Teacher's Picks
Best New CD

Terri Hendrix
Celebrate the Difference
Wilory

Terri Hendrix may have roots in rock, country, pop, and blues, but here she proves that her talents translate perfectly to children's music.   From the rockin' "Nerves" to the bilingual "Lluvia de Estrellas," Hendrix celebrates the things that make kids unique.  

Fred's CD Pick of the Month

Terri Hendrix
Celebrate the Difference
Wilory

"CELEBRATE THE DIFFERENCE" Terri Hendrix, a singer/songwriter from San Marcos, Texas, has released her first CD for kids and it is outstanding. It features clever, childlike songs coupled with hip, adult-friendly musical arrangements. Musically, it is all over the map, gliding smoothly between Texas swing and folk rock. It even features a wonderful hybrid of sorts with a funky banjo set to a techno beat in "Get Your Goat On." Favorites with my students at school include " Celebrate the Difference ," which uses the animal kingdom as a great metaphor for looking at people and "First Place," which encourages kids to "Walk like you're in first place / Talk like you're in first place / Run like you'll win first place / on the track of the human race." You won't find this recording alongside the Disney soundtracks at your local retail outlets, so go to her Web site, listen to some samples of the songs and buy the CD directly from her. You will feel good about supporting independent music and you will add a great recording to your children's musical library. And if you are like me, you will be impressed enough with her adult music to buy one of those CDs, too. – Fred Koch

Americanaroots.com "Roots and Branches"
Contributed by Don Henry Ford Jr.   Terri Hendrix
Celebrate the Difference

Terri has written and recorded a group of songs with the help of Lloyd Maines that your children need to hear. Songs about love, tolerance, getting mad and then getting over it, about need and want, making the best out of bad situations, self esteem, even saving the environment. Not only do the songs have positive messages, they sound good. They incorporate sounds you're used to hearing in country and folk music, but sounds not usually heard on a children's record. In spite of this, they are songs a kid will like and sing along with. And take it from me; some of your crusty old adults can learn a thing or two listening to this cd as well. I did. Or maybe I unlearned a thing or two life as an adult taught me. Either way, Terri's love of life and what's good about this world is infectious."

Terri Hendrix
Celebrate the Difference
Wilory "Celebrate the Difference hits all the sweet spots for parents and kids. Outstanding songwriting, musicianship, production values and enough inventive playfulness to include a "hip-hop banjo" and a "hard rock mandolin."

#2 Celebrate the Difference
Terri Hendrix
THE TOP 10 BEST Kid's CD's OF 2006!
WXPN Kids Corner "Folk meets power chords. "Nerves" has become a Kids Corner classic, veering back and forth from "be nice" to "good thing you can't read my mind." Other highlights include "Get Your Goat On" and "Celebrate the Difference" which salutes the differences among all species."

Terri Hendrix
The Art of Removing Wallpaper
Wilory Records

Promotional material accompanying Terri Hendrix's new CD says she studied opera in college before dripping out to milk goats and pursue music. Now that would make a great song. Not that there's any shortage of appealing tunes on "The Art of Removing Wallpaper," the latest set from Texas singer-songwriter Hendrix. The title refers to peeling away the layers that hide true feelings, and Hendrix shares hers on a variety of subjects with a nudge, a wink and rat-a-tat lyrics. "I'm underpaid, undersexed, overworked, overtaxed, spammed, slammed, wham-bammed, and thank-you ma'am'd," she sings. The quality of Hendrix's writing is high from start to finish, but the most confessional tune is actually one she didn't write but embraces as her own-- LL Cool J's engaging "I Need Love." Hendrix is a folk singer first, but there's a tinge of country thanks to her Texas twang and stellar instrumental accompaniment provided by co-producer Lloyd Maines, father of Dixie Chick Natalie Maines. The versatile Hendrix also borrows from pop, bluegrass, gospel, and R&B, with one cut-- the clever "It's About Time"-- finding a grove reminiscent of the Pointer Sisters. All that's missing is opera.

By: Andrew Dansby
rollingstone.com

Terri Hendrix
The Ring
(Wilory Records)

The fourth studio recording by this Texas square peg is (almost) bookended by a pair of tunes that neatly set up the wide parameters for the breadth of her talent. The opening "Goodbye Charlie Brown," like the work of its title-character’s creator, skillfully finds adult observations in its childlike vessel. In between are bits of whimsical pop ("Consider Me") surreal folk ("I Found the Lions") and bundles more. The wood-and-wireness of Hendrix’s songcraft almost demands the folk tag, but her smooth and nimble phrasing suggest something jazzier (particularly on the likes of "From Another Planet"), though that influence still creeps in even when she isn’t scatting with fleet dexterity. Those bells and whistles aside, it’s the album’s other bookend, the title track, that best reps Hendrix. A perfectly hatched story song pulled from the pages of her family history, "The Ring" is told with the simplicity and detail of the best songsmiths—right down to the hard perfection of its title object, which is both a limitless metaphor and a detail as small and tangible as the metal from which is composed. – Andrew Dansby

