One of the first albums recorded in post-Katrina New Orleans just four short months after her musicians were flung far and wide. More organic and more voice-oriented than "Orange Colored View", featuring well-known jazz standards and some lesser known tunes learned at the suggestion of collaborator Tim Laughlin, one of New Orleans' premier clarinet players. Very intimate and personal with spare arrangements. If you loved Kitt on OCV, you'll enjoy this new release."I met clarinetist Tim Laughlin in the spring of 2004 at a jazz festival we both played in Pensacola, Florida.
We struck up a musical friendship and soon I was driving to New Orleans to sing with his band. This recording was supposed to have happened at a studio in New Orleans the very week that Hurricane Katrina blew through Louisiana. While I was disappointed to have to put it off, I was far more relieved that friends escaped with their lives, some with little more than that. Cornetist Connie Jones lost everything, including his cherished thirty-year collection of antique sheet music, except for a single page he recovered in his backyard, ironically titled “Hurricane Rag.” It hangs in a frame in the house he rebuilt. Instead we began four months later as people slowly returned to pick up the pieces. Tim was back and calling me to sing with him at the Bombay Club. I asked if there was any chance we could record while I was there and he rounded up these stellar players, a veritable Who’s Who of New Orleans jazz. I’m so blessed to have them here on this CD and deeply grateful to everyone who helped make it happen.
New Orleans is home to my creative heart and soul. With every visit, something in me resonates with a profound sense of belonging and of possibilities - I can just feel myself expanding. Whether through music or food, art or architecture or just the abundance of warm hospitality so unique to her, she gives us license to express our truest selves. New Orleans doesn’t judge us for being different or non-conformist she celebrates our uniqueness and expects it More than anything, New Orleans is family and it always feels to me like coming home."