"Two extremely talented people, Jenny Parrott and Vaughn Walters, make up Loves It. The record is an American original, seemingly spontaneous at times, effortlessly stunning when you least expect it. The voices come into your heart like that of an angel on your shoulder. Music is sparse, unique and stellar. Another step on the road to the stars." -Kinky Friedman
"Best CD anyone's given me in my memory" Mark Rubin of the Bad Livers
"...heartbreaking stories with tragically gorgeous vocal harmonies, hearkening The Avett Brothers with the sincerity and intimacy of The Civil Wars." - Michelle Bacon, The Deli Magazine - Kansas City
"The Loves It album is disarmingly funny and engaging. You rarely hear that much warmth outside a Jonathan Richman album." Christian Lorenz from Tuneraker
"End 2011 on a high, immersing yourself in some shamelessly naive and wonderfully quirky music. Loves It are a brand new boy-girl duo that makes a racket like a 1930’s style travelling medicine show that was reared on a diet of Jonathan Richman records. Vaughn Walters picks a mean, scratchy banjo while Jenny Parrott voice alternates between sweet playfulness and the world-weariness of a seasoned blues chanteuse.There are a lot of Americana references in this opening paragraph alone, so you’ll have an idea what Walters and Parrott sound like. If Jonathan Richman and his Modern Lovers plundered the 1950’s canon of pop music to create their brand of naive ‘n’ roll, Loves It are digging deeper, right into a veritable drug store stuffed to the rafters with 1930’s Blues, Appalachian hollers and Dustbowl ballads." Tuneraker.com
"There’s a lovely simplicity in things that come in pairs. White clouds and a blue sky, lemon slices and iced tea, and Jenny Parrott and Vaughn Walters. The two singer-songwriters and their collection of strummed instruments are one part Avett Brothers (no really, Walters could be one, both in appearance and poetic, nostalgic songwriting) and one part Patsy Cline, due to Parrott’s romantic style and sway. The indie-folk group calls themselves Loves It and is both silly and thoughtful." Flagstaff Live
"Keep it simple if you have the charm and talent these folk's have. Damn fine music, so catch up with them if you get the chance, either live or recorded." Beehivecandy.com
"...fans will appreciate the fact that their indie folk is audibly inspired by the roots of early country, gospel, bluegrass and soul. Still at the core is the sharp, angelic ruralism of Parrott’s singing, only balanced this time by Walters’ warm, open voice." – Bao Le-Huu, Orlando Weekly
"Variety, virtuosity, humor and a genuinely sweet and vibrant disposition...our audience was charmed, entertained, and LOVES-ed it... yours will be too!" Matt Morelock - Morelock Music, Knoxville TN"
"With vocal stylings ranging from gospel to soul and country to folk, Loves It! is a must see and Yay! is a must have." Michael Plata - Examiner.com
"Loves It are a delight to watch. Talented, quirky, fun... and just plain darlin'!" DJ Red - WDVX Blue Plate Special"
"Jenny Parrott's romantic vocal style can melt any man's heart, and Vaughn Walters' soulful and rustic delivery bring a unique and inventive energy to their music. With a touch of folk, bluegrass and country, Loves It! is totally Texas!" Nick Dement - KAOS Radio
"Jenny Parrott of Shotgun Party has another band, a duo with Vaughn Walters, and they just released their album "Yay!" and it is great. I'm not a stellar descriptor, but I'd say it sounds something like magnetic fields, crossed with decembrists, with some fiddle and a firm country twang... or something. There's a track about the civil war, and one about Bobby Kennedy. They are not all historical, but these are my favorites." - http://worsethanlast.blogspot.com/2011/01/loves-it.html
"They've got a great imagination ("Bobby Kennedy," "Christmas Tree Bridge") even when the bluegrass gets sad." Audra Schroeder - Austin Chronicle
"Both accomplished writers. This collaboration shines!" The Loafer (Johnson City TN)
From the New Haven Independent, by Nicolás Medina Mora Pérez | Jan 24, 2013 11:50 am
When Jenny Parrott put down her guitar Wednesday night for an a cappella rendition of Johnny Rodgers’ “Jerusalem,” the Cafe Nine audience couldn’t help but feel that the song was her elegy to the city where she grew up.Parrott, who grew up in Morris Cove, came back to New Haven after years in Texas and hundreds of shows around the world. She couldn’t help but feel that her hometown was no longer home.
