Glenna Bell
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. The story of this rising Texas star began in the woods of her youth near Beaumont, Texas, where she grew up influenced by the hymns sung a cappella at the church she attended with her family and by the old-school country music that she found in her relatives’ record collections. Often compared stylistically to Johnny Cash, with a delivery that’s raw and bare boned, Glenna Bell captures the very essence of how country music was, is, and should always be.
Glenna’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, including the Cactus Café, Threadgill's, the Continental Club, and SXSW in Austin, McGonigel’s Mucky Duck and the Hard Rock Cafe in Houston, Poor David's Pub (Finalist in the 20th Annual BW Stevenson Memorial Singer-Songwriter Competition, May 2008), The Gypsy Tea Room, and Bill’s Records and Tapes in Dallas, amongst many others. Glenna's songs have also received praise from top-tier music critics such as Robert K. Oermann at Music Row, Nashville and, most recently, Robert Christgau of Rolling Stone.
A deal with Burnside Distribution in Portland, Oregon will place Glenna Bell's new record, The Road Less Traveled, in retail outlets across the nation in July 2008. The album was recorded at historic Sugar Hill Studios in Houston, Texas, where the Big Bopper taped "Chantilly Lace" and George Jones laid down some of his first vocal performances, not to mention the many other legends who have made their mark behind the mic's of the oldest continuously operating recording studio in Texas.
Notably, Glenna will also be included in Andy Bradley and Roger Wood’s forthcoming book on the history of the studio, House of Hits (UT Press, 2009), and on the accompanying compilation disc singing Willie Nelson’s “The Family Bible,” which was first taped at Sugar Hill in the 1950’s.
Glenna Bell is a Daughter of the Republic of Texas and a graduate of Texas A&M University and the University of Houston’s renowned Creative Writing Program, where Pulitzer-winning playwright Edward Albee directed her dissertation plays. She teaches writing at Houston Community College and at a young age has already composed a lasting body of music to represent the diversity of Texas. Glenna Bell's sound is modern Americana in the truest sense. It is a unique blend of country roots music, romantic urban culture lyrics, and Texas folk rock; all sung in a voice that is powerful yet somehow vulnerable.
For more information on Glenna Bell, please visit:
http://www.myspace.com/glennabell
http://www.sonicbids.com/glennabell