Power in the Blood is a sculpture of an artist ever-evolving and a statement of a life’s work realized - challenging, empowering, and celebrating the listener with each and every song. Featuring all but two original tracks, the album starts unpredictably with a re-imagined version of “It’s My Way,” a song that originally appeared on her acclaimed debut album. The new recording of “It’s My Way” demonstrates how her work can transcend generations and still inspire individualism and self-expression 50 years after it was written. Today, NPR Music premiered the track where writer Ann Powers stated "The song is a blessing, ever renewing itself — as relevant as the voice of the glorious elder who offers it."
LISTEN: Buffy Sainte-Marie's "It's My Way" on NPR Music:
[url=http://www.npr.org/2015/03/17/393553697/buffy-sainte-marie-its-my-way]http://www.npr.org/2015/03/17/393553697/buffy-sainte-marie-its-my-way[/url]
Recorded in Toronto, Sainte-Marie enlisted three different producers, a first for her, to help shape Power in the Blood. Michael Phillip Wojewoda (Barenaked Ladies, Rheostatics), Jon Levine (Nelly Furtado, K’NAAN), and Chris Birkett (Sinéad O'Connor, Bob Geldof). Birkett has worked with Sainte-Marie on four albums, beginning with the 1992 release Coincidence and Likely Stories. He recognized from the start that Sainte-Marie was a singular force. “She pays a lot of attention to her lyrics,” Birkett says, “and when Buffy says something, she actually means something.”
Throughout her incredible half-century career each era has revealed new and distinctive shades of an artist revered for her pioneering and chameleon ways. There was no mold from which Buffy Sainte-Marie emerged; she created her own, ripened from experiences in both her head and her heart. Power in the Blood is a reminder that, five decades on, Sainte-Marie is a voice as vital and significant as ever. Like so much of Sainte-Marie’s work, it’s universal. “I love words, I love thinking, and I recognize and value the core of a universal idea simplified into a three-minute song,” says Sainte-Marie. “What appeals to me in folk music are the songs that have lasted for generations, but I wasn’t trying to be one of those guys. I want to give people something original.”
Power In The Blood Track List:
01) It's My Way
02) Power in the Blood
03) We Are Circling
04) Not the Lovin' Kind
05) Love Charms (Mojo Bijoux)
06) Ke Sakihitin Awasis
07) Farm In the Middle of Nowhere
08) Generation
09) Sing Our Own Song
10) Orion
11) The Uranium War
12) Carry It On
US Tour Dates:
May 15 - Lincoln, NE @ University of Nebraska Lincoln
May 17 - Chicago, IL @ City Winery
May 18 - Philadelphia, PA @ World Cafe Live
May 19 - Washington, DC @ The Hamilton
May 20 - New York, NY @ Highline Ballroom
Jul. 16 - Grass Valley, CA @ California Worldfest