Parrott and bandmate Vaughn Waters comprise Loves It!, an indie-folk-country-blues duo formerly based in Austin. They now operate out of a van just large enough to fit a mattress and a couple of guitars. They sang their version of “Jerusalem” Wednesday night at Cafe Nine on Crown Street for a intimate audience consisting mostly of friends and family. (Click on the play arrow above to watch a sample.)
“It always makes me nervous to play for friends,” Parrott said. “Strangers don’t know the meaning of your songs, but friends know exactly what you are talking about in your lyrics.”
None of that nervousness came up during the hour-and-a-half show, which besides the Rodgers cover included a healthy dose of the duo’s original music. Throughout, Parrott and Walters sounded like what they are—veteran traveling minstrels.
“I think we played two hundred shows last year,” said Walters (pictured below), who originally hails from Macomber, a town in West Virginia that he said has 51inhabitants.
The duo’s travels certainly inflect their lyrics, which are full of place names. They sang of America in close harmony, taking the audience on a tour of farms in West Virginia, streets in Texas, liberals arts colleges in upstate New York, and the grave of Graham Parsons by the Joshua Tree.
The show felt like the contemporary version of whatever it was that the Rolling Thunder Revue was trying to recreate.
Some of the lyrics were charmingly naïve: “I’m just a boy from the farm / and I ain’t no big city light.” Others were more serious: “By ones and twos / people we loose / what do we do / when the loss becomes of no use?”
Parrott and Walters produced a wide range of sounds with a just a couple of instruments. At different points, they were able to make an acoustic guitar sound like an electric bass, a drum kit, a harp, and a washboard.
Their set list went all the way from the bluesy soul of “The Angels Sing” to the almost-pop-punk of “My So-Called Life” and to “Dixieland”—a heartbreaking lament for the tragedies of war and the lost soul of the South. (Click on the arrow to watch a clip).
Homeward BoundParrott hasn’t lived in New Haven since she left her Morris Cove home at age 18 to go to college out of state.
“It doesn’t feel like home anymore. Texas doesn’t feel like home either. I don’t think I’ve settled that part of myself yet—but I do have a lot of great memories of this town,” she said.
Among those memories are long walks on the beach at Lighthouse Point, sitting on the exhaust vents of Yale’s Beinecke Library to keep warm late at night in the winter, and climbing one of the oil tanks at the Q Bridge and talking there with a friend until dawn.
She spoke so passionately about this town that on her lips Rodgers’ lyrics took on a whole new meaning:
“Jerusalem is filled with holy people . . .
Jerusalem is filled with crazy people . . .
I think we all want truth.”
"Best CD anyone's given me in my memory" Mark Rubin of the Bad Livers
"...heartbreaking stories with tragically gorgeous vocal harmonies, hearkening The Avett Brothers with the sincerity and intimacy of The Civil Wars." - Michelle Bacon, The Deli Magazine - Kansas City
"The Loves It album is disarmingly funny and engaging. You rarely hear that much warmth outside a Jonathan Richman album." Christian Lorenz from Tuneraker
"End 2011 on a high, immersing yourself in some shamelessly naive and wonderfully quirky music. Loves It are a brand new boy-girl duo that makes a racket like a 1930’s style travelling medicine show that was reared on a diet of Jonathan Richman records. Vaughn Walters picks a mean, scratchy banjo while Jenny Parrott voice alternates between sweet playfulness and the world-weariness of a seasoned blues chanteuse.There are a lot of Americana references in this opening paragraph alone, so you’ll have an idea what Walters and Parrott sound like. If Jonathan Richman and his Modern Lovers plundered the 1950’s canon of pop music to create their brand of naive ‘n’ roll, Loves It are digging deeper, right into a veritable drug store stuffed to the rafters with 1930’s Blues, Appalachian hollers and Dustbowl ballads." Tuneraker.com
"There’s a lovely simplicity in things that come in pairs. White clouds and a blue sky, lemon slices and iced tea, and Jenny Parrott and Vaughn Walters. The two singer-songwriters and their collection of strummed instruments are one part Avett Brothers (no really, Walters could be one, both in appearance and poetic, nostalgic songwriting) and one part Patsy Cline, due to Parrott’s romantic style and sway. The indie-folk group calls themselves Loves It and is both silly and thoughtful." Flagstaff Live
"Keep it simple if you have the charm and talent these folk's have. Damn fine music, so catch up with them if you get the chance, either live or recorded." Beehivecandy.com
"...fans will appreciate the fact that their indie folk is audibly inspired by the roots of early country, gospel, bluegrass and soul. Still at the core is the sharp, angelic ruralism of Parrott’s singing, only balanced this time by Walters’ warm, open voice." – Bao Le-Huu, Orlando Weekly
