Hilary Gardner

Singer | Writer | New Yorker

NYC-based singer (mostly jazz) and writer. Lover of words, food, and all things Italian.

For Your GRAMMY® Consideration

Hilary Gardner

best jazz vocal album - on the trail with the lonesome pines

best jazz performance - Cow cow boogie

best arrangement, instruments and vocals - twilight on the trail

Alaska-raised, New York City-based jazz vocalist Hilary Gardner’s album, On the Trail with The Lonesome Pines, transports listeners to the nostalgic heart of the American West. Produced by Eli Wolf (Norah Jones, Cassandra Wilson, Willie Nelson), the album features songs by jazz and film composers like Johnny Mercer, Frank Loesser, Benny Carter, and other stalwarts of the Great American Songbook.

The 12 tracks on On the Trail with The Lonesome Pines paint soundscapes of the archetypal cowboy’s life on the trail—replete with pale dawns, purple hills, and the high lonesome feeling of camping out beneath a vast, star-filled sky. Says Gardner, “These songs remind us that the answers to many of life’s big questions can be found in contemplative solitude, the beauty of the natural world, and the arms of a loved one.”

Photo: Margherita Andreani

Photo: Margherita Andreani

“...something new and wondrous. ”
— Will Friedwald, The Wall Street Journal
“…a delightful innocence, tempered by Tin Pan Alley wit and romance and a drowsy desert atmosphere to soothe 21st-century woes. ★★★★”
— The Times of London
“Ms. Gardner’s delicate, winsome approach rises into an exalted realm of feeling and experience common only to the finest interpretive singers.”
— The Absolute Sound
“...her golden tone and vocal ease shine beautifully…soulful and hypnotizing.”
— The New York City Jazz Record
“ …an unjustly neglected corner of the Great American Songbook: the rich vein of swinging tunes from the accomplished pens of Johnny Mercer, Frank Loesser, and others, written in the 1930s and ‘40s for the singing cowboys of stage and screen. This is not the historical American West, but it’s a powerful fantasy implanted in our collective imagination… ”
— Stereophile Magazine

PERSONNEL:

  • Hilary Gardner: Vocals

  • Justin Poindexter: guitars, mandolin, organ, background vocals

  • Noah Garabedian: bass

  • Aaron Thurston: drums, percussion

  • Sasha Papernik: accordion (tracks 4 and 5)

Recorded by Lily Wen at Figure 8 Recording, Brooklyn, NY

Mixed by Teddy Tuthill

Mastered by Dave Darlington

Produced By Eli Wolf

Released March 8, 2024 on Anzic Records