Chastity Brown with Sawyer Fredericks 

About

JUST ANNOUNCED: SAWYER FREDERICKS OPENING FORCHASTITY BROWNBorn with an innate ability to channel wrenching circumstances into beautiful, uplifting songs

After surviving the isolation of the early pandemic and a global racial reckoning that was set off mere blocks from her South Minneapolis home, even she was surprised to hear the way her latest album was taking shape.

“It’s a love album, in a way I didn’t plan on,” Chastity says. The songs on Sing to the Walls blossom around the ears like a lush garden of flowers, with Chastity’s expressive voice and expansive melodies supported by intertwining, twinkling tendrils of atmospheric sounds. Even
the titles hint at the album’s sense of optimistic yearning, from the dreamy opening track “Wonderment” to her ode to healing a broken heart post-breakup, “Curiosity,” to the pulsing promise of “Hope.”

With the exception of “Golden,” a searing indictment of white complacency and a cathartic release of post-uprising rage that comes halfway through the album, Chastity’s new release, Sing to the Walls, is ultimately an album about hope, connection, and love—an ode to the
sweetness of life, even amid a pandemic, even in a city that’s experienced so much pain.

“I think it’s such audacity,” Chastity. “It’s almost like how funk music came after Malcolm, Martin, and everybody got murdered in the ‘60s. Then the ‘70s popped off, and there was funk!

This isn’t funk, but it feels like that same kind of audacity. I just want to feel good. Straight up.” Like so many artists who endured 2020, Chastity’s instinct was to turn inward, at first out of self-preservation, and then because the new songs kept coming and coming. Since finishing her last album, 2017’s Silhouette of Sirens, she estimates she’s written nearly 100 new songs, 10 of which are on Sing to the Walls. The album was partially recorded in Stockholm, Sweden with the revered session drummer and producer Brady Blade, with additional production and mixing by Chris Bell, and the rest was completed at Chastity’s own home studio with her longtime drummer Greg Schutte.

http://chastitybrownmusic.com/

SAWYER FREDERICKS

Americana singer-songwriter, Sawyer Fredericks, hailing from his family farm in central New York State, cut his teeth at the age of 13, playing local farmers markets, open mics, and iconic New York venues like Caffe Lena, the Towne Crier Cafe, and The Bitter End. With his deep, beyond-his-years original lyrics and melodies, raw, soulful vocals, and powerful live performances, Sawyer seemed an unlikely match for reality tv, but having been scouted by casting directors at 15, he quickly won over broad audiences with his genuine delivery and unique arrangements of classic songs, going on to win season 8 of NBC’s The Voice.

In January 2021 in advance of the inauguration, Sawyer released his rendition of the iconic “What A Wonderful World” with an accompanying animated video.