Lydia McCauley’s music is described as beautiful, mystical, intriguing, crystal, passionate. Her songwriting is shaped by Celtic, Medieval, and Appalachian music—and her own pilgrimages around the world. This combination portrays a beautiful journey through the past and into the present as Lydia’s passionate and clear vocals take her listener to an inward landscape, where the simple truths of her lyrics illumine the soul.
Born in Seattle and raised in the southeastern United States, Lydia grew up studying classical music as a child. When she was sixteen, her family moved to the Appalachian mountains of Tennessee and it was there that she began learning about the Celtic music that had been brought over the waters from the British Isles. She documented folk music from the Appalachian region at Berea College in Kentucky while working at festivals and at the school’s museum. The echoes of the British Isles were what truly inspired Lydia, but it would be years before she found her family’s history in Ireland, and before she could journey to Scotland and England.
She moved to the Pacific Northwest, started a family, taught piano, and continued to contemplate the modal sounds of antiquity. Pilgrimages to Europe and an interest in Medieval music lit a fire under her developing songwriting skills. In 1995, Lydia began a professional career in the music industry which has blossomed considerably since the release of her first album, SABBATH DAY’S JOURNEY and has received further acclaim with her second recording, ENTRANCES. She manages her own independent label, Brimstone Music, distributing her recordings to merchants and radio stations in several countries.
Lydia McCauley and her talented ensemble have toured the West Coast of the U.S. and British Columbia, performing by candlelight in Cathedrals, making appearances on television, at festivals, performing art centers and other venues. In addition to their moving performances, Lydia’s CD recordings are reaching appreciative audiences throughout North America and are increasingly making their way into Europe and Japan with rave reviews.
"We booked a major international studio, traveled by caravan north to Canada, illuminated the studio with 100 candles, played music for two days, and recorded vocals for the next two," explains Lydia as she describes the intense time-limits on the actual recording of ENTRANCES. One would not be able to tell that the album was recorded so quickly, judging from the lush instrumentation and layered sound. "The band was in fine form and good humor. The candles and music transformed the room into a beautiful space." - A mystical space that one can sense throughout the album's ten tracks.
"McCauley's music is reminiscent of the soft, filtered light one experiences upon entering an ancient cathedral, or a dense green forest. Her diverse band layers historical music tradition alongside more contemporary New Age modes of sound with an eclectic blend of instruments ranging from the doumbek to the Irish flute. McCauley's rich vocals are woven throughout, bringing the clear, simple truths of her lyrics to the listener with a purity akin to illumination." Cecily Schmidt, THE EVERY OTHER WEEKLY
"Drawing from her Appalachian background, Lydia sings an achingly lovely, simple rendition of the folk song "Black is the Color." Her own songs of the Pacific Northwest, such as "Grace Day," call out for deeper intimacy: "forgiveness is a healing of a wound between us both." Drawing inspiration from spiritual soul mates Francis of Assisi and Julian of Norwich, she creates songs around ancient words, such as these from Julian: "All shall be well, all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well." Around that one sentence she and the band have made a swirling temple of song to end the album." Margaret D. Smith, author and poet, HOLY STRUGGLE "The second CD of Lydia McCauley is a real work of beauty and love. The more you listen to this recording, the more you realize the devotion and passion put into this CD. Beside the eight original songs, there are two traditional songs on this album: 'Foggy Dew', the old English ballad, adapted by Lydia and beautifully flavored with an Appalachian taste; and the most serene, delicate version of "Come All Ye Fair" we have ever heard. Although Lydia's voice sounds great on all the songs, here she adds a deep passion. Superb." INT'L DR. NINA SIMONE SOCIETY, Roger Nupie, Antwerpen, Belgium
"Lydia McCauley brings a provocative blend of mysticism, intelligence and beauty to her art. Her vocals require and deserve a careful hearing so the listener can accompany her into the far reaches of the human soul that she seeks to illuminate. Happily, her musicians follow her into these mysteries with both subtlety and power. ENTRANCES is definitely an album to be listened to again and again." Connie Dover, Taylor Park Music conniedover.com
“In significantly calmer water, there is Lydia McCauley - yet another Celtic interpreter from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. She closely follows up her debut album “Sabbath Day’s Journey” “with one, in atmosphere, even more together production, “Entrances.” Her music is peaceful, thoughtful, almost fragile. The eleven pieces form a unified lyrical suite. McCauley’s voice is catching landscape after landscape during a journey where the sought after is always within reach. In compositions like “Pregiera Semplice” and “The Fire” one is being transferred to another world. ...Her voice is taking pictures from several landscapes, turning it into great images."
