After more than 40 albums — mostly of Cajun music but also two gypsy jazz releases and a duets album with Linda Ronstadt — Ann Savoy has recorded her solo album debut.
“Another Heart,” to be released Friday, April 19 by Smithsonian Folkways Records, is the follow-up to “Adieu False Heart,” Savoy’s Grammy-nominated 2006 album with Ronstadt. The two friends were recording songs for a second album when Parkinson’s disease compelled Ronstadt to end her singing career.
At home in Eunice a few weeks ago, Savoy discussed the leap from “Adieu False Heart” to “Another Heart.” Though Ronstadt’s withdrawal from their album-in-progress was difficult, Savoy longed to do a follow-up. With Ronstadt’s blessing, she restarted the project, finding time for it amidst her commitments to the Savoy Doucet Cajun Band, the Savoy Family Cajun Band, the Magnolia Sisters and Ann Savoy and Her Sleepless Knights.
“I’m singing my life story,” Savoy said in the kitchen of the 112-year-old, Acadian-style home on the Cajun prairie she shares with her husband, Cajun musician and accordion maker Marc Savoy.
In Ronstadt’s absence, “Another Heart’s” harmonies are sung by Grammy and Pulitzer Prize winner and MacArthur Fellowship recipient Rhiannon Giddens, Acadiana singer Kelli Jones, and Savoy’s daughters Sarah and Gabrielle. Her sons Joel and Wilson contribute fiddle and accordion.
Co-produced by Savoy and multi-instrumentalist Dirk Powell, “Another Heart” inevitably became a larger expression of Savoy than its predecessor. She tells the story of her adventurous life in the album’s songs and liner notes.
“My brilliant, wild father passed away when I was 13 years old,” the album’s notes reveal. “That sent me even deeper into the world of music: music as my friend, my escape, my teacher. Enshrouded in shyness in those days, music was a good way to communicate. I played my guitar and sang everywhere.”
Savoy described her solo album as “the person I was before I came to Louisiana. It’s based on the music I listened to then, and the lifestyle I had in Richmond, Virginia, and yet the players on the album are Louisiana musicians. It’s infused with Louisiana.”
Savoy’s journal in song includes interpretations of songs she’s loved since the 1960s and ’70s plus three songs she composed.
Despite Louisiana flavoring, “Another Heart” has only one Cajun song, the Savoy original “Triste Samedi (A Sad Saturday)/A Hurricane Song.”
“I’ve made so many Cajun records,” she explained. “And because the record with Linda got such an amazing response, I thought fans of that record would like another batch of that kind of stuff.”
Another difference between “Another Heart” and her Cajun recordings can be heard in Savoy’s vocals.
“These songs allow me to use my pretty singing voice,” she explained. “In Cajun music, you don’t want it to sound like that. That wouldn’t be authentic. But this is my favorite voice, the one I have on this record.”
The “Another Heart” track list often has a British accent. There’s Sandy Denny’s “Who Knows Where the Times Goes,” Donovan’s “Lord of the Reedy River” and, a song that reminds Savoy of the London she knew in the 1960s and ’70s, the Kinks’ “Waterloo Sunset.”
Also of English origin, “A Heart Needs a Home” is a soul-baring love song written by Savoy’s friend Richard Thompson.
“We wander through life hoping to meet our soulmates,” she writes in the liner notes. “Sometimes it takes a long time. Sometimes it is the first person you love. Sometimes that person is never found.”
American Bruce Springsteen wrote another of the album’s ballads, “Stolen Car.” Savoy was unfamiliar with Springsteen’s music when she first heard the song, but its lyrics about a young woman who marries too young touched her so much she recorded the song herself.
Concerned about the reaction to the folk and pop-oriented “Another Heart” though she was, Savoy didn’t let that stop her.
“I’ve never been afraid to do anything,” she said. “I adore Cajun music and will continue to do it — but this is more of the things I love.”
The sumptuous vinyl LP edition of “Another Heart” features a six-page insert containing photos and artwork by Savoy. She created the album’s cover, too, a self-portrait with images from Virginia, rendered in collage, paint and colored pencils.
Savoy’s “Another Heart” performances during spring festival season include Sunday, April 27 at Festival International in Lafayette, Saturday, May 4 at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, Friday, May 24 at the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage in Washington, D.C., and Sunday, May 26 at In Your Ear Studios in Richmond.