Brenda Linton Secret CD

As the only daughter of Southern parents reared in poverty, BRENDA LINTON became aware at a young age of her mother’s dreams for her – that she would have red hair and would sing and dance like Shirley Temple. Today, although the petite redhead has some great moves on the dance floor, she is best known for a voice so pure and melodic that fans have dubbed her the “CAROLINA NIGHTINGALE.” Born in Washington, North Carolina, Linton says she was raised by “a passel of kind-hearted women, including my mother, grandmother, maternal aunts, and housekeepers who treated me as their own.” Her mother overcame childhood polio to train as a registered nurse and began working at the county hospital when Linton was still an infant. Raised in a Baptist orphanage, her father was a major source of strength and understanding in later life. But in her early years, his work as a master plasterer frequently took him away from home, even to the island of Bermuda. “Part of my dad’s compensation was a month in paradise for my mom and me,” says Linton of the experience, “and I guess my love of the road began there.”The singer/songwriter is taking to the road again to promote her first long-player and indie debut, THE SECRET. The album’s 12 songs reflect a range of genres from her earliest influences of roots and classical music to her coming-of-age with folk and protest songs to more recent affairs with jazz and gospel. Co-produced and mixed by JOHN PLYMALE (SQUIRREL NUT ZIPPERS, CLAIRE HOLLY, CAITLIN CARY), THE SECRET is a showcase of Linton’s talents as a guitarist, pianist, writer, arranger, and producer. Using a combination of live recording and overdubbing, Linton and Plymale supported her emotive singing with lush background vocals and a rich palette of lead instruments, including mandolin, penny whistle, harmonica, fiddle, electric and slide guitar, dobro, and saxophone.The six original tracks on THE SECRET demonstrate Linton’s skill at creating provocative music that touches both heart and mind. BARGAIN LOVE and THE GOOD LIFE provide opposite views of the same phenomenon – how living a borrowed life only alienates us from ourselves and others. The jazzy QUIET LOVE touts the wisdom of finding our own answers rather than relying on popular culture. WARRIORS and STILL IN THIS WORLD are perhaps the most personal songs on the album and movingly express the depth of Linton’s sorrow at losing her mother to breast cancer in 2004 as well as the belief that there is still much to recommend the world - a belief made more poignant by her own triumph over the disease a year earlier. The tune for WARRIORS was written by THOMAS WALSH, a gifted composer and multi-instrumentalist living outside Dublin. “I happened upon his lovely melody, Innisheer, and knew it would be the perfect complement for my lyrics,” says Linton. “When I called him to get permission to use the tune, he was at home with the flu; but he was very gracious and we found we had a lot in common. Music often allows perfect strangers to quickly get down to the important stuff.”Although Linton remembers hearing lots of music during her early childhood, her formal education began at the age of eight when her parents bought her a Wurlitzer spinet and a set of classical piano books. By adolescence, Linton had developed a list of favorite singers (PERRY COMO, PAUL McCARTNEY, JOAN BAEZ, and JONI MITCHELL) whose influence would later emerge in her unique vocal style. In high school, she taught herself to play guitar and formed a duo with a girlfriend that expanded into a folk trio called the NEW HORIZON SINGER. By her mid-teens, Linton was performing regularly in college coffee houses. After graduation, she joined an established folk-rock group called WARM. Linton’s voice as well as the innovative harmonies and original songs provided by the other three members set the band apart from most local acts in eastern North Carolina. For two years, she was able to e