Conceived as two albums, the first disc Saturday Night/Rough Around the Edges captures the energy of a raucous, hard-hitting night of country music while the gospel-laden and harmony rich second disc Sunday Morning/Cathedral, the follow-up to 2005's Souls Chapel, channels the fervent and solemn spirit of a Southern Sunday morning.
Produced by Stuart and featuring his longtime band the Fabulous Superlatives -- including guitarist Kenny Vaughan, bassist Paul Martin and drummer Harry Stinson -- Saturday Night & Sunday Morning features more than a dozen original compositions ranging from Stuart's signature hillbilly rock to ballads and hymns (see track list below).
The set also features Marty's takes on traditional songs such as Hank Williams' "I'm Blue, I'm Lonesome," the Stalter Brothers' "Firing Line," and George Jones' "Old Old House." The Staple Singers join Stuart to open Sunday Morning with a rendition of their 1956 hit "Uncloudy Day." Stuart recorded the song with Pops Staples' telecaster and described the Staples singing on the track as "haunting," like "ghosts singing in a cotton field."
Talking about Saturday Night & Sunday Morning, Stuart says, "A few years ago, I rededicated myself to traditional country music. We [Stuart and the Fabulous Superlatives] spent some time in RCA Studios in Nashville, where so much of modern country was created, and we worked to imitate that style of production and songwriting."
The album's first single and subtitle of Saturday Morning, "Rough Around The Edges," is autobiographical. Quoting the opening stanza Stuart says, "I woke up this morning, with miles of life behind me, my friends worry, because they don't know where to find me. Once again, I beg forgiveness for another lost night in my soul, some bad got a hold on me and it just won't let me go -- that was my life from 1987 to about ten years ago [laughs], it was a hard-living, honky-tonk musician lifestyle."
The new album arrives on the heels of 'American Ballads: The photographs of Marty Stuart,' a new exhibit of Stuart's photography at Nashville's Frist Center for The Visual Arts. The exhibit features more than 60 photos from three bodies of Stuart's work, documenting the people and places he has encountered on tour over the past four decades - "The Masters" of country music, the "Blue Line Hotshots" on America's backroads, and the Lakota people of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and other locations in South Dakota's "Badlands." The collection will be published as a hardcover book of the same title through the Vanderbuilt University Press on July 4.
The Frist exhibit is the first of four museum programs Marty will participate in this year. On June 29, he will perform a concert as part of a week long festival at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian.
Stuart and The Fabulous Superlatives will perform October 3 at The Sheldon in St. Louis, MO to open a three month exhibit of Marty's photography and collection called “The Art of Country Music — Photographs and Memorabilia." Then Marty and The Fabulous Superlatives will perform alongside Steve Miller on Oct. 6 at The Metropolitan Museum Of Art in conjunction with the exhibition Early American Guitars: The Instruments of C.F. Martin.
Track list:
Saturday Night
1. Jailhouse
2. I'm Blue, I'm Lonesome
3. Geraldine
4. Rough Around The Edges
5. When It Comes To Loving You
6. Sad House Big Party
7. Talkin' To The Wall
8. Lifes Ups And Downs
9. Look At That Girl
10. Old, Old House
11. Streamline
Sunday Morning
1. Uncloudy Day (featuring The Staple Singers)
2. Boogie Woogie
3. Long Walk To Heaven
4. That Gospel Music
5. The Gospel Way
6. Mercy Number 1
7. Firing Line
8. God Will Make A Way
9. Good News
10. Angels Rock Me To Sleep
11. Cathedral
12. Heaven
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