Gert-Ove Fridlund, Hallansposten , Gothenberg, Sweden
Entrances
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Once again McCauley intrigues us with new ideas, taking us to musical places we haven't been before. Through repetitive, prayer-like lyrics set to aloe-soothing vocals, this album plays like one, on-going developing vigil. You can smell the melting wax and flaming wicks of the candles that were set up in the studio for the atmosphere of this music's recording. McCauley takes us home to emotions heard somewhere before but from a different angle. Some of her helping muses are: Frank Olsen, Frank Jackson, Phil Heaven, Brian Cunningham, Kurt Scherer, and Marc Murray. Very nicely produced by Lydia McCauley and Kurt Scherer and recorded at Greenhouse Studios in Vancouver where one hundred candles burned to the rhythm of a walk in the woods, "Entrances;" the fullness of summer, "Garden Room;" and our own souls, "The Cloister Within." Welcome this CD to your collection. Lyrics are included.
Nicki Ehrlich, Victory Music Review, January 2000
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"Sabbath Day's Journey is very inspiring, contemplative, and beautiful. From the opening track comparisons to Loreena Mckennitt's music are almost inevitable--more quiet, but also very beautiful and mystic, not unlike Loreena's The Mask and the Mirror ...somehow to me Lydia's music is more American (like Kate Price).I find it's a great album to start the day."
Marion Kippers, Ectophiles Guide
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To know Terri Hendrix and her music is to know an artist driven by creating and the passion for motion itself. Terri is a multi-instrumentalist who writes, sings and runs her own label, Wilory Records. The Dallas Observer states "...[Terri] makes her way in the music industry like some Hill Country version of Ani DiFranco." Over the course of the last half-decade she has quickly risen to the top of the talent pool in her native Texas, a state that measures its musicians against such towering standards as Willie Nelson, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Townes Van Zandt.
On her latest release, Places in Between, Terri teams again with producer and steel guitarist Lloyd Maines (Robert Earl Keen, Joe Ely, Wilco, Richard Buckner) and her award-winning band, Paul Pearcy on drums and Glenn Fukunaga on bass. She has created with Places in Between an ambitious soul-searching album that stands in stark contrast to her three previous independent releases--1996's boho Two Dollar Shoes, 1998's eclectic Wilory Farm and 1999's scintillating Live. Places in Between offers a truly intimate portrait of Terri.
Whereas Mojo critic Johnny Black fondly summed up Wilory Farm as a collection of "songs that quickly etch themselves in the brain courtesy of smart hooks and well-observed slice-of-life lyrics" and an album to "play when the sun shines, " Places in Between is a companion for darker hours. The underlying theme and common thread that ties these songs together is the hope and promise to pull through hard times. "Hit the road until it hits you back," she sings on the album's opener Good Time Van "...and when it does cry until you laugh."
"It's about direction and finding one's place in the world in spite of the weeds in the garden of life-fear, doubt and uncertainty," says Terri. "When I graduated from comfortable noisy bars and coffeehouses to serious listening rooms, I realized I couldn't let weeds get in the way of my music."
Many of the songs on Places in Between reflect the obstacles Terri has confronted steering the ship of her career on her own against the tide of music industry conformity. The funky scat driven "Invisible Girl" blindsides the same frustrating struggle with a liberal dose of the humor and wit that Terri's audience has come to love and expect. Elsewhere on Places, Terri rocks ("Throw my Love Against the Wall"), rolls ("Good Time Van," "Places in Between"), comforts ("Joy or Sorrow," "Eagles") and bares her heart and soul ("It's a Given, " "Moon on the Water"). It all comes together in the glorious "Fair," an exuberant, crowd-pleasing anthem that turns what at first seems an admission of defeat ("Nothing is fair but the weather...") into a chorus of ultimate triumph. Or, as she succinctly puts it to a lover in the final verse, "I'm strong enough to leave you/ if you're not strong enough to stay."
"All I want to do is make and perform the best music that I can and create something special for others in the process. To me, my new release Places In Between is a commentary of the journey," says Terri.
Places In Between
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"Music has been the balance in my life. It's led me to love - - it's led me to God, salvation, freedom. I didn't know it. I didn't know anything else, It's been my gift."
Fair to say that music is Gwen Avery's life -- the gut wrenchin,' belly laughin,' music of classic blues. It's the music Avery heard as a child hanging around her grandmother's speakeasy in Verona, Pennsylvania, the town where she grew up. Like roadhouses and juke joints all over the South where so many of the early blues and jive artists came up, her grandmother's joint rocked with the music, the laughter and loud talk, the drum of feet keeping time.
