In her mature and coherent first recording, Massachusetts songwriter Tracy O’Connell brings cinematic images from the American west, of fading roses and a lonesome whippoorwill, of a cotton dress and a summer’s waltz, of an orchard in the fall, of trains and rain and prairie to her portraits of love lost and love gone bad. Taking cues from the great country singers Patsy Cline and Emmylou Harris, O’Connell inhabits her songs with intimacy and grace and believability.  These eleven stories take sadder-but-wiser looks at the past; they are bittersweet and full of longing, hopeful but restrained, kind-eyed but regretful, sad and lovely.  The CD features top-shelf session players Matt Leavenworth on fiddle and Steve Sadler on Dobro.  (Sadler also has tracks on Susan Werner’s latest recording.)  Harmony vocals from Betsi Mandrioli, Julie Dougherty, and Tim FitzPatrick lock up with Ms. O’Connell’s steady leads like they’d all grown up singing together.  Acoustic-savvy in-demand producer and multi-instrumentalist Seth Connelly contributes acoustic guitar, mandolin, bass, and a harmony vocal.  Telling of fir and pine, home and life destroyed by wildfire, the title track was honored with Third Prize (out of 340 entries!) by the Boston Folk Festival Song Contest in September 2004.   ~ Geoff Bartley, October 15, 2004