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Cover
from Betty's Room
the CD from
Linda McLean
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At
the risk of using the term "concept album", though it's
not backed by the Montreal Symphony, there is a common thread running
through the songs on Betty's Room.
This recording was a culmination of a process of self-growth and
creativity and the fulfillment of a lifelong ambition. My older
siblings introduced me to Dylan, the Doors, the Stones, the Beatles
of course. A guitar "horrible" used to lean against a
corner in my house, and I would play that, imitating my sister imitating
Joan Baez.The first album I ever bought was The Partridge Family,
but somehow, luckily, Melanie's Candles in the Rain LP had been
put into the jacket.
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Introducing to Europe, Canada's hottest export
following Alanis Morrisette, Celine Dione & Avril Laverne
Linda McLean
(as heard on Radio 2's Terry Wogan, Bob Harris
(Record of the week))
My
real musical training started at age too little to remember, watching
musicals on TV. I spent a lot of free time listening to my parents
records, the soundtracks to South Pacific and Oliver Twist were
favourites. As I grew up, I discovered new artists at the local
Sam the Record Man shop, or at parties in someone's basement where
music defined us more than what we wore. I had to keep my folk and
movie musical sides somewhat private there.
When
I was a kid I studied ballet, and when I was a teenager I joined
a local drama group which led me into the theatre world for a long
time. While I was a professional actor and acting teacher, I studied
music, music theory, composition, piano, voice. (My first vocal
teacher told me I sounded like Mary Martin.) Somehow in all of that
I managed to get degrees in literature and drama and eventually
a Masters Degree in arts education.
Betty's
Room is a chronicle of sorts, personal eclipses captured in music.
I'm standing on this ground, and I want to tell others how I came
here. I want to tell about love, about being human, and a woman,
and a mother, struggling and fucking up, striving and flying. I
want to point to true love, tulip love, the love the earth feels
for her earthlings, the love the parent knows for the child, the
love of wonderment, of being amazed by life. And be here, in all
this music that is everywhere, the chatter of the mysteries, essential,
true, somewhere in the middle listening for that amazing song, somewhere
in the invisible, the silent, the irrevocable.
Linda
McLean 2004 UK Tour Dates
APR 14 LONDON THE SPITZ Supporting Stephen Fearing
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