After 20 years, singer-songwriter Kim Richey chose to revisit her 1999 album, Glimmer. She switched up the track ordering, and rerecorded songs with different, more stripped-down instrumentation, and A Long Way Back: The Songs of Glimmer is a timely re-imagining of the country pop original.
“I thought it’d be interesting to back and rerecord these in more of an acoustic fashion,” says Richey. “Just to give the songs a little more room for people to listen to.”
One track that stands out from the original is “A Long Way Back.” After bringing the tempo down and including a flugelhorn section from Dan Mitchells, “it completely changed the song from the way that we recorded it on Glimmer,” says Richey.
Recorded for this Home Studio Session, “Hello Old Friend” is a recollection of a late night call with one old friend whom Richey hadn’t spoken with in years: “And is it me you want, or are you just lonely, well aren’t we all?”
She also tells the story of her song “I’m Alright,” off her second album, Bittersweet, which came to her during a difficult time in her life.
“I was driving up to see my folks,” says Richey. “And the chorus just kinda came to me and I remember I just pulled over to the side of the road cause it made me cry.”
Hear the full conversation about Richey’s songwriting in quarantine, as well as the new album, A Long Way Back: The Songs of Glimmer.
-Logan Roddy
