Standing Eight by Bill Morrissey (Folk)

Personnel includes: Bill Morrissey, Suzanne Vega, Patty Larkin, Johnny Cunningham, Shawn Colvin, Richard Gates, David Patt, John Curtis, Peter Keane, David Ruskin, Robin Ratteau, Eric Lillequist, Dean Adrien, Rick Watson, Cormac McCarthy, Greg Hopkins, Leslie Sivolkos. By the time of Bill Morrissey's third release, STANDING EIGHT, he was well on his way to becoming one of New England's best folk-singers, and one of the top writers in the genre as well. From the opening bars of the melancholy "Handsome Molly," it's clear that Morrissey is an unflinching storyteller, a folk singer who accomplishes what few of his peers can manage: the creation of evocative tales that reveal the human condition without resorting to sanctimony or melodrama. It is this condition--one of lost loves, unrealized dreams, infidelity, and succumbing to an open bottle of whiskey--that Morrissey chronicles and inhabits. The weariness of "Motels and Planes" captures the bleary existence of the traveling troubadour who swallows the bit...