Biography

OUT OF MY HANDS/NATASHA BORZILOVA
Label: Hadley Music Group
Produced by: Natasha Borzilova
Executive Producer: Doug Johnson
Recorded and Mixed by: John Caldwell at Station West Studios
Second Engineer: Kyle Manner
Mastered by: Luke Wooten at Station West Studios
A & R by: Kathy Sacra-Anderson
Photography by: Rebecca Joy Major
Hair and Makeup by: Melissa Toshinsky aka Makeup by Melissa Kane
Graphic Design by: Sara Ostrovsky

TRACKS:
1. BETTER THAN ME
Written by: Natasha Borzilova
Uncle Hadley Music (ASCAP)
Natasha Borzilova: vocals, 12 string guitar
Tommy Harden: drums
Alison Prestwood: bass guitar
Billy Panda: mandocello
Bob Britt: electric guitars
Michael Rojas: synthesizer
Natasha's notes: This song was born out of my fascinations with the metamorphoses of a failed relationship. I look back at some intense loves of my past and sometimes I can't understand exactly what drew me to those people. At one time they were irreplaceable, and so was I to them - then just like that there was someone better for then and someone better for me

2. CYNICS HATE HOLLYWOOD
Written by Natasha Borzilova
Uncle Hadley Music (ASCAP)
Natasha Borzilova: vocal, acoustic guitar
Tommy Harden: drums, percussion
Alison Prestwood: bass guitar
Billy Panda: high string guitar
Bob Britt: electric guitars
Michael Rojas: piano, synthesizer
Natasha's notes: In my early years I was a serial monogamist and then I got married so I can't claim a lot of experience with first dates, but for many years I lived vicariously through the ladies of "Sex and the City". I was thinking of them writing this song.

3. OUT OF MY HANDS
Written by: Natasha Borzilova, Ilya Toshinsky, Lydia Salnikova, Sasha Ostrovsky, Sergei Ostrovskiy, Alexander Arzamastsev
Uncle Hadley Music (ASCAP)
Natasha Borzilova: vocals, acoustic guitar
Tommy Harden: drums
Alison Prestwood: bass guitar
Billy Panda: acoustic guitar
Bob Britt: electric guitars
Michael Rojas: piano, accordian, synthesizer
Notes from Natasha: One day I had this melody in my headand a random line "I tried everything, couldn't bring you back" and the song just started growing out of it. I finished it with the members of Bering Strait We used to play it a lot and even recorded a very different version, but it never made the cut.

4. THE WORLD BELOW
Written by Natasha Borzilova
Uncle Hadley Music (ASCAP)
Natasha Borzilova: vocals, acoustic guitar
Tommy Harden: drums, loop programming, percussion
Alison Prestwood: bass guitar
Billy Panda: acoustic guitar
Bob Britt: electric guitars
Michael Rojas: piano, synthesizer
Notes from Natasha: This song is about depression I had 8 years ago. Neither me, nor the guy I was dating at the time understood what was going on, but it was pretty unbearable. For awhile we clung to our old routines, pretending that things were all right - we listened to music, went to the movies, smoked our cigarettes in pretend-contented silence, and sometimes we'd grab a bottle of wine in a brown paper bag, drive out to this railroad bridge, scary high, and hang out, drinking the wine, talking about what we were going to do in the event of a train.

5. FISHERMAN'S WIFE
Written by Natasha Borzilova
Uncle Hadley Music (ASCAP)
Natasha Borzilova: vocal, acoustic guitar
Tommy Harden: drums, percussion
Alison Prestwood: bass guitar
Billy Panda: mandocello
Bob Britt: electric guitars
Michael Rojas: synthesizer
Notes from Natasha: I used to live in an apartment building on Music Row in Nashville and had a lot of free time in between touring with Bering strait. There was a great chair in the hall with a window overlooking the street, in fact almost half of this record was written there. It was a rainy day and the tires of the cars passing under the window made a swishing noise, so I closed my eyes and pretended that those were waves angrily slamming at the feet of a lonely woman waiting for her lost love on a deserted winter beach...

