How to go
WHO: Jonell Mosser
WHERE: Canal Street Tavern, 308 E. First St., Dayton
WHEN: 8 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 28
COST: $12
MORE INFO: (937) 461-9343 or www.canalstreettavern.com
ARTIST INFO: www.jonellmosser.com
The music industry is a fickle business, a fact Jonell Mosser knows all too well.
In 2004, the Nashville-based blues-rock singer completed “Time Will Do the Talking.” She considered it the best album of her career, but it was never released. Her record label pressed copies of the disc, which featured appearances by Delbert Clinton, John Hiatt and others, before pulling the release when Mosser was unexpectedly unable to tour.
“My husband at the time, the father of my children, was in a catastrophic accident,” she said. “He was thrown from a horse into a fence and it ripped his scalp nearly off. ... He’s now completely physically recovered, but he had cracked five vertebrae, and he was in a halo for three months.
“The album was finished, the artwork was done, and they were printed up, but it never came out,” Mosser said.
“Honest to Pete, I think it was the best record I had made up until then, but I wasn’t able to tour immediately, so the record company decided they weren’t going to do anything with it.”
Mosser — who performs at Canal Street Tavern on Saturday, Nov. 28 — admits she was emotionally devastated. However, the mother of two sons, ages 12 and 14, pressed on.
“I kind of cocooned and started writing more with Tom Britt,” Mosser said. “I went through a little funk, but when you have kids, you can’t let anything affect your everyday routine. You have to pick up and go on. I thought for awhile it was because I wasn’t doing something I should be doing and this was their way of negotiating with me. I kept going, ‘So what can I do?’ And there was nothing.”
Mosser fully shed that cocoon in 2008 when producer Bil VornDick approached her about producing a new album. This led to a renewed focus, a new label deal and “Trust Yourself,” her first official release since 2001.
“I was just grateful to have another opportunity to make another record,” Mosser said. “I would’ve done it myself if I had to, but thank God I had some people there to help me. It was right at that point that I’d taken my sons and moved back to Nashville on my own. It seemed a godsend to me in every way to have a small advance, some work to do and a good bunch of people to do it with.”
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