Ready Let Go is the latest album from New York award winning singer/songwriter, Tina Vero. Released on January 17th, Ready Let Go is an 11-song collection that speaks to such influences as Kathleen Edwards, Feist and Florence+The Machine. It is a journey of liberation, self-realization and risk-taking built from musical influences in which Vero deftly marries the genre of strong, smart singer/songwriter to ambient alt-pop.  Vero recorded the album in Nashville, TN with Dustin Burnett, who has produced albums by Augustana, Kingsfoil and An Epic, No Less. Vero plans on touring in support of the album during 2012.

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Are you ready to let go?

In the Fall of 2010, in a Nashville recording studio, hundreds of miles from her New York home, Tina Vero found herself asking this question. She was not completely surprised that the answer turned out to be a fervent, "I'm ready to let go....NOW."

Ah-ha, ah-ha, ah-ha...or so the song goes...

Art, in whatever form it is practiced, challenges us to constantly reevaluate ourselves. It dares us to see something new each time we engage it. Art tests our preconceptions and asks us to move beyond what is comfortable. So often, we must let go to allow art to reveal itself to us. In many ways, we must be ready to let go.

When she arrived at Nashville's Beech Creek Studios to record her third release, Ready Let Go, Tina found herself at something of a crossroads. Could she let go of the habits that had sustained her as a singer-songwriter up until that point? Could she step outside of her comfort zone? Could she take the indie-folk sound that she'd cultivated on her first album, 2000's In The Waiting (Producer: Ken Cedar) and expanded upon in 2005's EP Tina Vero (Producers: Mike Visceglia,Rob Friedman,Tina Vero) and move into a new artistic direction that she longed to explore? With the mighty, multi-instrumentalist, seasoned producer of Dustin Burnett at the helm, five weeks and 11 finely-crafted songs later, she discovered that she could.

In The Waiting

In the early years, Tina played any college, coffeehouse and in the endless rows of NYC dive-bars that supported independent musicians. She played showcases, won band competitions and built different communities of songwriters who encouraged each others' musical growth through monthly songwriting groups. They were fertile days for an artist who was patiently and diligently honing her craft.

"Those songwriting groups were where some of the songs from Ready Let Go were definitely born."

Some of those early songs even ended up at the feet of her earliest songwriting influence, the iconic Neil Finn (Split Enz, Crowded House), during one evening while attending one of Finn's shows at Irving Plaza in New York City. A precocious friend of Tina's, tossed a copy of In The Waiting on to the stage, knowing quite well how Finn was a passionate supporter of indie musicians. To her utter astonishment, Finn passed the CD to the sound man and began playing Vero's, "Do You Wanna Go Home?" throughout the entire venue sound system. Finn brought the crowd into a frenzied pitch playing along to Vero's song, that he then brought Tina onstage to sing a duet with him on a Crowded House favorite, "Fall at Your Feet."

Tina met with Finn after the show and he gave her some invaluable career advice.

"Here I was with the artist who had single-handedly influenced me the most as a songwriter and a performer, he looked me square in the eye and said, 'Now go get a record deal, because you are ready for it.'

There was that word again: Ready.

Ah-ha, ah-ha. ah-ha...or so the song goes...

Tina would accompany Finn again at Philadelphia's Electric Company. The duets caught some high-powered attention in the New York music scene, namely that of New York Times music reviewer, Jon Pareles and Rita Houston, Music Director of WFUV radio station out of Fordham University.

It also caught the attention of producer Mike Visceglia, the primary bassist for Suzanne Vega, another one of Vero's songwriting inspirations. Visceglia, a prominent figure in the New York Music scene, has recorded and/or performed with Bruce Springsteen, Bette Midler, Avril Lavigne, Jonatha Brooke and Dar Williams. In March 2005, Visceglia and Rob Friedman (Phoebe Snow, Paul Carrick, Sheryl Crow, Aimee Mann) recorded Tina Vero, a four-song EP that would attract attention throughout the indie-music world.

