By David Okamoto, KERA 90.1 commentator
Dallas, TX – [Track 3: "I Found the Lions"]
With her new album titled The Ring, San Marcos singer-songwriter Terri Hendrix has come full circle.
Four years ago, she was a soulful, sunny-voiced graduate of San Antonio's Riverwalk bar scene, penning life-affirming narratives and blending the influences of such folk-pop heroines as Michelle Shocked, Nanci Griffith and Rickie Lee Jones. Then on her introspective 2000 album, Places In Between, she explored lives in transition by populating her songs with wobbly, but strong-willed narrators who were determined to move on even though they didn't always know where they were going.
On The Ring, her fourth studio album, Hendrix doesn't hide behind characters, nor does she hide her emotions. Tough-skinned songs like "Spinning Off," "I Found the Lions" and "Truth Is Strange" smack of renewed confidence. At age 34, she is wiser but not jaded, centered but not giddy, and she has mastered the ability to tap into universal truths by confronting her most intimate fears and feelings. As a result, The Ring crackles with a heart-racing intensity that bursts through the dobro- and mandolin-spiked band arrangements like a deep-sea diver who has finally reached the surface. Always a charming folk-pop vocalist, Hendrix digs deeper and discovers not only her inner rapper and blues mama on the Dire Straits-influenced "I Found the Lions," but also a scatting be-bopper on the dazzling "From Another Planet."
[Track 5: "From Another Planet"]
Despite the new nuances in her voice, Hendrix's simplest images make the strongest impact, from the tapping sounds coming from her father's workshop in the title track, to her touching tribute to the late Charles Schultz in "Goodbye Charlie Brown." Hendrix wrote the latter song to ponder whether the magic of childhood dreams - colorfully symbolized for decades by the round-headed kid's relentless quest to kick that football - needed Schultz's pen to stay alive. But now, after 9/11, "Goodbye Charlie Brown" sparks a different, unintended interpretation, resonating as an anthem of hope for any parent who still can't point out a soaring airplane to their child without feeling a chill. The song's opening verse, addressing the beginning of a new era, coincidentally alludes to the New York skyline.
[Track 1: "Goodbye Charlie Brown"]
The good songs are the ones you can always turn to for comfort - but the great songs are the ones that unveil deeper meanings as time goes by and help you make sense of a world in which things don t always make sense. With The Ring, Terri Hendrix set out to make an album, but she has crafted a keepsake.
[Track 1: "Goodbye Charlie Brown"]
David Okamoto is a senior producer of entertainment at Yahoo Broadcast and a contributing editor to ICE magazine.