July/August 2002
By: Clay Steakley

Terri Hendrix
The Ring
Produced by Lloyd Maines & Terri Hendrix

Terri Hendrix plays innovative yet rootsy Texas music with a breezy, joyful ease. On her latest release The Ring, the San Antonio native’s trademark Rickie Lee Jones-meets-Emmylou Harris voice and her catch, literate lyrics are at their best. From the bright harmonica adornment of the opening tune "Goodbye Charlie Brown" through the driving "I Found the Lions" to the subdued, "Prayer for My Friends" with its warm harmonies, The Ring is a thoroughly captivating record.

Texas Platters
Phases & Stages
June 7, 2002

By: Christopher Hess

Three Stars

TERRI HENDRIX The Ring (Wilory). Perhaps the hardest-working singer-songwriter in Central Texas, Terri Hendrix is constantly playing locally or heading out on tour or putting out a new album. It’s only been since 1996 that she put out her debut, Two Dollar Shoes, and now the San Marcos dynamo is releasing her fourth full studio effort (there’s also two live discs). As expected, The Ring will not disappoint the legions of loyals she’s already earned—no doubt it will gain her a slew more. It’s all over the place in that enchanting way her albums always are, grinding out the sexier, bluesier side of country music at one turn ("I Found the Lions"), and floating on tear-spilling sentimental breezes at the next (The Ring"). Pop tunes gorgeous and wordy, plenty of folk sounds, and a scattershop of jazz, country, and all other things Texas make their way into these 11 tunes. At this point in her career, Hendrix’s overt eclecticism is no longer a sign of searching, but a hallmark of her own well-developed style. Her band, headed by sage of all things stringed Lloyd Maines, is solid as ever, and tracks like "I Found the Lions" and "Long Time Coming" show the singer reaching new plateaus of comfort and expertise.

"No Depression" #41 – September-October 2002

Terri Hendrix
The Ring
Wilory

The title song from Terri Hendrix’s latest album, ’The Ring,‘ is inspired by a gift her father once gave to her mother. When Terri was a child, whenever an argument flared up between her parents, her father would quietly retire to his workshop and labor into the night. No one knew what he was working on until years later, when he presented his wife with a ring fashioned out of a 1955 half-dollar. Hendrix’s father had turned his temper into a symbol of love.
Hendrix confronts the consequences of losing her own temper in "Spinning Off" and, like her father, makes a thing of beauty out of personal turmoil. "Goodbye Charlie Brown" mourns the passing of childhood with an engaging chorus surrounded by a simple yet catchy harmonica riff, while "Night Wolves" sets a mysteriously funky groove to the buzzing thoughts and worries that fill the head on sleepless nights.
With production assistance from Lloyd Maines, Hendrix wraps her intimate observations in a folk-pop sound dominated by bright acoustic guitars and mandolins. She occasionally ventures into other musical territory, such as the bass-heavy bop that winds through "I Found the Lions" and the jazzy rap of "From Another Planet." No matter what style she tackles, however, Hendrix’s clear, sparkling voice, relaxed manner and keen eye for detail make ‘The Ring’ a rewarding musical gift. – STEVE ROSTKOSKI

Terri Hendrix
‘The Ring’
Three Stars

AMG EXPERT REVIEW: While the dusty Texas landscape hardly seems like fertile soil, it nonetheless produces more singer/songwriters per acre than any state besides Massachusetts. The difficulty is to stand out in the crowd. Terri Hendrix makes her latest effort to stand out on The Ring, a 40-minute foray into love, relationships, and intergalactic space travel. A bouncy acoustic arrangement gets things off to a good start on "Goodbye Charlie Brown," a song that expresses hope in the face of the millennium and all the fears that came with it. This tune, along with "Spinning Off" and "Truth Is Strange," features Hendrix’s attractive and confident vocals against a rich musical backdrop. While these songs work well, the material also calls to mind a number of other singer/songwriters. On a track like "From Another Planet," however, with a barrage of words and a jazzy structure, and "Nightwolves," with its half-sung, half-spoken lyric, she offers something completely different. In fact, on "From Another Planet" Hendrix comes into her own, presenting an exciting, in-your-face vocal with a fun lyric. Even on the somewhat-predictable country romp "I Found the Lions," Hendrix uses a word rap in the middle of song to transform the piece into something original. Even when she doesn’t throw in a little something extra, good taste dominates the arrangements and production, creating a good-sounding album. With its tuneful songs and distinctive elements, The Ring should make Hendrix conspicuous among her Texas peers.
– Ronnie D. Lankford, Jr.

