David Hershey-Webb - Welcome to the World

The songs on Welcome to the World were written over many years as David traveled back and forth across the country in his 1985 Honda Civic searching for a place to call home. Heartache and lonesomeness, love and death, finding reasons to keep pushing on and landing in a good place. The album opens with Things That Might Have Been. 'I look into the mirror/And practice how to smile again.' It is a bittersweet note to the self to push on and put what might have been behind. The song features a crackling slide guitar by Jon Pousette-Dart. White Church follows. 'White church wedding gown/Someone's six feet in the ground.' The song is a Steve Earle-esque travelogue on the road and in the mind. Lorenza Ponce's violin and legendary Jay Dee Maness' pedal steel bring the song home. Tired of Love bounces along - Tin Pan Alley meets Nashville or Austin. The album jumps off a cliff and flies with Hole in My Heart with rapid word poems and memorable horn playing by members of Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. A folky If I Knew follows with Jon Pousette-Dart singing harmony. Come Back to Me Baby arrives with a Stevie Wonder-esque electric piano introducing a wild rhythm R&B adventure. Someone To Love brings the album back to Nashville with sweet Alison Krause-ish harmonies. Darkness takes over with Murder and Love which was written in a haunted house in Los Angeles. The song begins hauntingly enough but ends in a Gospel fervor. Welcome to the World is folky tribute to newborn babies which ends with a mariachi band. The emotional journey glides to a close with Family Way, a quirky folk-country song about being a Dad and Hit the Road Jack featuring David's nine-year old Lilly who belts it out. Dave Darling mixed the album. Grammy-award winner Neil Citron engineered. The album was produced by Paul Trudeau.

1) Things That Might Have Been
2) White Church
3) Tired of Love
4) Hole in My Heart
5) If I Knew
6) Come Back to Me Baby
7) Someone to Love
8) Murder and Love
9) Welcome to the World
10) The Family Way
11) Hit the Road Jack