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 Resolution is posted on the homepage at www.glennabell.com.) A true Daughter of Texas, Glenna’s ancestors can be 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 music has been aired locally, nationally, and internationally on NBC, CNBC, Fox TV, and numerous radio programs, as well as through live performances on stages all over Texas and, recently, venues in NYC, such as the Living Room, Googies, Caffé Vivaldi, Banjo Jim’s, Gizzi’s, Hill Country Barbecue, and the Towne Crier. In September of 2011, the ASCAP Pop Music Division panel honored Glenna with an ASCAPlus award, recognizing her “contribution to American music” for 2011-2012, and in November of 2010, Glenna’s “The Cougar Anthem,” was a USA Today top ten pick of the week, alongside songs by Keith Richards, Paul McCartney, Norah Jones, Aaron Neville, Meat Loaf, Wheezer, and Dave Brubeck. In October 2010, Glenna was featured in an ASCAP AudioPortrait, which can be heard online at http://www.ascap.com/network/audioportraits/Glenna_Bell/. In May 2008, Glenna was a finalist in the 20th Annual BW Stevenson Memorial Singer-Songwriter Competition in Dallas, and her songs have also received praise from Nashville’s Music Row and celebrated music critics such as Robert Christgau and David McGee, formerly of Rolling Stone magazine, and Paula Carino at American Songwriter. (Reviews are posted on the press page at www.glennabell.com.)
Glenna’s new album—her third independent release since 2005—Perfectly Legal: Songs of Sex, Love and Murder, was recorded in four acts at studios on the East Coast, Austin and Houston, Texas, and 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 twenty-first century. The themes are both contemporary and timeless, ranging from Bell's comical, foot-stomping, hand-clapping, beat-driven romp, "The Cougar Anthem," to her banjo-infused rollick down bluegrass lane, “Big Kev,” to her tragic dirge, "The Southern Gothic Wedding Waltz." The covers include a first-person, barrel-house version of the American folk classic, “Frankie and Johnny,” that takes Bell 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 hit, “Lost and Lookin,’” on which she steps back in time to the a cappella church singing that she remembers from her childhood in the Golden Triangle, the tiny east Texas enclave that produced two of the most influential vocalists of the twentieth century: Janis Joplin and George Jones. Bell’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, a territory with which Bell is intimately familiar.