KENT EASTWOOD – THE CORKTOWN SESSIONS

Kent Eastwood is a 21st-century troubadour. He worships at the altar of the Holy Triumvirate of Dylan, Cohen, and Springsteen. He lives on the road, travelling light: a traditionalist armed with a guitar, a suitcase, and a laptop.  He writes and records on the fly. On The Corktown Sessions, his songwriting is simple and unaffected, emotionally pure, the work of an enthusiast, a fan.  It’s a love-letter to his heroes, and to the city that inspired some of their best work: New York. “Hey Woody, I’m coming to see you down Mermaid Avenue,” he sings on Coney Island. “How’s your ghost?” Recorded over four days in a Brooklyn hostel, it’s an album haunted by the detritus of the city: traffic noise, a jet passing overhead, a girl’s laughter. It’s raw and immediate, and if some of the songs have an unpolished quality, and others run perilously close to pastiche, there are compensations in the warm burr of Eastwood’s voice, and the pencil-sketch arrangements for acoustic guitar, “backpacker backing vocals”, finger-snaps, hand claps and (gloriously battered sounding) upright piano.
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