Out singer-songwriter and guitarist Patty Larkin will hit road this fall behind the release of her latest album “Still Green,” her 13th album and her first original music since 2008’s “Watch the Sky. ”
Larkin can be forgiven for the long stretch between albums, as “Green” chronicles the past four years of Larkin’s life, which was a trying time for the artist after she lost both her parents and witnessed her sister suffer a stroke.
Larkin said she retreated to a secluded dune shack on the Outer Banks of the Cape Cod National Seashore, both as a respite and to write many of the songs on “Still Green.”
“I’d always thought about doing it but a lot of times people go out there and they write and paint and draw or whatever and create art,” she said. “It’s not something that I had done before. I remember one time I went out and I was supposed to be writing an instrumental, so I put all kinds of pressure on myself. This time I thought, What the hell? I’m just going to go out there and write and see what comes out of this. There were very whimsical songs on the way and somehow a continuation of the sort of heavier songs I had written. It focused me in a different way. It was like an assignment and originally I thought it would be an EP or an album of songs about the dunes, but I just decided to incorporate the full picture for this album.”
Even though the album was written during a dark time in her life, the resulting songs don’t necessarily come across as mournful.
In fact, many of them have a bright and upbeat feel.
“It doesn’t go to a super-dark place musically but it’s very straight-ahead in terms of productions and it’s sort of almost a lighter way of singing in a way,” she said, “I think of it as totally listenable. When you consider what I was going through when I wrote some of the songs and what the four-year interim has been like, you would think it would be fairly depressing. I think it’s emotional but it’s ultimately hopeful and that’s where the ‘Still Green’ comes in.”
Patty Larkin performs 8 p.m. Sept. 20 at Sellersville Theatre 1894, 24 W. Temple Ave., Sellersville, and 8 p.m. Sept. 21 at World Café Live, 500 N. Market St., Wilmington, Del. For more information or tickets, visit www.pattylarkin.com.
— Larry Nichols