Music has the power to
change lives. Each of us has experienced
what music can do at some point in our lives.
Remember those tough preteen/teenage years? Life was challenging. Where and how do I fit
in? You retreated to your room to listen
to music and brood when suddenly, THAT song came on. At last, someone who understands what you are
going through. This artist really gets
it.
Music’s influence
continued as we got older and wiser. With your earbuds in, listening to your
playlist on your favorite streaming service, you don’t care your boss is a jerk
or that the third train in a row has raced past your El platform traveling
express.
Nashville-based music
critic, academic, and artist development consultant Holly Gleason remembers
experiencing the transformative power of music as a student at a Catholic high
school in suburban Cleveland. As she
entered a local record store to purchase some new music to help fuel her
growing interest in country music. As
Gleason entered the store she looked up to find herself face-to-face with a
life-sized cutout of country star crossover rock queen, Tanya Tucker, promoting
her new album TNT. There Tucker stood at the end of the aisle, a
fiery red-head in a skin-clutching red spandex outfit, dropped low in the back,
with her back to the camera and head tossed high in a half challenge, half come
on. Staring at the cut out in her college prep school uniform, Gleason felt the challenge… “Come on, take a chance, give
it a listen.” Feeling Tucker’s eyes
follow her around the store, Gleason bought the album. (Hey, it was discounted
to $5.99) As she listened to the swagger
of a buzzing electric guitar and the pumping of the drums, Tucker opened
Gleason’s eyes and ears to a whole new world.
After an injury sidelined
Gleason’s dreams of a professional golf career, she continued her pursuit of
music. She began covering country music
while attending the University of Miami.
Gleason went on to have her work appear in Rolling Stone, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, HITS, Musician,
CREEM, No Depression, and Paste. She
is the Editor and a contributor to Woman
Walk the Line: How the Women in Country Music Changed Our Lives. Gleason collected essays from 27 writers
discussing how the women of country music influenced their lives. Here are deeply personal essays from
award-winning writers on femme fatales, feminists, groundbreakers, and truth
tellers. Holly George Warren captures
the spark of the rockabilly sensation Wanda Jackson; rocker Grace Potter embraces
Linda Ronstadt’s unabashed visual and musical influence, and a
seventeen-year-old Taylor Swift considers the golden glimmer of another
precocious superstar, Brenda Lee.
Part history, part
confessional, and part celebration of country, Americana, and bluegrass, and
the women who make them, Women Walk the
Line is a very personal collection of essays from some of America’s most
intriguing women writers. It speaks to
the ways in which artists mark our lives at different ages and in various
states of grace and imperfection – and ultimately how music transforms not just
the person making it, but also the listener.
Woman Walk the Line will take
the reader back to their own music transformation. It is definitely worth the read.
 |
| Woman Walk the Line Editor Holly Gleason Photograph by Allison Ann |
Woman Walk the Line is scheduled for release in September by the University of Texas Press.
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Thanks again for your support!
-Louis Vasseur
Thanks again for your support!
-Louis Vasseur
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