BIRD ON A WIRE A CHALLENGING RECORD FOR TOBY LIGHTMAN

Toby Lightman has released ‘Bird on a Wire’ her follow up to 2004’s ‘Little Things’ and Toby feels her latest release is her most challenging album yet. After touring the world performing with the likes of Rob Thomas, Jewel and James Blunt, Lightman honed her song writing and extremely talented vocal ability on the road and brought her experience into the studio with producers Bill Bottrell (Sheryl Crow, Shelby Lynne, Van Hunt) and Patrick Leonard (Madonna, Jewel, Natasha Bedingfield), each of whom shared producing credits on the album.

We caught up with Toby to talk about what a challenging album this was for her.

“I don’t know if records go smoothly, I really don’t but ‘Bird on a Wire’ it was definitely a challenging record. I took about eight or nine months and it was really hard. The producers I worked with had really high standards and they had a certain level of success before they worked with me and so I felt really challanged. So, it was really hard at times, but I’m really happy with the way it turned out.”

After ‘Little Things’ was geared more towards programmed beats and hip hop grooves in the studio, Toby also admitted she fell in love with live musicians and the passion they bring while out on the road touring in support of ‘Little Things’ and that’s what she brought into this recording.

“Well the first album I was really into a lot of programmed beats and I was really into actually programming the beats myself and while I was on the road touring for the record I had a real drummer and I had a real bass player and just started listening to so much old music, old soul music and classic rock music I just really fell in love with the realness of it and I realized there’s actually people that can do that themselves and I kind of gravitated away from it. I saw a little more passion and realness in it.”

It was announced recently that Toby will be playing a series of Hard Rock Cafe shows in March benefiting the Music Rising Organization, which works to replace instruments lost by musicians in The Katrina disaster. Toby will then hit the road with Taylor Hicks in April. Look for tour dates to be announced shortly.