“Nashville’s best-kept secret” (The Boston Globe) singer-songwriter and poet Tristen, releases a stunningly somber and beautifully orchestrated original holiday song, “In Winter Blues,” to raise money for the International Rescue Committee, an organization founded by Albert Einstein and currently helping vulnerable families caught in the world’s worst humanitarian crises to survive and rebuild their lives.
A farewell to an old love, “In Winter Blues” portrays the devastating loneliness of being single during the holidays, where the songwriter “cried behind the evergreen” and boasts that “real friends make a toast to remind me they never liked you anyway.” In addition to its lush arrangement and pristine vocals, the song features Nashville pedal steel legend Jim Hoke (NRBQ, Dolly Parton, Billy Joel) and local folk darling, Erin Rae McKaskle on backing vocals.
Tristen gained notice as an artist with “pop hooks and pure inspiration” (NPR) through her 2011 folk-oriented record Charlatans at the Garden Gate and was later recast as “a synth-pop siren” (SPIN) by her 2013 record CAVES. Outlets including Rolling Stone, The Wall Street Journal, and KCRW have all recognized Tristen’s skill as a songwriter and performer. Tristen spent 2015 as a backing singer and keyboard player in Jenny Lewis’s band and released her first book of poetry, Saturnine, earlier this fall which features a foreword by rock and roll poet Ezra Furman.