Terri Hendrix

There's barely anything country about Terri Hendrix’s music, but she’s certainly an Americana artist. Her voice, her songs and her effervescent personality are the essence of joyful folk music. There’s a salt-of-the-earth spark that resonates in her performances, whether on CD or onstage. The San Antonio native, who currently lives in San Marcos, is part of the all-encompassing Texas music movement. And, like many of her contemporaries, she’s been doing it herself since 1996, when she formed her own label, Wilory Records, and released her debut effort, Two Dollar Shoes. Ms. Hendrix’s new album, The ring, is another one of her intriguing, hard-to-categorize gems full of unconventional tunes such as "Goodbye Charlie Brown" and "From Another Planel."
-Mario Tarradell

‘The Ring’ by Terri Hendrix – A Review

There aren’t many singers who’ve paid tribute to the late creator of the "Peanuts" comic strip, but Texas-born singer-songwriter Terri Hendrix has in her new CD. Critic David Okamoto says ‘The Ring’ shows Hendrix at a new stage of artistic development.

‘The Ring’
Terri Hendrix
Produced by Lloyd Maines & Terri Hendrix
Wilory Records
By David Okamoto

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 burst 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."
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.
The good songs are the ones you can always turn to for comfort – but the great songs are the ones that unveil deeper meaning 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.

David Okamoto is a senior producer of entertainment at Yahoo Broadcast and a contributing editor to ICE magazine. © Copyright 2002, Public Arts ™. All rights reserved.

The Guardian (London), December 8, 2000

Twang 'em high: Gems in the Nashville Swamp
Country CD Round Up
By Adam Sweeting

Thanks to the likes of Reba McEntire, George Strait and the color-coordinated nincompoop Garth Brooks, country music reached an unprecedented peak of popularity in the early 1990s (in the US, at any rate). However, times have changed, and now sales are falling. "Everyone in this town is being challenged to start taking chances and stop sucking up to radio and the status quo," warned a recent editorial in the Nashville trade paper, Music Row. "Give the fans something that engages them. Our jobs depend on it."

The Nashville companies have achieved their recent successes more by fluke than by skilful talent spotting. This year has seen more than its fair share of typical airbrushed Nashville piffle, with its production-line crooners and vacuum-molded clones of Shania Twain. I could mention singing supermodel Terri Clark and her album Fearless (Mercury, **), on which, despite Terri's desperate attempts to achieve the perfect rockin' cowgirl pout from inside her black leather suit, the music is a dispiriting mixture of "sensitive" girlie ballads and sleek country cliches. There also seems to be little hope for Reba McEntire, who has lapsed into characterless middle-of-the-road slop in her recent album I'll Be (MCA, *), a disc so determined to blend in with the soft furnishings that it should be dragged outside and shot for sheer spinelessness.

By contrast, Alan Jackson couldn't be anything but country, and his album When Somebody Loves You (MCA, **) is awash with flag-waving hymns to the glories of the American south. But although he claims "It's all right to be a redneck," you'd imagine his white Stetson, curly blond hair and matching moustache could land him in trouble in some of the rougher honky-tonks. As for Billy Ray Cyrus, perpetrator of the wretched Southern Rain (Epic/Monument, *), his bellowing stadium-country belongs in a mausoleum.

I thought of being nice about Sara Evans's Born to Fly (Grapevine/BMG, **), but another listen to its blow-dried Nashville orthodoxy, and a glance at the sleeve depicting the artiste in a variety of absurd stylist's postures, made me think again.

Perhaps we can make an exception for George Strait, who is about as pretentious as a plate of pork and beans, and his album George Strait (MCA, ***). With the wind in the right direction, you can almost kid yourself you're listening to the great George Jones.

But there's no shortage of excellent songwriters making albums that country buffs would love if they ever got to hear them. Interestingly, many of them are coming out of Texas, like Terri Hendrix, whose Places in Between (Continental Song City, *****) could end up being my favorite album of the year if it isn't careful. Ms Hendrix writes infectious tunes and, with an expert band, performs them in a spread of styles from cow-town funkiness with horns to traditional Irish balladry. Then she equips them with crafty, deadpan lyrics, like "My Own Place," or the title track. Especially brilliant is "Invisible Girl," in which the narrator finds herself a spectator in her own life.

Hendrix sometimes writes with her producer, Lloyd Maines, and he crops up again as the guiding hand behind the Hot Club of Cowtown. As a quick spin of their album Dev'lish Mary (Hightone Records, ****) reveals, the Hot Club have seized upon aspects of Django Reinhardt but have bolted on some distinctive features from Texas, such as western swing, jump blues and some rude blasts of Tex-Mex. This is pretty good going considering there are only three of them, with Elana Fremerman setting a ferocious pace on fiddle and vocals.

