Making Tracks

Meg Hutchinson won us over from the start, when she was barely out of her teens, playing local open-mike nights and warming up audiences for touring singer-songwriters. Now, with her latest recording, The Living Side, Hutchinson is bound for greater glory. The Berkshire native who now calls Boston home comes across as a confident, mature songwriter on the eleven original compositions on this album, her sixth altogether and her second for national folk-music label Red House Records—producer Crit Harmon allows Hutchinson’s unassuming, organic vocals to play first fiddle. Hutchinson, now thirty-one, knows all too well that you don’t need to shout to get a listener’s attention; indeed, sometimes if you sing barely above a whisper, people will lean in close to hear what you have to say.

Whether singing about social and political issues (“Hard to Change,” “Yea Tho We Walk”) or introspective numbers about the tightrope an artist treads or staying on an even keel (“Being Happy,” “Gatekeeper”), Hutchinson’s is a vision of art without artifice. Catch her live at the Guthrie Center in Great Barrington, Mass., on Friday, May 28, at 8; call 413.528.1955 or visit www.guthriecenter.org for more information. [MAY 2010]

THE GOODS

Meg Hutchinson
The Living Side
Red House