Matador Signs Laura Cantrell

Matador Records has announced its signing of acclaimed artist and radio personality Laura Cantrell to a worldwide recording agreement.

The Nashville-born, New York-based "proprietress" of WFMU's long-running Radio Thrift Shop is currently working on the follow-up to her 2002 release When the Roses Bloom Again.

Cantrell's two previous albums were released by Diesel Only Records in the U.S. and Shoeshine/Spit & Polish in the U.K. Over the past four years, she has opened U.S. tours for Elvis Costello and Joan Baez, appeared on the Grand Ole Opry, the Newport Folk Festival, and the Late Show with Conan O'Brien, recorded five Peel Sessions, and been profiled in the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.

The as-yet-untitled album is being scheduled for a late spring release and will include such new Cantrell originals as "Khaki and Corduroy," a meditation on her experience as a transplanted southerner attending university in New York City, and "California Rose," inspired by the life of California country music pioneer Rose Maddox. The album will also feature a version of the Appalachian murder ballad "Poor Ellen Smith," which was collected and published in the 1927 book American Mountain Songs by Cantrell's great, great aunt Ethel Park Richardson, a "songcatcher" from Chattanooga, Tenn., who, like Cantrell, later moved to New York and produced the NBC radio drama “Heart-throbs of the Hills" throughout the 1930s.

The new sessions are being produced by JD Foster, whose production credits include Richard Buckner and Mark Ribot, and has recorded and toured with artists including Patty Griffin and Dwight Yoakam. Other musicians appearing on the new recordings include Mark Spencer (Jay Farrar, Kelly Willis), Jon Graboff (Amy Rigby, Beat Rodeo), Jeremy Chatzky (They Might Be Giants, People Are Wrong!), Dave Schramm (Yo La Tengo, The Schramms) and Joey Burns, John Convertino and Paul Niehaus of Calexico.

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