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Reissue of Courtney Marie Andrews' early record, No One's Slate Is Clean, from Fat Possum / House Arrest.

Her local alt-newsweekly once called Andrews “the biggest star in the pop-folk scene in Phoenix.” In the same article, Jim Adkins of Jimmy Eat World, who had Andrews sing backup vocals on the band’s 2010 release Invented, called the young singer “all pro.”

But being huge in Phoenix isn’t big enough for Andrews, who hits the road relentlessly. She visits Upland’s The Wire Sunday, Jan. 29, bringing her somber, Carole King-ish crooning and Zooey Deschanel bangs to the stage.

The self-taught songbird is influenced by artists as far reaching as Sun Kil Moon and Billie Holiday to Joni Mitchell and Pink Floyd. But what inspires her creativity most, she says, is change—people, places and things, continually evolving.

Touring, which provides plenty of spark for songwriting, is part of the deal for the desert dweller. “It’s bad and it’s also vital for my sanity,” Andrews says. “I really like the stories,” she says, adding that nearly every song on No One’s Slate is Clean was written in a hotel room.

Many of Andrews’ tunes are autobiographical, of course, sometimes intimately, painfully so. “But there are always those little stretches of truth,” she concedes. “But that is what makes a story a story.” The ones that come easily usually end up as tracks on the album, she says. But that doesn’t mean they are Andrews’ favorites.'"

TRACK LISTING

1. Bumper In The Hail
2. Monkey On A Chain
3. Songs For Tourists
4. Mistress Of The Stone
5. Ballad Of A Home Once Left
6. Sex Dreams
7. Unbalanced Suns
8. Canals Of Amsterdam
9. Georgia Guilt
10. Dear Sister
11. Magician's Best Trick