Austin's own Darden Smith tarnishes the Texan cause slightly by sounding too fey on Extra Extra (Haven Records, **); but stampeding in from way out west comes Dale Watson, whose Christmas Time in Texas (Continental Song City, ****) could prove to be the one Christmas album it's possible to listen to all year round. Dale, who has serious form as a crooner, leaps nimbly from the bogus Elvis-isms of Christmas in Vegas, to the laidback lope of Christmas in Texas, to the Bing Crosby-ish smooch-fest of The Christmas Song. But he can also summon the ghost of a legend like Merle Haggard, on the opening cut, Honky Tonk Christmas.

If it isn't Texas it's the Antipodes. One of the year's biggest surprises was Kasey Chambers's storming debut The Captain (Virgin, ****), on which the gal from Nullarbor Plain showed that country is a state of mind, not a geographical location. The only thing wrong with songs like "Southern Kind of Life" or "These Pines" was that they were so dyed-in-the-wool country that they scared cloth-eared commercial country radio to death.

For a trip back to country's origins in bluegrass and folk, you could do far worse than sample Real Time (Howdy Skies Records, ****), in which multi-instrumentalists Tim O'Brien and Darrell Scott pluck and twang their way through a selection of their own tunes, traditional pieces and a couple of powerful songs by Hank Williams. In Hank's "Weary Blues from Waiting," the duo sound as woeful and windswept as the legendary Louvin Brothers. By contrast, they break out the dueling banjos for "Helen of Troy, Pennsylvania," and sound positively jovial on "Long Time Gone."

For a caustic survey of the state of commercial country music, look no further than Dallas Wayne's song "If That's Country," from his album Thinkin' Big (HMG, ***). In his menacing baritone, Wayne warns the music-biz fat cats that "you're turnin' our music into some kinda strange elevator noise" and adds that "you can make a star of a teenage girl, but one million dollars won't make her Merle." He takes a swipe at Garth Brooks, lays into another unnamed singer who "sounds like bad Phil Collins with a hip facelift," and signs off with "you can kiss my Ozark ass if that's country." Go git 'em, Dallas!

Anyone who saw Emmylou Harris on her recent UK tour will have caught a glimpse of Patty Griffin, who wrote "One Big Love" (included on Emmylou's Red Dirt Girl album). Griffin's own version is included on Flaming Red (A&M, ***), her 1998 album just released here in tandem with her debut, Living with Ghosts (A&M, ****).

The contrast between the two is bizarre. Flaming Red kicks off with the ferocious thrash-punk blast of its title song. But Living with Ghosts, a collection of Griffin's demos from 1996, found her testing the limits of her formidable voice with just an acoustic guitar for company. If she sounds uncannily like Alanis Morissette on "Every Little Bit," she can also evoke the spirits of Rickie Lee Jones, Bonnie Raitt and even Bruce Springsteen. Her songs, like "Let Him Fly" or "Poor Man's House," are frighteningly good.

Terri Hendrix
Places In Between

VISUALIZE SHERYL CROW in overalls, or maybe Ani Di-Franco with a down-home Texas perspective: That's Terri Hendrix, the singer-songwriter-entrepreneur-czarina, in a nutshell. Born and raised in San Antonio and now living in San Marcos, Hendrix is a walking advertisement for sunny confidence and boundless enthusiasm, qualities that she's been polishing along with her bright, sassy vocals and accomplished guitar playing over the course of three albums. Places in Between demonstrates how she's taken those talents one step further, exuding an innate sense of street smarts and a keen eye for detail on all fifteen tracks, particularly "It's a Given" and "Places in Between" - tunes that are simultaneously intimate and universal, telling stories that hold a listener even when the melody might not. Besides, how can you not love a singer who pines for a flush toilet and central air in her dream home, as she does on "My Own Place"? To pull that off suggests quite a career in the making. Keep your eyes and ears open as she whizzes past.

JOE NICK PATOSKI
TEXAS MONTHLY
May 2000
Essential listening
Terri Hendrix, Wilory Farm

Wilory Farm
Continental Sound City
Third album from scarifying breezy Texan cowgirl songwriter.

HENDRIX wears denim overalls and looks like she’s never had a worry in her rosy-cheeked life. She’s worked on farms, waited tables, is good at sport and uses the term ‘big ‘ole’ to indicate something large. Hell, she’s way too wholesome to have made an album as invigorating as this, but the evidence is plain to hear. Her voice is compounded of roughly equal parts Nanci and Emmylou, but with a boho spark of Rickie Lee in there, too, and her songs quickly etch themselves in the brain, courtesy of smart hooks and well-observed slice-of-life lyrics. Her band handles swing and Tex-Mex as easily as it does country-rock, there’s some sparkling mandolin and fiddle interplay and, yes, that really is a sitar among those twangy guitars on Gravity. You need something to play when the sun shines? Look no further. Johnny Black.

Copyright © 1996 - 2004 Terri Hendrix