In 2006, two tracks from Tina Vero, "Nowhere" and "Angelchasing," won awards from IAMA and UNISONG songwriting competitions respectively. Shortly after, the EP's acoustic version of "Memory For Me" was selected for three compilation albums, Original Session National Band Search Compilation, Tunes To Train To and InTouch Entertainment's CD For Emerging Artists. In 2011, this early recording of Memory For Me, was selected for two motion picture soundtracks, The Putt-Putt Syndrome and Delivering the Goods. Also notable, this four-song EP became Vero's ticket to showcasing around the country at CMJ, ALLBIZ Music Conference, Emergenza, Original Sessions National Band Search NYC and Dewey Beach Music Festival.

"Dewey Beach Music Festival changed my entire musical direction in one night." For it was at this event, that Vero met the band, The October, an outfit out of Calvert City, KY that was building intense momentum throughout the indie music scene with front man, Dustin Burnett. "I heard the first note of their opening song and I knew instantly that I was going to work with Burnett. He and his band had finally captured this particular sound that really spoke to me and it took the listener right to the edge of passionate urgency and emotional freedom. It was the right mix of sounds and I knew that this was the next direction for my music."

Ready Let Go

"Music is a way for me to sift through my emotions and recalibrate myself from the experience of those emotions," Tina said.

She decided that she had to share those emotions with the wider world.

"It was my insatiable belief that these songs had a story that needed to be shared...not only did I know this deep down that I had to let these songs out, but that belief was meet with an equally powerful belief that Dustin Burnett (Kingsfoil, An Epic, No Less, Augustana) and his particular melodic, ambient, visceral style of producing had to leave his stamp on these songs. I felt the synergy long before we even stepped into his home studio in Tennessee. I was thrilled when he said yes to my project."

But, with a bevy of new songs aching to be recorded and a ready and willing producer in Burnett to take Vero's music to an entirely new level, what is an indie singer-songwriter to do? The only thing an artist can do in the Internet age: crowd-source it.

Enter the famed crowd-funding site, Kickstarter. Tina liked the site's DIY ethos and that this style of funding could enable her to reach out to the fans that had long supported her music since .

"I had seen how Kickstarter was working for so many other fellow musicians and I gave it my best shot. We reached our goal on Kickstarter and that gave me the confidence to start the project. Initially, I was raising funds to do a 5-song EP. But, very soon after leaving my first session in Nashville, like on the plane ride home kind-of-soon, I knew I had to make a full album with Burnett. We had the right sounds, the right direction, the right songs. We were ready to do more. So, I did what any songwriter would do. I went home and I wrote more songs.

"Between the two Burnett sessions in Nashville, I reached a point where I had to tend to some heartbreak in my own life back at home. I should know by now that this is the kind of potency that tends to show up in my songwriting. The writing of the title track "Ready Let Go" was born out of disappointment, frustration, heartbreak and this desire to open up to what else could be possible for me not only in love, but in the totality of my life. And so, it was the last song I wrote for the album. Up until that point, Deep September was the working title for the album."

'The title track, "Ready Let Go" brings together all of the themes that run through the album, uniting around the central point of change, while that certainly wasn't my intention as I was writing it. It is equal parts heartbreak, contemplation, transformation and authentic emotional liberation. I didn't know at the time that I was writing something for the album, let alone the title track. But just as songs do, they are always so many steps ahead of us. They show up right on time, as Ready Let Go did, echoing my readiness for letting go, for moving forward, for sharing these songs with a fan base that has been so ready to hear these songs in a way that I have always longed for them to be recorded.'

And so, Tina Vero is ready. Ready to let go now. Are you?

Ah-ha, ah-ha, ah-ha...or so the song goes...

Ready Let Go released on Handmade Muse Records on January 17th, 2012. Available at iTunes, Amazon.com, CDBaby and more.