Donna Ulisse
Showin’ My Roots: Glowing reviews and tops lists of 2013 releases
Showin’ My Roots has been receiving fantastic reviews and finished the year on some of the best of 2013 lists. Below are many of the links.
CMT EDGE Top 10 albums of 2013
THAT NASHVILLE SOUND Top 100 songs of 2013
ENGINE 145 BEST OF BLUEGRASS & ITS OFFSHOOTS 2013
Showin’ My Roots receives enthusiastic reception from radio
Donna Ulisse’s Showin’ My Roots is already being received well at radio. It maintained the #1 slot on the Airplay Direct Bluegrass/Folk chart for radio digital downloads for the whole month of October with over 900 downloads by radio.
It also was #9 in the FolkDJ charts which is compiled from actual playlists of 129 DJs worldwide who report their playlists to the chart. It is also currently #10 in the EuroAmericana chart which is compiled from airplay by DJs in Europe playing Americana, bluegrass and roots music.
SiriusXM’s Bluegrass Junction continues to add songs off the album into rotation.
Hadley Music’s Donna Ulisse included on RFD-TV’s Simply Bluegrass
Donna Ulisse recently spent a day in the Nashville Northstar TV studios surrounded by the “who’s who” of bluegrass music taping RFD TV’s Country Family Reunion: Simply Bluegrass. The show was hosted by Grand Ole Opry star Bill Anderson and Ricky Skaggs.
Other guests on the show included The Grascals, Bobby Osborne, Mac Wiseman, The Whites, The Roys, Larry Cordle, Carl Jackson, Rhonda Vincent, Del McCoury, Doyle Lawson, Jesse McReynolds, The Gibson Brothers, Jerry Douglas, Ramona Jones, Sierra Hull and Donna’s duet partner on her new album, Newgrass icon Sam Bush.
Donna sang the song One Way Rider off her new CD at the request of Terry Choate who booked her on the show and Carl Jackson and Larry Cordle sang harmony with her. The staff band consisted of Barry Bales on upright bass, Adam Steffey on mandolin, Ron Stewart on banjo, Stuart Duncan on fiddle and Donna’s co-producer on her new CD “Showin’ My Roots” on guitar, Bryan Sutton. Air dates are yet to be announced.
Ulisse celebrates CD release in WSM studios
The morning of October 15th found Donna Ulisse and her bluegrass band The Poor Mountain Boys in the WSM 650-AM studios with host Bill Cody on the Coffee, Country and Cody show to celebrate the release of her newest CD on the Hadley Music Group label, “Showin’ My Roots.”
Donna and her top notch band performed two songs live during the hour and Bill Cody also interviewed Ulisse and played tracks from the record.
Ulisse has been a favorite studio guest of Bill Cody and Charlie Mattos so on this morning she also brought some of her homemade Italian meatballs and sauce to them both as well as to Operations Manager Joe Limardi who also grew up in an Italian family.
Donna Ulisse thanks Del McCoury!
Donna and co-writer Jerry Salley recently caught up with bluegrass icon Del McCoury in Raleigh, North Carolina at the International Bluegrass Music Awards to thank him for recording their song, “Butler Brothers” on the new Del McCoury Band CD The Streets of Baltimore. The CD was released on September 17, 2013 and is already receiving heavy airplay and stellar reviews.
Butler Brothers is a song about two brothers fighting on different sides in the Civil War and the struggle of their mother having two sons in a war on opposing sides. It was inspired by real life documents Ulisse’s husband Rick Stanley got from a Virginia courthouse about his own family. To read more about the background on the song, visit the Bluegrass Situation to read an interview journalist did with Donna for a piece she was writing about the album.
Donna Ulisse featured in Singing News
Donna Ulisse was featured in October 2013 in a full page article in the most read southern gospel magazine, Singing News. The piece ran on the Front Porch Fellowship page and was written by Les Butler, radio host of Front Porch Fellowship which is syndicated to over 200 gospel music stations across the country and listened to online.
Donna Ulisse honored with IBMA Songwriter of the Year Nomination
Hadley Music Group singer songwriter Donna Ulisse has been nominated for International Bluegrass Music Association’s Songwriter of the Year Award. The nomination was announced at the August 14, 2013 press conference at Loveless Barn in Nashville, TN. The other nominees are Brink Brinkman, Paula Breedlove, Louisa Branscomb and Eric Gibson. The winner will be announced in Raleigh, North Carolina at the IBMA World of Bluegrass Conference during a special awards luncheon.
Nominations are decided by a special professional committee and upon the body of work written and released during the year with consideration given to chart activity, reviews, radio airplay and sales. This is the second year in a row Donna has been nominated.
New Gospel Compilation to be released by Donna Ulisse
Gospel music followers are about to discover what aficionados of country and bluegrass music have known for years: Donna Ulisse can flat-out sing — and write — a gospel song.
As her warm, pure voice caresses ten heartfelt songs reflecting her lifelong faith, she transports you to a welcoming, down-home church that you won’t want to leave (even if you’re getting hungry and thinking about Mama’s pot roast). It’s a voice brimming with joy, a voice that remains firmly grounded even as it soars heavenward.
“I am trying to use my music to honor Him and to spread the word of His love through song,” says Ulisse, who wrote or co-wrote all but two of the songs on this career-spanning collection. Gospel songs have figured prominently on previous albums, and this CD culls the best of those, plus two newly recorded chestnuts.
While earning worldwide kudos for her singing, Ulisse has consistently been building a first-rate reputation (and catalog) as a writer. Artists including Claire Lynch, Darin and Brooke Aldridge, The Bankesters and Nu-Blu have recorded her songs, with two of those on Nu-Blu’s recent gospel album (the Bankesters and Lynch cuts were also gospel songs). And Ulisse earned a 2012 nomination for IBMA songwriter of the year.
I Am a Child of God has its eyes on an eternal prize, and it’s clear Ulisse believes what she’s singing. From the soulful testimony of the title song to the irresistible mountain harmonies of “Everything Has Changed,” through fresh spins on “Wait a Little Longer Please Jesus” and “This Is My Father’s World,” to the urgent confession of need in “I’m Calling Heaven Down,” Ulisse delivers confident, convicting gospel that, like the best of the genre, feels timeless, impervious to trend.
The accompaniment, of course, is sublime, with stalwarts including Keith Sewell and Bryan Sutton (both of whom produced songs here) on acoustic guitar; Viktor Krauss and Byron House on upright bass; Andy Leftwich on fiddle, Rob Ickes and Randy Kohrs on Dobro; and Scott Vestal on banjo. The Isaacs lend their unmistakably gorgeous harmonies to “This Is My Father’s World.”
By turns jubilant, prayerful, reflective, pleading and emphatic, I Am a Child of God shines as a uniquely personal expression of a believer’s spiritual journey. There’s not a false note here, lyrically, vocally or instrumentally. And that’s the gospel truth.
Companion songbook now available for All The Way To Bethlehem
Hadley Music Group has published its’ first song book and it is the companion guitar/vocal songbook for the Donna Ulisse Christmas album All The Way To Bethlehem. The songbook also has photographs of Donna with all of her co-writers and additional information written by Donna to give the reader insight to the process of writing the songs. The book can be ordered from Donna’s website store or on Amazon.com
Guitar chords are diagrammed above the staff.