{"id":2264,"date":"2013-10-19T19:40:30","date_gmt":"2013-10-19T19:40:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/216.71.127.204\/wordpress\/?p=2264"},"modified":"2015-10-20T19:40:46","modified_gmt":"2015-10-20T19:40:46","slug":"wendy-colonna-nectar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/houstonmusicreview.com\/wordpress\/2013\/10\/19\/wendy-colonna-nectar\/","title":{"rendered":"Wendy Colonna – Nectar"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n\n
Written by James Killen <\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Oct 19, 2013 at 02:00 AM<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\"Image\"Wendy Colonna is a young singer\/songwriter and Lake Charles, Louisiana native that chose to import her smoky blues\/jazz\/folk vocal style to Austin and has been very successful in doing so. She\u2019s not only a talented song writer and a gifted vocalist, but she is one of the sweetest and most genuine people that I\u2019ve met.<\/p>\n

She just released a new disc called \u201cNectar\u201d, in collaboration with Mark Addison who produced and played on the disc as well as either writing or co-writing with Wendy almost half the songs. I could do no better than to copy use her words from her website to describe the collaboration:<\/p>\n

\u201cMark Addison and I had a running joke that when I was ready, we would make my \u201cdark\u201d record together.\u00a0 I had a few songs waiting in the wings that were more melancholy than the upbeat stuff on Right Where I Belong and We Are One and they needed a place. . . So I blocked off entire days to write throughout the month of January and brought them to him in batches. We sorted through them, found ones we loved, discarded others, he shared pieces of songs he was working on and he helped me with bridges and edits on some of my pieces. I had always been sort-of afraid to co-write songs, but with Mark it was easy and fun.\u00a0 We wanted to make sure they were all songs I could tour solo or with a full band when we recorded them and to make sure every instrument on board supported the song.\u201d<\/p>\n

The disc starts off with one of the soulful tunes of innocent sin that seems to flow so easily from Wendy\u2019s pen called \u201cDirty Things\u201d. She follows that with a beautiful country crooning, \u201cBring Me Water\u201d. \u201cShelter and Be Kind\u201d slides a jazzy rhythm right out of the Louisiana back country with nice wa-wa guitar and piano solos in series.<\/p>\n

“The Water\u2019s Fine\u201d is a pop vocal with ukulele tune that seems to come from \u201csomeplace over the rainbow\u201d accompanied by a very cool pedal steel solo. There is a gentle, charming reggae rhythm carrying Mark Addison\u2019s dream song, \u201cSleeping\u201d with a heart-felt acoustic guitar solo and Wendy\u2019s steady voice playing through. Guy Forsyth contributed a bit of his saw playing along with\u00a0 Addison\u2019s banjo to the slow jazz, \u201cDance with the Moon\u201d, that could have come straight from a 1920\u2019s speak easy.<\/p>\n

Mark Addison\u2019s other solo composition, \u201cGirl without a Name\u201d, seems to have been written with Wendy\u2019s voice in mind and features Bukka Allen\u2019s accordion work and an electric guitar solo to carry the song beyond the horizon. \u201cWhen Love Comes my Way\u201d is a night club jazz number with a swirling keyboards solo, sure to draw couples to the dance floor. \u201cTexas Summer Love\u201d is that special combination of country and blues that seems to happen in Texas so often featuring harmonica and pedal steel parts and lines like \u201csometimes you just grow bitter reaching higher for something sweet. \u201c<\/p>\n

Wendy stands stoically independent on the rocking \u201cI\u2019ve Never Been\u201d, a song that begs to be heard acoustic and electric, back to back, for an anticipated contrast. Ms. Colonna ends the disc with an ethereal \u201cMother Forgive Us\u201d, a song that deals with that theme of innocent (or maybe not so innocent) sin featuring a sad European string and tympani background.<\/p>\n

\u201cNectar\u201d is a beautiful composition and I look forward to seeing Wendy take these songs in all directions. I see the potential for captivating audiences in the solo performance as well as with a full band. It\u2019s a collection of songs that has several lives to live and certainly worth a quiet evening of listening.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Written by James Killen Oct 19, 2013 at 02:00 AM Wendy Colonna is a young singer\/songwriter and Lake Charles, Louisiana native that chose to import her smoky blues\/jazz\/folk vocal style to Austin and has been very successful in doing so. She\u2019s not only a talented song writer and a gifted vocalist, but she is one… <\/p>\n

Read More<\/i><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cdreviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/houstonmusicreview.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/houstonmusicreview.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/houstonmusicreview.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/houstonmusicreview.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/houstonmusicreview.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2264"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/houstonmusicreview.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2264\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2265,"href":"https:\/\/houstonmusicreview.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2264\/revisions\/2265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/houstonmusicreview.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/houstonmusicreview.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/houstonmusicreview.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}