THE LINER NOTES

 

Buoyed by the critical acclaim for 1992’s ‘Cowboy’s Sweetheart’, this first volume in a set of two reunites Lynn with the writer and mentor that guided her career in its earliest days, and the woman who remained the most powerful and lasting influence in her life; her mother, celebrated songwriter and country artist, Liz Anderson. But where ‘Cowboy’s Sweetheart’ explored the romance of The West through the lenses of a broad spectrum of writers, ‘Cowgirl’ is a twelve-song book composed entirely of chapters written by the elder Anderson, and each is a lasting testament to both her talent and her intimate knowledge of not only her daughter’s gifted voice, but her roots as a cowgirl.

 

Like the great female western singers of our memory, Lynn’s performances here are virtually effortless; her voice like fine, worn leather, every line phrased with an unhurried grace, every verse and chorus perfectly balanced with co-producer Bill Vorn Dick’s lean, traditional production; a balance that earned this 33rd release from Lynn the Academy of Western Artists’ Album of The Year in 2007.

 

Exploring themes of love and redemption, legends and loneliness; these are songs that chronicle the resilience, strength, and heart of the Western woman; a resilience and strength never more powerfully portrayed than in the collection’s most compelling track, “Full Moon In Baghdad”; a cowgirl’s letter from the desert of Arizona to her man—across the world in the desert of Iraq. They are songs that reflect the solitude and great expanse of The West, mirrored in the emptiness of a woman’s arms, and the hollow of a pining heart. For the woman we hear in “If I Had My Boots”, however, her heart isn’t pining for a man…a lover. In this collection’s most personal, and perhaps, biographical track, this woman’s heart yearns to find its way back from a life of riches and fame that is hers, to the life and true love she left behind. A simpler life that she’d traded. A life that was her very heart and soul….

 

The life of a cowgirl.

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J Buck Ford