Kris Delmhorst

She and her husband, singer/songwriter Jeffrey Foucault, had just returned from a tour of Alaska and the West Coast when she called from her Greenfield, Massachusetts, home. "We played Anchorage, of course, and Eagle River, which is basically a suburb of Anchorage, and Talkeetna, and Homer. I've been up there four or five times to play, plus trips to visit friends. But," she chuckled, "it was different this time, with a nine-month-old baby." The tour was in support of her new album, Shotgun Singer, which was issued by Signature Sounds in late 2008 and represents another stage in Delmhorst's move from the Cambridge/Boston area, her home for 10 years, to what is colloquially referred to as "western Mass."

"Until a year ago I would have said Boston was still my home," she said. "I moved out here five years ago, but for a while I was commuting to music in Boston. It's only about 100 miles."

For Shotgun Singer, however, Delmhorst not only did nearly all the recording in western Massachusetts, but she recruited local musicians to play the few parts that she didn't record on her own. "[Singer/songwriter and friend] Erin McKeown lives in Conway [in the Berkshires], and she's on the road a lot, so she let me stay at her place when she was gone," Delmhorst explained. "And I sort of turned it into a stripped-down studio."