Top tracks
Listeners also bought
Other Soul albums
Other with Live-band Production albums
Put your hands on the remote! browse music »The Mule by Kristi Martel
view larger image
fave it Soul | with Live-band Production
13 tracks | 58 minutes
Released Mar 2004
on Sealed Lip Records
Click
for a 30-second preview. All tracks are 192kbps high fidelity sound quality. Protected WMA $0.77 or unprotected MP3 $0.88.
listen album 30sec. shuffle buy CD review album promote album
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 02:27 Give lyrics BUY MP3 02:27 Give lyrics "GIFT MP3" 02:27 Give
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 05:29 honey.moon lyrics BUY MP3 05:29 honey.moon lyrics "GIFT MP3" 05:29 honey.moon
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 06:48 My Torn in Two lyrics BUY MP3 06:48 My Torn in Two lyrics "GIFT MP3" 06:48 My Torn in Two
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 03:43 Aged lyrics BUY MP3 03:43 Aged lyrics "GIFT MP3" 03:43 Aged
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 03:38 Carrying Stories lyrics BUY MP3 03:38 Carrying Stories lyrics "GIFT MP3" 03:38 Carrying Stories
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 04:46 My Name lyrics BUY MP3 04:46 My Name lyrics "GIFT MP3" 04:46 My Name
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 03:20 Carry It On lyrics BUY MP3 03:20 Carry It On lyrics "GIFT MP3" 03:20 Carry It On
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 02:03 The Maiden and Her Master lyrics BUY MP3 02:03 The Maiden and Her Master lyrics "GIFT MP3" 02:03 The Maiden and Her Master
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 05:01 Hooker lyrics BUY MP3 05:01 Hooker lyrics "GIFT MP3" 05:01 Hooker
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 04:57 The Mule lyrics BUY MP3 04:57 The Mule lyrics "GIFT MP3" 04:57 The Mule
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 04:02 Carry Me lyrics FREE 04:02 Carry Me lyrics "GIFT MP3" 04:02 Carry Me
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 03:51 When Outside Gets Inside Through the Skin lyrics BUY MP3 03:51 When Outside Gets Inside Through the Skin lyrics "GIFT MP3" 03:51 When Outside Gets Inside Through the Skin
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 08:33 Road Song lyrics BUY MP3 08:33 Road Song lyrics "GIFT MP3" 08:33 Road Song
Ten years of raw, soulful, poetic and experimental piano and voice songwriting centering around the theme of being a carrying animal and attempting to lay the burdens down.
Bio / Background
I hand the album to someone and they say,
"Is that really a mule? It's so....big! I thought mules were smaller..."
And I say,
"Yes, that IS a mule. Her name is Dolly. She IS big... and beautiful! Donkeys are smaller, but mules have horse in them so..."
And they say,
"Why is the album called 'The Mule?'"
And I say,
"well....the mule is a carrying animal..."
Here, let me just give you some of the liner notes and then some...
The mule is a carrying animal, like me. Mules carry goods; I carry stories. I hold the unseen, give voice to the silences, carry and identify trouble, and try to heal my loved ones with a tenacity I have seen in no one else. It's high time I let the stories and their people go, let their weight off my shoulders, stand taller and lighter. At some point I thought of putting a bunch of songs together under the title "The Mule" because I liked the metaphor I created in my song, "The Mule," and noticed I had also created a carrying trilogy.
↓ more ↓Then I talked to people (especially my partner, Littlebird, who helped me create the track listing and started creating a mule cartoon for me, for the album...) about the idea and got enough feedback to create this here "theme" album. It's been a long, long time coming. I wrote most of these songs before I recorded my previous album, "brave enough," but chose not to put these songs on that album because these songs are heavier and required a more weighty recording process. The songwriting spans ten years - ten years of stories I've carried. The songs tend to explore the bounds of relationships and identities - interior, romantic, social, public. Relatives, friends, lovers, street harassers - leave their imprints on me and show up in my texts. I am just trying to get the word out. I am just trying to get free by telling. I hope you can feel all the beauty, emotion, love, care, power, fight, struggle, commonality, and truth. I hope that we can each be brave enough to break our silences and let our stories take flight, so that we may live fully and well on the ground. Let me set them free. Blessed be.
-km
"...love emanates from every note." - Vienna Teng
"Incomparable!" - Utah Phillips
"Damn!" - Cesca Waterfield
Voted RI’s Best Female Alt-Rock Vocalist in 2006 by Motif Magazine, avant-soul piano diva Kristi Martel grew up in New England and left in 1990 to earn an ASCAP grant and two music degrees (Bard and Mills College) in NY and CA before returning home to RI in 2003. The visionary soulsinger choreographed performance art and composed vocal music to tell stories about relationships, cultural identity, body image, and body memory before beginning her touring and recording career in 2000. "The Mule" is a project long in the making that seems to integrate her through-composed, performance art, and soulsinger selves into one work.
A finalist in many of the top international songwriting competitions, Kristi's piano playing combines her love of blues dissonance and syncopation with her classical training. Her voice is at once sweet and bitter, able to leap and soar, whisper and rattle, expressive of any emotion she chooses and fluid throughout her 4-octave range. She is visionary in her lyrics and composition, writing her prayers for solace and quirky relationship narratives in the same breath. Her sweet presence and fearless songwriting endear audiences nationwide.
Through Sealed Lip Records, Kristi has released five CDs, most recently the homespun limited edition demos for her forthcoming studio album, Ravengirl. “Ravengirl” is Kristi’s goofy joke superhero name for herself, her recognition of the crazy blessing it is that she felt joy everyday, amidst the profound grief, after her former life partner’s suicide in 2003. The album is full up with that joy, with the healing and transformation Kristi has undergone to be singing still so powerfully today.
discography:
Ravengirl (LP 2006)
Quaint & Curious Ravendemos (LP 2005)
The Mule (LP 2004)
bound (single 2003)
brave enough (LP 2001)
give me a little... (EP 2000)
↑ less ↑








