An artist whose mastery has elevated her to the highest ranks of roots music, Mary Flower is celebrated for her instrumental skills and engaging vocal style. Her new Yellow Dog Records release, Misery Loves Company, finds Mary hosting some of blues and roots music’s most accomplished practitioners for a series of duets.

Calling upon the talent pool in her home town of Portland OR, Mary sat down with ten instrumentalists — and one singer — to make her most intimate record to date.  Along with Mary’s dazzling guitar and unmatched lap steel, Misery Loves Company features a staggering variety of great players, from jazz pianist Dave Frishberg to multi-instrumentalist Colin Linden. It’s a testament to Mary’s ability to bring out the best in her collaborators.

• Mary talks with Minnesota Public Radio , Western Michigan Public Radio, and Oregon Music News about the album
• More details and streaming previews
• Official press release (PDF)
• CDs and downloads available now! Visit the Order page to get your copy.

Mary Flower‘s newest studio album, Bridges, is another chapter in the acoustic guitarist’s narrative of the diversity of American roots music, deftly melding ragtime, country blues, swing, folk styles, and hot jazz through the mastery of her fingerpicked and lap-style guitar playing.

It’s also a love letter of sorts to her adoptive home town of Portland, OR — the “bridges” of the title allude to the many crossings of the Willamette River that give the city its unique character, as well as metaphorically referencing the connections to many different musical genres that give Mary’s distinctive sound its own unique character.

As Terry Currier, owner of indie-music cornerstone Music Millennium, summarizes in the album’s liner notes, “Throughout her career, Mary has brought her own roots and blues sensibility to a wide variety of genres. Bridges is a unique, only-in-Portland blend that could only have been created by the versatile Mary Flower.”

• More details and sound samples
• Official press release (PDF)
• Album shipping now! Visit the Order page to get your copy.