The weather is heating up, but don’t get too excited. Something needs to anchor us to this mortal coil. With “Everything I’ve Got’s in Tennessee,” Michelle and Jason Hanan fire the opening salvo in their upcoming album Cheater’s Waltz. The album will be the pair’s first concept album, in which “a woman who’s had bad luck with love. She decides to take one more chance when she meets a stranger in a bar. The album chronicles her new relationship going from good to bad and then to the absolute worst. A nasty break up followed by a murder and its aftermath,” Jason tells us. Yikes!
“Tennessee” is a dolorous waltz that’s the perfect soundtrack for picking up the pieces. Michelle’s impassioned performance is a fine bit of character acting as our protagonist gathers steam to come to a decision she can’t take back.
“This is my favorite song on the album,” Jason tells Adobe & Teardrops. “It’s the crucial point in the story where our protagonist murders her unfaithful ex. The really cool thing about this for me is that I got to write it with my daughter and my wife. My daughter and I came up with the idea after I had a conversation with another musician who just moved to the DC area from Tennessee. He said ‘I’m sleeping on the floor. Everything I’ve Got’s in Tennessee!’ It stuck and we wrote it very quickly. This was all about 9 years ago. When the time came for the album, we knew we wanted to use this one but couldn’t remember the melody. Michelle wrote a beautiful, haunting tune for it and came up with a new verse as well. We’re thrilled with how it came out. That’s local bluegrass wiz Shannon Bielski on fiddle. I played in her band when she was a 16 year old prodigy and I’m so happy to be able to have her on this track.”