Meat Loaf will performing of his new song "The Giving Tree" live on the "Tonight Show With Jay Leno" on March 14th. The performance coincides with the March 13 release of the new Hell In A Handbasket Cd (Sony/Legacy). Meat Loaf will also sit down that week for an interview on PBS' "Tavis Smiley Show" (airdate TBA).
"Hell In A Handbasket is the most personal record I've ever made," said Meat Loaf. "It's really the first record I've ever put out about how I feel about life and how I feel about what's going on at the moment." The album, produced by Paul Crook, is an expression of life's metaphors, driven by excellent musicianship, and of course, the passionate vocals of Meat Loaf. "Making this album was a great experience," said MEAT LOAF, "and I hope my fans enjoy hearing it as much as I did making it."
It's his most autobiographical album to date, a thematic record that easily crosses any number of genres, featuring such unlikely contributors as rappers Chuck D and Lil Jon, country star Trace Adkins, and Sugar Ray's Mark McGrath. It's an album about feeling alone and disconnected from the world around you, at the same time as it tries to tap into what unifies us as fellow humans on this topsy-turvy planet in 2012.
Musically, Hell In A Handbasket ranges from the southern country blues feel of "Live or Die" (co-written by Grammy-winning band The Civil Wars' John Paul White), the DEVO-esque New Wave feel and Beatle-esque interlude in "Party of One," the gospel/R&B of "Our Love and Our Souls" (duet with Patti Russo), to "Stand in the Storm," which segues from country to rock to rap all in one song, featuring Lil Jon and Mark McGrath, along with Trace Adkins. Other tracks include "All of Me," a cover of Tom Cochrane's 1991 "Mad, Mad World," (which is part of a trilogy including the dreamy "Blue Sky" before it, and Chuck D's virulent rap, with "The Good God is a Woman and She Don't Like Ugly" as a coda), the Mamas and the Papas' "California Dreamin'" (duet with Patti Russo), "Another Day," "40 Days," and "Fall From Grace."
