The Road Home

By Tina Lear

Begin with a voice that sounds like a blend of Carly Simon and Rickie Lee Jones, then give it to a classically trained pianist with Buddhist tendencies and a penchant for folk songs and protests.

You'll end up with Tina Lear and her new CD, The Road Home The range of this album is astounding. I don't know what I was expecting when the CD began to spin up ... and I still didn't know when the last song began.

The first couple of song's are pretty safe and sensible acoustic folk, but soon you hit the smooth jazz stylings of Flying Solo. Just as you get comfortable with that The Village is Ours kicks in with an exuberant big band sound.

Meanwhile People in Cars and Don't Look Away are clearly consciousness raising ballads aimed at waking people from their apathy. And just to make sure you're completely unable to pigeonhole her, Lear tosses in The Box and Buy it Now ... show tunes from a Broadway musical she scored.

Don't wait to hear this on your local top 40 station. It won't be there. I can't even tell you what bin to look in at the music store. There are far too many categories Lear's music could fit into.

Although the vocal stylings are about as opposite as possible, I see a strong parallel here with one of my personal musical influences ... Tom Waits.

Lear has that same consciousness that music should do more than just provide a pleasant background for dinner parties. There's also to take views we've driven by a thousand times in our cars or glimpsed through our windows and make them intense and real.

The comparison to Waits grows stronger when you realize that Flying Solo was inspired by the same painting that gave Waits the background for his Nighthawks at the Diner album. The lyrics, however, offer a softer, more feminine view of the same solemn, lonely landscape:

Killin' time at an all-night diner
this man sittin' next to me
talkin' like he understands but he really doesn't see
they tell me it's time to close now they're busy sweeping up and I can't find no warmth in this china cup.

Later, when Buy It Now begins, we see Tina stringing together catch phrases from a plethora or commercials and advertisements in a short piece that's very reminiscent of Waits' "Step Right Up."

The lyrics are exceptional and able to make you feel things that ... frankly ... you shouldn't be qualified to feel. When she talks of two women spending time together, or a mother watching her daughter grow up, I shouldn't be able to identify with the lyrics.

But I feel them to the depths of my middle-aged male redneck bones.

I can't think of a greater skill any songwriter could have.

You can hear online samples of The Road Home at Amazon.com.

You can also find out more about Tina by checking out tinalear.com.