CD Reviews
Terri Hendrix
The Spiritual Kind


Terri Hendrix is good natured and whimsical but hardly toothless; there’s no question she finds nothing at all funny about peace, love and understanding. Light, folky/bluesy, this disc, produced by Lloyd Maines (daddy of Dixie Chick Natalie), invokes St. Christopher, Buddha, the Dalai Lama (“The Spiritual Kind”) and Mother Nature (“Acre of Land”). Refreshingly, as such names—Buffalo Bill, Amelia Earhart, Joe Louis—and tales of real-life legends of another generation fade from collective national consciousness, she also calls forth the ghost of Jim Thorpe (“Jim Thorpe’s Blues”). She rails against racism, excess injustice and just plain meanness, on a foundation of clean, unhurried music graced by Maines’ work on various stringed, mostly acoustic, instruments. Too smart to be cynical, too sharp to be naïve, Hendrix nonetheless believes the human mess can be fixed. Right or wrong, she makes a delightfully listenable case.
By Rick Allen