"Love is the Kingdom is an epic song cycle rooted in the plaintive, earthy range of vernacular musical styles known as Americana."
"Love is the Kingdom is the new album containing 14 songs written and performed by Asher Kramer with the backing of some of the finest studio musicians and performing artists in the industry. The album tells the story of the rebirth of hope, optimism, and spiritual discovery through songs of loss, love, and redemption. Asher has been writing and performing songs since the age of 13. The album channels the breadth of American music that influenced his writing over that time period. The spirits of Townes Van Vandt, Johnny Cash, Nancy Griffith, Warren Zevon, Joni Mitchell, Richard Schuman, Bob Dylan, Judee Sill, The Byrds, Jimmy Webb, Tom Waits, Bruce Springsteen, and Ralph McTell live in soul of the songs. This album is a compilation of new material written over a short period in 2021, but honed over a lifetime of dedication to make a significant and important contribution to the American music liturgy.
The fourth album by singer/songwriter Asher Kramer, it is the artist’s most fully-realized recording to date, emblazoned by a stellar cast of backing musicians that includes steel guitar ace Kenny Skaggs of the Glen Campbell Band, Alice Cooper drummer Ken Mary, bass man David "Dbazz" Jones from the Sister Sledge Band, Appalachian fiddler Scott Freeman and his golden-voiced daughter Dori Freeman, visionary new age guitarist GuruGanesha Khalsa, and acclaimed classical pianist Henry Kramer, the artist’s son, among others.
But the recording’s front-and-center focus is the richly poetic songcraft of Asher Kramer. Panoramic in scope, the album’s 14 songs are grouped in an ambitious, four-part narrative structure that evokes the seasonal cycle in the vivid hues of imagery drawn from nature. Kramer’s lyrics are dappled with sunlight, seafoam, and windswept canyons. Love is the Kingdom is like the elusive Great American Novel, told in song. Characters drift through the Big Sky landscape of the American heartlands. A carefully wrought web of recurring themes and leitmotifs, this is an album that will reward repeated listenings.
Deeply autobiographical, yet universal in resonance, Love is the Kingdom is the work of a mature artist moving into a fresh phase of creative and personal renewal. “The album tells the story of the rebirth of hope, optimism, and spiritual discovery through songs of loss, love, and redemption,” Kramer notes.
He collaborated on Love is the Kingdom with producer Liv Singh Khalsa, noted for his work with Wiz Khalifa, Bruce Walker, Zakir Hussain, Snatam Kaur, GuruGanesha Khalsa and Lester Chambers of the Chambers Brothers, among others. Together, artist and producer have forged a work that harmonizes the variegated strains of country, folk and rock and roll - taking the listener on a journey through a melodic and lyrical landscape that is at once hauntingly familiar yet evocatively mysterious."