Early years . . . the jukebox roots
In an atmosphere heavy with smoke, buzzed by whiskey, often overwrought with the heat of the moment, Avery watched, listened and absorbed the elements that were to inform her own musical style. It was a place where every itinerant musician passing through could find an audience for a night. Their sounds and styles were as varied as the records that played on the joint's jukebox. It was from that jukebox that Avery first heard the voices of Aretha, Jimmy Reed, and sucked up the sounds of The Drifters, Esther Phillips, Ella Fitzgerald, Gloria Lynn. And there was the gospel music that Gwen has said, "flowed in that house of ill repute with the whiskey and beer as frequently as there were church services."
Go West, young woman
That life and those sounds invaded Avery's soul and set her on a course of personal exploration and professional growth. Born of a musical family, she grew up singing first at home then at church and in local clubs. The pull of the West Coast music scene and the need to express herself musically was too great to keep Gwen in Verona for long. In the early Seventies she hooked up with Gregg Young and for three years sang in his hard rock band, Full Moon, before the Women's Music Movement drew her to San Francisco and a whole new set of musical influences. Gwen has toured, recorded, and played venues as diverse as outdoor music festivals and prisons. Through it all her music, style and stage presence continue to evolve.
The soul connection
As a songwriter she reaches down into the recesses of her heart and the collective experience of the generations who came before her. Without artifice or pretense she writes music that connects with her audience in a way that only music which comes from the soul can. Grammy nominated producer, Linda Tillery, performed with Gwen in the early days during the Varied Voices Tour, and has known Gwen for over 30 years. She has said simply, "To hear Avery's music is to be gifted with hearing the Real Thing."
Sugar Mama: the colossal voice
As a performer Gwen, dubbed Sugar Mama, is an irrepressible life force reaching out for another big handful of life. She grabs her audience by the lapels when she rattles the piano and raises her colossal voice. She means to connect with her listeners in ways that make them feel like they've just run into an old friend they haven't seen for years. Welcoming everyone into her realm with huge gestures of down home hospitality, she jokes, teases, shocks, charms, instructs, and preaches her way into their heads and hearts. The air vibrates with the expectation that something big, something provocative is about to happen.
Of her music Gwen Avery says it best
"I want people to brighten up and lighten up. I call on them to participate and to take that with them. My singing is for people who want to be uplifted . . . moved until their foot can't stand no more sittin,' till their butt can't no longer be flush with the chair…"
-- Gwen Avery
Sugar Mama
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Linda Tillery, Producer
*Written By Gwen Avery
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Some riddles are meant to be solved; others, to be savored,
with new wonders and insights to be discovered each time around. Riddles marks the recording debut of Jamie Solow, a Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter whose work combines the organic feel of traditional folk with the more contemporary textures of artists such as Sarah McLachlan and Tracy Chapman.
But Jamie’s is a distinctive new presence on the musical scene. Her voice is warmly expressive — sometimes ethereal and almost childlike, sometimes ballasted with the weight of emotion — and her songs tell stories based on real-life loves, losses, and other experiences. On the deceptively simple title track, she sings, “When a hand I’ve held is sliding away, I think love will go on,” but then, “I turn around and it’s gone.”
From the lilting folk-jazz of “Passionflower” and its ride through the countryside to the more urban longing of “Freeway,” the songs on Riddles take listeners on a journey of sound and vision. The achingly beautiful “Joe’s Song” was written as a tribute to a friend who died of AIDS, while in the reggae-inflected “Don’t Go Dirty,” she playfully but insistently asks why people keep their hearts walled in. Ultimately, in “The Softest Hour,” the CD’s striking final track, love and passion are carried to their inevitable conclusion: sonic nirvana.
Riddles
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All About Jengurl
Well, rather than a typical "bio", we thought we’d give you a Top Ten List of why you should listen to and care about Jengurl…. So, here’s goes nothing….
Penguinville’s Top Ten Reasons Jengurl Rules
10. Often compared to Ani DiFranco and Tori Amos, she sings better than your sister.
9. She looks better than your sister.
8. She isn’t your sister…not that we don’t like your sister….
7. She has an Elmo *and* a Furby… I doubt your sister has both….
6. Lilith Fair ’98. She played more dates than anyone (except Sarah and Paula), yet she’s about as "indie" as you can get. Your sister is a sell-out….
5. Lilith Fair ’98. Did we mention that one? …sorry, I was thinking about your sister.
4. Cowboy Junkies. She sang with them at a show… your sister sings in the shower.
3… as in MP3… as in free tunes… what was the last thing your sister gave you? www.mp3.com/jengurl
2. At 6’9", 285 lbs, she could destroy your sister… of course, she’d *have* to be that big to take down your sister…
El numero uno... Nikko, The Flying Monkey. He’s a friend of ours and he owes us a favor, so if you ever want to see your sister again….
...so ...what are you gonna do about it??
Stick A Fork In It
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