"Variety, virtuosity, humor and a genuinely sweet and vibrant disposition...our audience was charmed, entertained, and LOVES-ed it... yours will be too!" Matt Morelock - Morelock Music, Knoxville TN"
"With vocal stylings ranging from gospel to soul and country to folk, Loves It! is a must see and Yay! is a must have." Michael Plata - Examiner.com
"Loves It are a delight to watch. Talented, quirky, fun... and just plain darlin'!" DJ Red - WDVX Blue Plate Special"
"Jenny Parrott's romantic vocal style can melt any man's heart, and Vaughn Walters' soulful and rustic delivery bring a unique and inventive energy to their music. With a touch of folk, bluegrass and country, Loves It! is totally Texas!" Nick Dement - KAOS Radio
"Jenny Parrott of Shotgun Party has another band, a duo with Vaughn Walters, and they just released their album "Yay!" and it is great. I'm not a stellar descriptor, but I'd say it sounds something like magnetic fields, crossed with decembrists, with some fiddle and a firm country twang... or something. There's a track about the civil war, and one about Bobby Kennedy. They are not all historical, but these are my favorites." - http://worsethanlast.blogspot.com/2011/01/loves-it.html
"They've got a great imagination ("Bobby Kennedy," "Christmas Tree Bridge") even when the bluegrass gets sad." Audra Schroeder - Austin Chronicle
"Both accomplished writers. This collaboration shines!" The Loafer (Johnson City TN)
From the New Haven Independent, by Nicolás Medina Mora Pérez | Jan 24, 2013 11:50 am
When Jenny Parrott put down her guitar Wednesday night for an a cappella rendition of Johnny Rodgers’ “Jerusalem,” the Cafe Nine audience couldn’t help but feel that the song was her elegy to the city where she grew up.Parrott, who grew up in Morris Cove, came back to New Haven after years in Texas and hundreds of shows around the world. She couldn’t help but feel that her hometown was no longer home.
Parrott and bandmate Vaughn Waters comprise Loves It!, an indie-folk-country-blues duo formerly based in Austin. They now operate out of a van just large enough to fit a mattress and a couple of guitars. They sang their version of “Jerusalem” Wednesday night at Cafe Nine on Crown Street for a intimate audience consisting mostly of friends and family. (Click on the play arrow above to watch a sample.)
“It always makes me nervous to play for friends,” Parrott said. “Strangers don’t know the meaning of your songs, but friends know exactly what you are talking about in your lyrics.”
None of that nervousness came up during the hour-and-a-half show, which besides the Rodgers cover included a healthy dose of the duo’s original music. Throughout, Parrott and Walters sounded like what they are—veteran traveling minstrels.
“I think we played two hundred shows last year,” said Walters (pictured below), who originally hails from Macomber, a town in West Virginia that he said has 51inhabitants.
The duo’s travels certainly inflect their lyrics, which are full of place names. They sang of America in close harmony, taking the audience on a tour of farms in West Virginia, streets in Texas, liberals arts colleges in upstate New York, and the grave of Graham Parsons by the Joshua Tree.
The show felt like the contemporary version of whatever it was that the Rolling Thunder Revue was trying to recreate.
Some of the lyrics were charmingly naïve: “I’m just a boy from the farm / and I ain’t no big city light.” Others were more serious: “By ones and twos / people we loose / what do we do / when the loss becomes of no use?”
Parrott and Walters produced a wide range of sounds with a just a couple of instruments. At different points, they were able to make an acoustic guitar sound like an electric bass, a drum kit, a harp, and a washboard.
Their set list went all the way from the bluesy soul of “The Angels Sing” to the almost-pop-punk of “My So-Called Life” and to “Dixieland”—a heartbreaking lament for the tragedies of war and the lost soul of the South. (Click on the arrow to watch a clip).
Homeward BoundParrott hasn’t lived in New Haven since she left her Morris Cove home at age 18 to go to college out of state.
“It doesn’t feel like home anymore. Texas doesn’t feel like home either. I don’t think I’ve settled that part of myself yet—but I do have a lot of great memories of this town,” she said.
Among those memories are long walks on the beach at Lighthouse Point, sitting on the exhaust vents of Yale’s Beinecke Library to keep warm late at night in the winter, and climbing one of the oil tanks at the Q Bridge and talking there with a friend until dawn.
She spoke so passionately about this town that on her lips Rodgers’ lyrics took on a whole new meaning:
“Jerusalem is filled with holy people . . .
Jerusalem is filled with crazy people . . .
I think we all want truth.”
