Un4Given"; and the Mitchell Froom-produced "Teardrop Trailer," originally written for Wynonna Judd. In 2022, she performed "Fire Down Below" on the trailer for the concluding season of the hit Netflix series Peaky Blinders.She says of her new recording, "If there's a thread on this album, there are a lot of tales about women - invisible women, or women made invisible who were trying to be seen and heard, or women kept in the dark, or exploited women." Reflecting the musician's longtime absorption in history, several of the compositions recount true stories that have boldly contemporary resonances.