6. GYPSY
Written by Natasha Borzilova
Uncle Hadley Music (ASCAP)
Natasha Borzilova: vocals, 12 string guitar
Tommy Harden: drums, percussion
Alison Prestwood: bass guitar
Billy Panda: mandocello
Bob Britt: electric guitars
Michael Rojas: synthesizer
Notes from Natasha:
The story of my gypsy is a metaphor for humans' ability to recognize lost battles and step aside before others get hurt. I admire the inner strength it takes to let go. It doesn't have to be unrequited love, it can be a mother sending her child off to college or simply someone letting go of an idea of oneself.

7. ONE SOUL DESIRE
Written by Natasha Borzilova & Colin Whinnery
Uncle Hadley Music (ASCAP)/Colin Whinnery (BMI)
Natasha Borzilova: vocals, acoustic guitar
Tommy Harden: drums, percussion
Alison Prestwood: bass guitar
Billy Panda: acoustic guitar, baritone guitar
Bob Britt: electric guitars
Michael Rojas: Hammond B3 orgain
Notes from Natasha: I wrote this song with my friend Colin Whinnery, more than a decade ago. All the songs I wrote back then were super depressing because I just got out of a relationship that should've ended about a year and a half earlier than it did. It was unsalvageable, yet we both kept trying and trying to make it work, so really the song should've been "Two Soul Desire", but it didn't have the same ring to it.

8. WINTER SEASON
Written by Natasha Borzilova
Uncle Hadley Music (ASCAP)
Natasha Borzilova: vocals 12 string guitar
Tommy Harden: drums, percussion
Alison Prestwood: bass guitar
Billy Panda: acoustic guitar
Bob Britt: electric guitars
Michael Rojas: synthesizer
Notes from Natasha: This song is based on a conversation I had with my grandmother years ago. Her entire life she was a daredevil; a regional steeple chase champion as a teen, she trained to be a nurse at the onset of WWII, which among other things included a series of parachute dives, in her early twenties she became a school principal and later worked with troubled youth. Once she said to me, "When I think of myself, I imagine a young woman, because in my heart I'm still the same person. Then I look in the mirror and see an old face I don't recognize". Grandma passed away from complications due to Alzheimer's disease. Sometimes I like to imagine her in her true form, skydiving in Heaven.

9. ONE SECOND FLAT
Written by: Natasha Borzilova
Uncle Hadley Music (ASCAP)
Natasha Borzilova: vocals, acoustic guitar
Tommy Harden: drums, percussion
Alison Prestwood: bass guitar
Billy Panda: mandolin
Bob Britt: electric guitars
Michael Rojas: piano, synthesizer
Notes from Natasha: When someone dies in a Russian household, there is a strange tradition to cover all the mirrors in the house until the funeral. It is believed that if the soul of the departed happens to catch a glimpse of itself in the mirror it will be trapped in this world forever. I found out about this sad ritual as a teen. My father was a renowned environmental physicist, and after the Chernobyl disaster he volunteered to lead the team of scientists who were charged with figuring out the ways to deal with the radiation. As a result of his frequent trips there he passed away suddenly at the age of 50. That day I grew up in one second flat.

