Shadow Resolve - Jake Berry

(photograph by Wayne Sides)

Shadow Resolve (1997) – Jake Berry – The first Front Porch CD and the impetus behind the founding of the label. Berry had circulated the songs recorded on a four-track cassette tape recorder among friends and associates. They encouraged him to release the songs as they were instead of recording them in a professional studio. Amy Trussell offered to back the expense of mastering and disk duplication. With some reluctance Berry agreed and the Front Porch label was born. Berry was already widely known as a poet with several books to his credit and had always written songs as another form of poetry, but this set generated enough enthusiasm to prompt him to go public as a singer-songwriter as well. Berry plays guitar and sings, occasionally dubbing a second guitar, harmonica or backing vocal. The tracks bare the mark of the original cassette tapes including tape hiss, but their sincerity and authenticity established the distinguishing feature of the Front Porch sound. To download the track “Walking” click here.