OneBeat alumnae Courtney Hartman released her much anticipated solo debut last Friday. Written in large part during a 500-mile hike of Spain to hike of Spain’s Camino de Santiago, Ready Reckoner is a genre defying introspective album, co-produced by Hartman and OneBeat collaborating artist Shahzad Ismaily.
Regarding the album title, Hartman told The Bluegrass Situation: “I was obsessed with the word reckon. I was reckoning with myself and my work, reckoning with the relationship to the music I was making, reckoning with whether I should even be doing it at all. That word felt like it had a lot of motion, so I looked it up and found that a ready reckoner was at one point the name of a hard-copy calculator. A merchant might have a ready reckoner, which is essentially a book of tables. I found one from 1905 for sale and ordered it on Amazon, as you do. I keep it in my guitar case. It’s this tiny, beautiful book with all these weird calculations for things. I felt like these songs were trying to calculate something, trying to get to a formula or an equation.”
Stream Ready Reckoner below:
