On May 15, 2007, the Texas House of Representatives honored the music of Texas-born singer-songwriter Glenna Bell with a House Resolution, which was read in a ceremony at the Capitol on the Floor of the House in Austin. House Speaker Tom Craddick was in attendance, and personally congratulated Miss Bell for her musical contributions to the Lone Star State. A true Daughter of Texas, Glenna Bell’s ancestors have been traced to the early days of the Republic and Texas’ battle for independence. She grew up in the east Texas lumber towns of Pineland and Lumberton, where she rode in rodeos and lived the real country life before heading to college at Texas A&M University, then on to Venice, California to become a theater critic and eventually a playwright, who studied with the legendary Edward Albee at the University of Houston’s exclusive Creative Writing Program.
Glenna’s new album, Perfectly Legal: Songs of Sex, Love and Murder, unfolds as a musical and theatrical journey through a series of stripped-down songs that document the seldom-told stories of a real woman living a real life at the turn of the 21st century. The songs were recorded in four “acts” at studios on the East Coast, Austin and Houston. Act I is set “out at the ranch” in Stafford, Texas, where the first three tracks were produced and recorded with minimal backing on simple home-recording equipment by Texas singer-songwriter, Jimmy Pizzitola, at his enchanting 1940’s ranch house/studio amidst the ghosts of the by-gone souls who came to hear the music of the roving Texas bands that graced its stage back in those long-ago days.
With Act II, we head west to another Texas location, The Congress House Studio out on South Congress Avenue in Austin. Tracks 4-6 were recorded during SXSW 2010 by Andre Moran and produced by Texas singer-songwriter, John Evans, in this humble, wood-frame house where Ani DiFranco, along with a slew of other music-scene insiders, have made their mark behind the mics that are sequestered away on a sleepy old road just south of the Live Music Capital of the World.
Act III takes us up East to the wilds of Pennsylvania, the home of WXLV radio studios, where executive producer, Kevin “Big Kev” Ploghoft, is a popular radio host and the station’s Music Director. This act consists of one solitary song, Glenna’s haunting original, “The Southern Gothic Wedding Waltz,” produced by Big Kev and recorded as a magical first-take, featuring members of the Jersey-based Gin Mill Kings on organ and electric guitar. Finally, Act IV brings us back home to Houston, where Glenna recorded Perfectly Legal’s last track at historic Sugar Hill Studios, the oldest continuously operating recording studio in Texas, where the Big Bopper immortalized “Chantilly Lace” and George Jones laid down some of his first vocal performances. “The Cougar Anthem,” a comical, foot-stomping, hand-clapping, beat-driven romp, is the result of the Sugar Hill sessions and was produced by John Evans and recorded by Steve Christensen, who won a Grammy in 2009 for his work on Steve Earle’s tribute to Townes Van Zandt.
From Glenna’s banjo-infused bluegrass breakdown, “Big Kev,” featuring members of Hayes Carll’s band, to her classic lament of a love forever lost—“These Days”—the themes of Perfectly Legal are both contemporary and timeless. In addition to her originals on the CD, Glenna’s cover songs include a first-person barrelhouse version of the American folk classic, “Frankie and Johnny,” that takes her back to her roots in the deep east Texas woods of The Big Thicket, along with her stark vocal rendition of Sam Cooke’s 1963 gospel hit, “Lost and Lookin’,” on which she steps back in time to the a cappella church singing from her childhood in the “Golden Triangle,” the tiny east Texas enclave that produced two of the most influential vocalists of the 20th century: Janis Joplin and George Jones. Glenna’s stone-cold country duet take on the Clint Eastwood movie theme song, “Honky Tonk Man,” also offers something for those who love traditional country music. Along with mixing and mastering by engineers whose credits include Grammy Award winning albums (Carter William Humphrey at ATWATERIVILLAGE in Los Angeles and Scott Hull at Masterdisk in New York City), the album’s spare production technique, aided by guitar, banjo, keyboards, bass and percussion, accentuates Glenna’s distinctive vocals and guitar and the songs’ well-written lyrics.
Glenna Bell’s music has been aired locally, nationally, and internationally on NBC, CNBC, Fox TV, and numerous radio programs, as well as through live performances at venues all over Texas. She was a finalist in the 20th Annual BW Stevenson Memorial Singer-Songwriter Competition in May 2008. Glenna's songs have also received praise from Nashville’s Music Row and celebrated music critics such as Robert Christgau.