Premiere: Ruby Friedman, ‘Teardrop Trailer’

Kevin Bronson on October 8th, 2019

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Ruby Friedman (Photo by Meghan Cummings)

Ruby Friedman has a once-in-a-blue-moon voice imbued with everything that hurts. The songs on her 2016 album “Gem” and the singles that followed play out like serial tragedies, dark vignettes of Americana and soul in which hope often finishes runner-up. If it’s possible to actually sing the blues away, Friedman is your diva. She might even sing you straight to heaven.

Which is kind of what happens in her new single “Teardrop Trailer.” It’s a country and western song that’s light on the country and heavy on the western, evoking the open road and all its possibilities — even if, in this case, a certain inevitability looms.

The song, originally written for use by Wynona Judd, is about a fan who came to Friedman’s music via FX’s “Justified.” “I didn’t get to know [him] until he posted on Facebook that he had a month to live,” the songwriter says. “He was a minister who had given up his home that he made by hand in Amarillo after his animals died — to travel and commingle across the country and back in a teardrop trailer.”

Friedman, a Southern California native who is getting her mail in Portland these days, is backed by guitarist Val McCallum, bassist Bob Glaub and drummer Matt Chamberlain on the new tune, which was produced by Mitchell Froom and is officially out on Friday. It’s from her forthcoming album “Late Afternoon Highs” (release date TBA).

The new tune is the follow-up to “Journey on a Bullet,” a collaboration with the Gentleman Alchemists (John Fryer and Colin McGuinness). She also recently appeared on “Stubborn Heart,” the debut album by Larry “Ratso” Sloman, covering Bob Dylan’s “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands.”

||| Stream: “Teardrop Trailer”