11. Weight of Your Words “I wish you would have thought before you talked to me. Do you know what it’s like? To be here all alone? To live with all the weight of your words?”
Words deeply affect who we are as people. Good or bad, we can’t take them back. When I say something hurtful to someone I love, they have to bear that burden. Our words can never be erased. They can either lift someone up or push them down. I remember the bad more then I remember the good. I was told several times that I wasn’t grieving the way I should be; that I wasn’t moving forward fast enough. What people didn’t know was that while they were giving unsolicited advice on the way I was living my life, I had been shriveled up in the corner of my room crying in the dark for the past week because I couldn’t make sense of why I should get up. It’s a good question to ask: “Do I know what it’s like? If I were in their shoes, would I want to hear what I have to say?” More times than not, I think people would rather have a person there to hold them in silence. Sometimes words just hurt too much, whether they're good words or bad.
Album: War & Peace
Release Date: April 1, 2016
Label: LaBrie Records and BUTR Records LLC
Nashville based singer-songwriter Shannon LaBrie has a sound that defies genres and tells insightful stories from an authentic place. She instantly became a favorite among music fans and critics alike with her powerful 2013 debut 'Just Be Honest'. With the hit lead single, “I Remember a Boy,” the independent release reached inside the Top Ten on iTunes and the Triple A Radio charts. Famed music blogger Bob Lefsetz wrote, “This track affected me. Made me believe like the great singer-songwriters of yore, maybe this woman has something to say. That in this crazy, mixed up, shoot-up world she can illuminate her story and people can relate.”
“When I listen to music,” LaBrie says, “a lot of times, it’s to make me feel good. But a lot of other times, it’s to make me not feel alone. So this next record is about embracing who I am and where I’m from. I am a Midwest girl. I grew up on an acreage in Nebraska, swinging around on old oak trees. I grew up really quickly and this album is a hindsight look into my past and learning how to embrace it in the present.”
The Austin Chronicle calls LaBrie, “a true guitarist singer/songwriter whose soulful voice’s sensual honey-crisp highs brings to mind the late, great Jeff Buckley.” She has opened for Dixon, Phoenix, ZZ Ward, The Head and the Heart, The Wild Feathers, Michael Franti and Valerie June. Her résumé includes South By Southwest, the Austin City Limits Festival, Road to the Hangout and Road to Bonnaroo.
