For Immediate Release March, 2007

NEW ALBUM BY INTERNATIONAL CHALLENGE WINNER EDEN BRENT TO BE RELEASED APRIL 15 BY YELLOW DOG RECORDS

Mississippi Number One is a tiny, two-lane state highway that meanders through blink-and- you’ll-miss-‘em communities like Rosedale, Beulah, Wayside, and Stovall before it dead ends into Highway 61 just south of Onward. In the masterful hands of blues and boogie pianist/vocalist Eden Brent, Number One – dedicated to her mother, the late Carole Brent – is a state of mind. The album, Brent’s debut for Yellow Dog Records, will be released nationwide on April 15. Both the self-penned title track and the album’s leadoff song, “Mississippi Flatland Blues,” which was written by Carole Brent, conjure up images of churning riverboats and prehistoric Indian mounds that rise like mysterious landmarks alongside the highway, the scent of honeysuckle at night, and the sounds that float from a raucous juke joint that stands at the end of a dirt road. Critics laud Brent’s “ meets Diana Krall meets Janis Joplin” attitude, compare her to jazz/pop dynamos Norah Jones and Sarah Vaughn, and wax effusively about that “whiskey-smoke” voice, which makes songs like “Darkness On The Delta” and Brent’s own “All Over Me” unforgettable tunes. Brent’s supremely tasteful take on the classic “The Man I Love” makes you pause while time seemingly suspends around you, while an upbeat original, “Meet You Anywhere,” encourages you to turn off your cell phone and re-engage in life. Taken as a whole, Mississippi Number One serves as a uniquely southern correlation to the popular “slow life” movement, the aural interpretation of dictums established by food doyenne Alice Waters and Project Alabama designer Natalie Chanin. The album fuses blues, soul, pop and jazz (after all, her home town of Greenville, Mississippi is located just a few hundred miles up the Mississippi river from New Orleans) into a heady roots- flavored concoction that turns lazy and lush on the bluesy “Why Don’t You Do Right,” heads straight to the kitchen for a rendition of fellow Greenvillian Jimmy Phillips’ homespun “Fried Chicken,” then veers into balladeer territory for her own “Afraid To Let Go.” Brent, who apprenticed with blues pioneer Boogaloo Ames for 16 years, actually grew up on Mississippi Number One, in a house located just north of Greenville, a legendary river town that served as the birthplace for such iconoclasts as historian Shelby Foote, singer Mary Wilson, and puppeteer Jim Henson. Her relationship with Ames was captured in the 1999 PBS documentary Boogaloo & Eden: Sustaining the Sound and in the 2002 South African production Forty Days in the Delta. “A young woman made of less stern stuff would not have braved such an apprenticeship,” writes author/journalist Julia Reed in the liner notes for Mississippi Number One. “Boogaloo was notoriously unreliable, often drunk, and never stayed in one place for long… but theirs is a phenomenal story of mutual admiration and need, of an unlikely but very real friendship that went well beyond that of student and teacher.” “Music school taught me to think, but Boogaloo taught me to boogie-woogie,” says Brent, who achieved a Bachelor of Music while studying jazz at the University of North Texas, swept the Blues Foundation’s 2006 International Blues Challenge, and was a 2004 inductee on the Greenville, Miss., Blues Walk. Her unshakable talent and carefree demeanor have taken her across the country and around the world, with appearances at the Kennedy Center, the 2000 Republican National Convention, the venerable Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, and tours of South Africa and Norway under her belt. Sharing a bill with B.B. King, Brent performed at the 2005 presidential inauguration, and solo, she’s appeared at the British Embassy and at the My South celebration in New York. She’s also burnished her reputation via appearances on the public radio program Beale Street Caravan, at festivals like the Waterfront Blues Festival, Edmonton Blues Festival and the annual B.B. King Homecoming, and aboard the Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruise. With the release of Mississippi Number One, Brent is now ready to take her place as one of the fresh voices propelling this vital American music forward. As Chip Eagle, publisher of Blues Revue, BluesWax, and Dirty Linen says, “in Eden’s huge playing and singing you can hear the ghosts of Mississippi in a duet with the future of the blues.” ##### Correction to album credits: the song “Trouble in Mind” was composed by Richard M. Jones. ##### Contact: Mike Powers 901-452-4087 [email protected] Photos and Electronic press kit: www.yellowdogrecords.com/presskits

Tour Dates for Eden Brent: 1/30 Real Delta Showcase - Memphis, TN ● 2/23 Phoenix Blues Society Blues Blast - Phoenix, AZ ● 2/26 KRFC Live @ Lunch - Fort Collins, CO ● 2/26 Johnny A's - Fort Collins, CO ● 2/27 Jimbo's Take Two - Colorado Springs, CO ● 2/29 Smokin' Moe's - Winter Park, CO ● 5/3 Blues Fest - Belzoni, MS ● 5/10 Crossroads Blues Fest - Rosedale, MS ● 6/13 Rootsway Blues Fest - Parma, Italy ● 6/26 Mississippi Delta Symposium - Memphis, TN ● 6/27 Blues from the Top - Winter Park, CO ● 8/7 Great Woods Music Festival - Beausejour, MB ● 9/12 Mississippi Delta Blues & Heritage Festival - Greenville, MS ● 10/5 Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruise - San Diego, CA and more…

www.yellowdogrecords.com 1910 Madison Avenue #671 Memphis, TN 38104 phone: (901) 452-4087 fax: (901) 328-5632