Michaela Anne Finds Reckoning and Healing After Life-Altering Year on Oh To Be That Free (6/10, Yep Roc)

Michaela Anne has announced the forthcoming release of her new album Oh To Be That Free, due out June 10 via Yep Roc Records. Written before the foundation-shaking events she faced during the global pandemic - including nearly losing her mother to a hemorrhagic stroke while pregnant with her first child - the Nashville songwriter found a deeply-prescient new significance in these songs while confronting life’s unimaginable challenges. “It’s kind of surreal the way this record turned out to be exactly what I needed to hear when I was at my lowest,” she reflects. "These songs became healers, almost as if I’d written them as letters to my future self.” 

The eleven-song collection is lush and cinematic, at times channeling the cosmic country of Emmylou Harris while also hinting at Brandi Carlile with its indie-folk storytelling, Kacey Musgraves with its sprawling swells of strings, and Shania Twain with its catchy pop melodies. But above all, Oh To Be That Free is profoundly vulnerable, touching on themes of gratitude, self-sabotage, nature, mindfulness and motherhood. Michaela’s delivery is tender and empathetic as she reckons with the flaws and faults that keep us up at night and insists we’re worthy of love not in spite of our shortcomings, but because of them. 

With the announcement, Michaela Anne has shared “I’m Only Human,” the soaring, self-embracing album opener about the power in losing control. With the support of Kristin Weber’s string arrangement and the hypnotic vocal harmonies of Madi Diaz and Lauren Balthrop, the track is delivered from a fiercely feminine perspective and celebrates how good it feels to release shame. Listen here: https://ffm.to/ohtobethatfree

Written and recorded with a small circle of close friends, including her husband and co-producer Aaron Shafer-Haiss, the songs on Oh To Be That Free find Michaela Anne searching for spiritual liberation with the help of her tight-knit musical community. These collaborators come from a variety of backgrounds - all brought together by their history with Michaela - from the jazz and soul intuition of her college friend Burniss Earl Travis on bass (Common, Robert Glasper) to the soaring harmonies of Jeff Malinowski and Amal Bouhabib, who years earlier sang as she walked down the aisle. With this group surrounding her, Michaela Anne summons the support and strength to purge the toxicity of “shameful self-destruction” and the never-ending chase for external validation.

Giving the album even deeper meaning are the life-altering, painful months that followed its recording. At five months pregnant with her first child, Michaela learned her mother had suffered a debilitating stroke. Dropping everything to care for her, it was during that period when Oh To Be That Free grew new roots as a cathartic vessel of healing.“In the many days and months I sat by my mother’s bedside in the hospital, not knowing if she’d ever be able to speak, walk or resemble her former self, I sang these songs to her, as well as to the baby growing in my belly, over and over,” Michaela remembers. “I let my own words from the songs sink into my consciousness as though they weren’t my own.

Next month, Michaela will bring Oh To Be That Free on tour with the Milk Carton Kids. Full list of dates below, and more on Michaela Anne here: https://www.michaelaanne.com/

MICHAELA ANNE SUPPORTING THE MILK CARTON KIDS

April 1: Capital Turnaround - Washington, DC

April 2: Ardmore Music Hall - Ardmore, PA

April 3: Gateway City Arts - Holyoke, MA

April 5: Hangar Theatre - Ithaca, NY

April 6: Capitol Theatre - York, PA

April 7: The United Theatre - Westerly, RI

April 8: The Egg - Center for the Performing Arts - Albany, NY

April 9: South Orange Performing Arts Center - South Orange, NJ

April 10: Bowery Ballroom - New York, NY 

April 12: Harvester Performance Center - Rocky Mount, VA

April 13: The Orange Peel - Asheville, NC

April 14: Hodgson Concert Hall - Athens, GA