Rock Ridge Music
2009
Release
About This Album
The five members of Sister Hazel -- Jett Beres, Ken Block, Andrew Copeland, Ryan Newell, and Mark Trojanowski -- who founded the group in Gainesville, FL, in 1993, appear in a line on the cover of Release, their seventh studio album of new, non-holiday material, no one person ahead of or behind another. It's a statement of equality that is pursued in the album's contents. When a band is founded, the young musicians often don't realize that whoever is credited with writing the songs is going to make more money than the others. That starts to become apparent later on, however, and it can lead to strange consequences. After years of recording hits written by singer/guitarist John Fogerty, Creedence Clearwater Revival abruptly released Mardi Gras, an album on which the bass player and drummer got equal songwriting credits. It was a bust, and the band broke up. Former members of the Band Robbie Robertson and Levon Helm became estranged because Helm believes Robertson's sole songwriting credit on most of their music is unfair. Other groups deal with the issue head on: all U2 songs are credited equally to the band's four members. In the case of Sister Hazel, early songs tended to be credited to Block/Sister Hazel, suggesting that the singer wrote the lyrics and the band came up with the music, which may have resulted in his getting 50-percent of the music publishing and the others splitting the other 50-percent.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 and 9)

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