Singer Finds Her Voice on "Magazine Street"

By Daniel Gewertz, Boston Herald, 6/22/2001

Felicia Brady's debut album, "Magazine Street," sounds too sophisticated, too melodically inventive, too far along its individual path to be the work of a 20-something beginner.

It isn't.

In 1986, Brady already had earned a college degree in classical piano from Texas Tech University in Lubbock. One year later, Brady moved north to attend Boston University as a graduate piano student. But by the time she graduated, Brady "had begun hating" the classical pianist track.

"I stayed in Boston because I wanted to do songwriting," she said. "I'd been doing it on the side, my parallel life." Country music was her entry into Boston's music scene, both with the band Sam Hill and her own outfit, Tulia Mirage. (Tulia is a town south of her home in the Texas Panhandle.)

"I was never submersed in country music, but it was everywhere growing up," said Brady, who was born in New Mexico but moved with her parents to Oklahoma, Colorado and west Texas.

Brady now lives on Magazine Street in Cambridge. At 37, there are few traces of a Texan accent in her speech, and though she counts Lucinda Williams as an inspiration, country is only an infrequent visitor on her album. Most of "Magazine Street" is a cool, intimate, rhythmically playful breed of largely acoustic, alternative pop. Brady's lyrics, at their strongest, capture casual bursts of everyday life, street-corner characters and personal ruminations. At times, as in the Joni Mitchellesque "Exactly," she creates a delicate, vulnerable picture of a single woman's urban life. "Put on My Face" is a brash, comical change of pace.

At their weakest, the lyrics' flow uses too much stream-of- consciousness. The best of "Magazine Street" is as fresh, airy and mellifluous a sound as has debuted on local folk radio this year. Brady not only produced the album, but also plays piano, accordion, guitar and Hammond B3 organ.

She wasn't always so confident-sounding. Even after her band experience, Brady was terrified at the idea of solo performance: "When I had my first gig as a soloist, at the Tam, I asked for a slot where no one would be there! I got Monday, 11:45 p.m. I was not a good guitarist. I was so scared I couldn't even look at people."

Slowly, she moved up her time slot, first to 10, then to 9:30. "I was allowed to blossom as a soloist at the Tam; I'm so grateful," said Brady, who has graduated all the way to an 8 p.m. spot at Club Passim on Thursday.

It's a split bill with Sandi Hammond, best known from the "Respond" CD. Hammond, whose gorgeous voice is nearly operatic, is another melodic, keyboard-based folk-club singer who exists far from what's normally thought of as folk.

© Copyright Boston Herald Library June 22, 2001.