Songwriters can be stereotyped as being gifted lyricists without the ability to stretch a note. Reagan Boggs is an accomplished songwriter with a voice that can captivate a room. Like a Julie Miller, Lucinda Williams, or Mindy Smith, she delivers well crafted compositions with natural soul and passion.
After recording her first album titled Somewhere In The Middle at age seventeen, she set off from her hometown of Pound, VA, to perform and made her first trip to Nashville. There she displayed her songwriting ability at the renowned Bluebird Café, sharing the floor with Skip Ewing, Paul Overstreet, and David Gibson. Two years later, Reagan caught the attention of The Hoodoos - a blues oriented band from Kingsport, TN. She spent the next four years displaying her versatile vocals with the group, as the band packed venues throughout the Mountain Empire. Although she enjoyed performing along side the talented musicians, with every blues cover, the desire to perform her own material grew stronger. In 2002 she assembled Carbon Blue, a four-piece project, to record her work. The group recorded, I Can Handle Crazy, in January of 2004.
After landing her 2006 release, Never Looking Behind, onto Americana Highway’s top 30 albums of the year list, Reagan Boggs delivers Right Now. Teaming once again with Eric Fritsch, Matt Crouse, & Park Chisolm, the album features 12 tracks, including 10 Boggs originals, and a fantastic cover of Herb Pederson's "Wait a Minute." The songwriter hails from a coal mining community in Southwest Virginia. With roots still firmly planted in those hills, she tells the story of “Clifton Branham,” Appalachian bad man via his own memoirs, and details a woman’s nightmare of strip-miners disrupting the resting dead after a pressured sale of her family’s land in “The Graves.” She pours out her heart through the eyes, ears, and fears of two young children living daily in an abusive home in “Ready to Run;” and again through the reflections of a middle-aged wife who struggles to find happiness in a comfortable, yet empty marriage in “Plastic Flowers.” Right Now is a collection of songs dealing with the light and darkness of everyday reality, composed in descriptive detail, and sung with the depth and emotion that is Reagan Boggs.
The majority of 2007 will be spent touring, both solo and with her band. The promotion of Right Now will begin at Patrick Sullivan's in Knoxville, TN and a show close to home at one of the nation's finest listening rooms, the Down Home in Johnson City, TN. For a list of dates and more information, logon to www.reaganboggs.com
What People Are Saying
"Reagan Boggs is a fantastic songwriter, and powerful singer. 'The Graves' (track 9) is brilliant, edgy Americana and 'Mixed Signals' (track 10) sounds like the Ronstadt repertoire from 1973. This disc may be your most pleasant discovery of the year!" - Rob Reinhart - Acoustic Café
"Reagan Boggs has the kind of rich, sweet voice that you can't get enough of. She comes from a place that is steeped in country music tradition and now she's carrying it on. Like Patty Loveless or Alison Krauss, she's a country singer who sounds like one."- Larry Groce - Mountain Stage
"Reagan Boggs is one of those lucky artists who stands a chance of breaking into the pop/country market on her own terms and conditions. Smooth but still rocking, her album Never Looking Behind certainly stands apart in its slick but not overproduced sound (none of those Shania the robot bloops and bleeps), confident playing and well-conceived lyrics."- Chris Cooper - Smoky Mountain News
"I have just become Reagan Boggs number one FAN! This imagery ridden album paints amazing pictures of love, living and home. She puts you in her head with every single line that is sung from a soft angelic voice that melts your heart.
Reagan wrote the majority of the tracks recorded, minus a handful. She starts with, Share Them With You, a pictured filled lyric that invites you to see what she is feeling on the road that she is traveling. She successfully put me on the red and orange highway just outside of Knoxville and I felt like I was sharing it with her. Her strong precise vocals I feel in some cases may overshadow her brilliant stories she is telling in her lyrics. I found myself straying from the message a couple of times just getting lost in her vocal talents. The haunting story told in Wrong Last Name leaves nothing for your imagination with well thought out lyrics telling the old time story of secret loves and circumstance.
She does an out of this world rendition of Johnny Cash/June Carters Jackson, making it her own so much that you forget it was ever sung by the legends if only for a split second.
I love the low key acoustic production of this CD. It accomplishes the task of allowing you to appreciate the stories told and the vocal talent this woman possesses. There seems to be a wide variety of talent displayed in this CD starting from the lead singer on down to each individual musician that participated in this luxurious sound. I found myself escaping to a multitude of places and romances during the 45 minutes I sat listening to this album and was left wanting more. Every single time you listen to the CD you find something that you didnt hear the time before, revealing one haunting ghostly image after the next. So true to life that I found myself asking was this real or did I hear it in a dream?
After trying many times to find something that I would change, and failing to do so, I decided this is about as close to perfect as an album can get. I rate this 4 ¾ guitars. I would have given it a 5, but thought I might be a bit biased since this album nails the blue grassy, americana genre that is my favorite!
- Rebecca Hosking - Music News Nashville
"She's awesome...what a voice...and the songs are poignant and emotional
without being over the top." - WDVX Writer's Block Host Karen Reynolds
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