Kevin Meisel's debut recording delivers what its title seems to promise: a rich and compelling look into the polarities of the human heart and its journeys toward truth and redemption. Eleven songs, sparsely orchestrated and soulfully performed, highlight Kevin's penchant for writing powerful, contemporary narratives ebbing with detail and reveal a singer of heartfelt compassion for the human spirit and its wanderings.

Coal and Diamonds is an earthy blend of acoustic instrumentation, haunting melodies and darkly beautiful singing that recalls the intensity of Bob Dylan, the plaintive yearning of Gene Clark and the acoustic Springsteen and the gentle wit of John Prine. Still, with original voice and vision, Coal and Diamonds will touch both nerve and spirit alike.

"Kevin Meisel's songs evoke the rich, dark, rocky texture of the landscape itself, His characters reveal through their hardships, victories and revelations the complex nature of humanity itself as it furrows within the architecture of a life in the process of being lived. His melodies are haunted: his phrasing is hunted and his voice carries the depth and dimension of each story he turns over and over, like dirt being tilled to discover the meaning inside."
- Thom Jurek, Detroit Metro Times

*****
"This is an astonishing debut from a Detroit born son of a Big Band musician. Mostly recorded at this home studio in Belleville, Michigan it has echoes of Springsteen's Nebraska running through it like a coal seam. However it is the first record of John Prine, also produced in his mid-twenties, that bears closest comparison. Red Moshannon starts the disc off very much like Prine's Paradise or a folkier Dwight Yoakim with its opening line 'Down in the Appalachian coal basin...'. Next track Behind This Veil has a Springsteen The River era like story line over a bright organ melody. Other stand-out tracks include the literary influenced Rock Springs (if Richard Ford could sing it would sound like this!) and Fourth of July with its wonderful hunting imagery. Not every track is a keeper. Tethered Angels almost falls into a sentimental trap but overall this hardly matters as the gritty voice and wonderful lyrics carry the listener along. This is the old Voice of America that could be heard on tracks like Paradise, Ballad of Hollis Brown, Atlantic City - gritty, dirty-realism combined with folk melody. One Man Clapping out of Chicago has already released some talented singer-songwriter material but this is one of the best yet. Ranks up there with the best of the unjustly neglected James Talley and Steve Earle and yes, even that man Bruce. File next to Tom Joad - it really is that good! The title track says it all..."coal and diamonds are treasures well worth the find."
- Shaun Belcher, Hearsay Magazine, UK/John Brandon's Alternative Country Page Magazine

"...In the folk troubadour tradition, Meisel sings about characters who work the coal mines of Appalachia and drive trains through California...Meisel's songs are carefully crafted, with a successful mix of the literal and poetic...he sings some emotive melodies in memorable refrains: "Seems like any way we bid we're going to lose," his coal miner declares in the first track, Red Moshannon...Coal and Diamonds is mostly made up of hard-living working class tales sung and strummed slowly...many strong, intricate character sketches."
- Erick Trickey, The Current, Ann Arbor, MI

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