10. LONG NIGHT
Written by: Natasha Borzilova, John Caldwell, Tim Buchannan
Uncle Hadley Music/Opposite Spectrum (ASCAP)/Ugama Jar (BMI)
*Contains musical elements of untitled traditional Russian lullaby)
Natasha Borzilova: vocals, electric guitar programming
John Caldwell: vocals, programming
Tim Buchanan: programming
Tommy Harden: drums
Michael Rojas: synthesizer
Notes from Natasha: When I became a mother, I quickly developed a small lullaby repertoire, and was taken by an idea to write a song that would include some of the authentic Russian nursery rhymes. One evening, while I was obsessing over it, my husband was playing with tracks from his hip-hop project "Universatility" and just for fun he reversed a part of one song. What came out of it was an odd sound that reminded me of a barrel organ. I started singing my lullaby over it and it fit like a glove, so we wrote a song about insomnia and John included a verse about our life as two working parents. Our friend Tim Buchanan came up with some cool piano sounds, and everyone got to program a little bit of the track, even me. Now about the lullabies. The first verse is the most widely used in Russia, my parents sang it to me when I was little. It goes something like: "Don't fall asleep on the edge of the bed, the gray wolf will come and bite you on your side." The second verse comes from a village near the city of Voronezh where my Mom was born, it was sung to her by her grandmother and only locals know it. It's about trespassing with intent to crack some peas. (yes, our nursery rhymes don't make sense either). Finally, the part that comes at the end of the song is so strange that it had to be included! Presumably our protagonist is a one legged bear. Here's a rough translation and it's not for the weak of heart: "I am walking through the forest on a wooden leg. All the chickens are asleep, and the water is asleep, and the earth is asleep, only the old woman is not asleep. She is sitting on my hide, spinning yarn out of my hair, she is boiling my meat". Sleep tight, little children, sweet nightmares.

11. TINY LITTLE THINGS
Written by: Natasha Borzilova
Uncle Hadley Music (ASCAP)
Natasha Borzilova: vocals, acoustic guitar
Tommy Harden: drums
Alison Prestwood: bass guitar
Billy Panda: acoustic guitar
Bob Britt: electric guitars
Michael Rojas: piano & synthesizer
John Caldwell: background vocal
Notes from Natasha: It took me two years to write a song about my daughter because everything I said sounded cheesy and sappy and I don't do either. Finally I figured out how to tell this tale of transformation from my wild pre-baby days to my unexpectedly structures present self. Once you have children, there's no room for selfish behaviour that comes from having too much time on your hands. Time becomes precious, your house is overrun by tiny objects with huge meanings, you are consumed by tiny problems that are giant because the tiny people that are experiencing them are the most important people that you'll ever have around.


BIOGRAPHY OF NATASHA BORZILOVA
From her early days as a classically trained child guitar prodigy, Natasha Borzilova has consistently created music that says something, and in a fresh way. That hasn't changed with Out of My Hands, her self-produced third solo release ― and her most personal collection yet.

Since the 2006 disbanding of Bering Strait ― the group of genre-defying Russian wunderkinds that brought her from Russia to America, spawning critical acclaim, a Grammy nomination, a 60 Minutes profile and a documentary film ― Borzilova has remained busy: as writer, recording artist, yoga instructor and, most important, mother. Despite a slowdown for the birth of her son, she found time to land her 2010 album, Balancing Act, in the Top 10 on the Folk DJ chart; guest on Art of the Song, the ongoing exploration of the creative process that is syndicated on more than 200 NPR stations; and perform on the acclaimed (and internationally listened-to) live radio shows WoodSongs Old-Time Radio Hour and Music City Roots.

Borzilova's life experiences inform and enrich Out of My Hands: Eleven wise and lived-in songs written or co-written by the singer and delivered with her warm and conversational voice; intimate yet not short on power. She plays acoustic six- or 12-string guitar on every song, with simpatico support from a group of Nashville's finest, whose credits include Delbert McClinton, Shawn Colvin and Bob Dylan.

Song topics include depression, letting go, personal growth and relationships ― universal themes rendered in sharp detail, with revealing metaphors that are all the more remarkable considering English is Borzilova's second language. Family is a major theme. “Winter Season” recalls a conversation with Borzilova's feisty grandmother, a skydiving nurse during World War II. “One Second Flat” addresses the death of Borzilova's father, lead scientist in charge of the cleanup after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, when she was 13. “Tiny Little Things” examines the shifting priorities and maturity that accompany parenthood. The hypnotic “Long Night” weaves together pieces of authentic Russian lullabies she has sung to her own children , partly sung in Russian and including a “rap” section about the sleepless nights of early parenthood by her husband and engineer John Caldwell.

Fans of singer songwriters in the vein of Shawn Colvin, Janis Ian & Joni Mitchell will savor this captivating, intelligent and highly listenable collection.