One particular year, not too long ago, American singer Claude Fontaine was awash in a grey London fog that matched the fog and grey in her own too-recently broken heart, stumbled into Honest Jon’s. It was there she first heard those old Studio One and Trojan and Treasure Isle reggae and rocksteady and dub records as well as the bossa nova, tropicalia and the musica popular brasileira that adorn the record bins and walls of the legendary London record store, and found herself under a spell. Because she loved those records so much, she decided to make a valentine to this special music that called out to her like no music had done before. She went to Chet Baker’s legendary old studio in Hollywood – singing her own love songs with Jane Birkin-style elan and with a foundation of musicians that helped define both genres - guitarist Tony Chin (King Tubby, Lee Perry, Jackie Mittoo, Max Romeo, Sly & Robbie), bassist Ronnie 'Stepper' McQueen of Steel Pulse, and Ziggy Marley drummer Rock Deadrick, as well as Braziloan drummer Airto Moreira (Miles Davis, Astrud Gilberto, Chick Corea, and more), Now Again Records guitarist Fabiano Do Nascimento, Sergio Mendes percussionist Gibi Dos Santos and Flora Purim bassist Andre De Santanna. “I hope this record will transport people,” says Claude Fontaine. “I wanted it to feel like those lost records, like it got lost in the bottom bin of some world music store in London because that’s how I felt when I walked in to that record store. I wanted it to be its own world.”
