In Lisa Forrest’s first book of poems, To The Eaves (2008), the music is of remembrance and hope, of longing and loss. Someday I’ll return / to the doorway / where you stood /… / you just pointed / to the weeds / the sliver moon trees, // singing a sorry song. Oh Lake Erie (2011), Forrest’s first full-length album, brings that same poet’s ear to the studio. In fact, many of the songs collected here, including “Black Dog’s Lament,” “Sorry Song,” and “Porcelain,” were poems first in To The Eaves. But where as poems they sang the chilled Minnesota winter, the dry whine of August insects in an auburn field, in Oh Lake Erie we hear the living heart and rusted clang of a city built on iron and steel gone bust.
Most of the songs on Oh Lake Erie were first written and sung at a small lake cottage outside of Buffalo, overlooking the lake and just out of view of the city’s lights. Joined here by some of the Nickel City’s most talented musicians, Forrest brings that original scene of both yearning and escape to full bloom in these eleven originals, at once fresh and timeless, tirelessly tread. It’s over the sorrow this time is mine / the black dog out back / barking discontent / all night long I hear / his song of moonshine tears / ragged black dog’s lament…Dobro and harmonica, accordion and pedal steel, piano, violin, clarinet, and delicate vocal harmonies, all over a quietly insistent snare and guitar—Oh Lake Erie maps the possibilities between the corner honky-tonk and the steel-blue lapping waves.
Recorded at the home studio of Jonathan Hughes in Buffalo, NY, Oh Lake Erie features John G. Brady (guitar), Jonathan Hughes (bass, organ), Ronnie Kowalewski (accordion), Doug Lambert (guitar, bass, harmonica, piano, voice), Rob Lynch (drums), Marlene Mathews (violin), David Mussen (clarinet), Melissa Rapisardi (voice), Paul Todaro (upright bass), Jonas Westbrook (guitar, voice), and Jim Whitford (dobro, pedal steel).
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Forrest’s full-length debut, “Oh Lake Erie,” finds her joined by a selection of our area’s finest musicians, among them Jim Whitford, Rob Lynch, John Brady, Jonathan Hughes, Ronnie Kowalewski, Doug Lambert, Marlene Matthews, David Mussen, Melissa Rapisardi, Paul Todaro and Jonas Westbrook.
Produced with a graceful subtlety by Hughes, “Oh Lake Erie” balances beautifully esoteric lyrics against sublime musical accompaniment. Rarely is such an evocative marriage of lyric and musical imagery achieved in what is ostensibly “pop music.” “Oh Lake Erie” is serene and welcoming, but it also runs deep.
Check Out: A gorgeous limited-edition “Oh Lake Erie” comes in a letterpressed artist’s book with handwritten lyrics and color photos by local photographers Brendan Bannon and Ginny Rose Stewart.
—Jeff Miers, The Buffalo News
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