Reviews:

"The songs are heart sprung, tender and tough, fragile and enduring. Some are jazzy, sung with sass and echoes of Carole King and Ricky Lee Jones. Others are moody, full of wee hours wisdom, or yearning and soul stirring, soaring toward heights flown by the likes of Joni Mitchell and Emmy Lou Harris. Webb is a newcomer whose music is mined in the timeless chambers of the human heart."

-- Steven Dougherty, senior writer, People Magazine

   
CD: Morning in New York

Wendy Webb’s precise vocal nuances breathe life and meaning into her new CD with such winners as “Shadows and the Fire,” an intricate sojourn into the ultimate contrasts of darkness and flame. Her songwriting prowess leads to disarmingly intimate confessions such as “You were chasing my disguise/Such a tattered naked lie."

Wendy’s her own woman with her own way of bending the notes and twisting the words into lyrics that plummet deep into the epicenter of those who love or at least try to love. Her messages wander from musical to mystical, from juiced to jaded, as her creative honesty lures the listener simultaneously into both her heart and her hurt. “Fantasia Extreme,” for example, shimmers with this revelation: “This time it really brought me down/and I ain’t never flown this close to the ground.”

In the title cut, Webb dissects the dual entities of the Big Apple and the relationships that are the core of her life, examines them with forensic fervor, and reconstructs the city and herself in the process.

These musical portraits stretch the canvas of life with vignettes that range from dark images that would do a latter day Van Gogh proud to gentle Andrew Wyeth style landscapes that color “Paradise Street.”

This is not only survival of the fittest, it’s survival of the finest – warts, worries and wonders jumbled in a mixed bag of despair, hope, laughter and tears. The beautiful chanteuse renders it all with the rare ability to alter viewpoints and change perceptions within the limited real time of a CD.

Bolstered by a style that vacillates from down-home funk to uptown opera, Wendy Webb displays a special talent that deserves to be discovered and cherished.

-- Gerry Wood, former Editor-in-Chief, Billboard, New York City

"The angelic range and hard-grit soul of Wendy Webb's voice rivals that of Emmy Lou Harris. Who would have thought that in our lifetime there would be another with a talent so pure."

-- Lorian Hemingway, author of “Walk On Water”

"I was spellbound when I heard Wendy Webb put life's emotions into song. Like Loreena McKennitt, her voice is a beautifully played instrument of original music that comes from the heart. Listeners will swear she wrote them just for them."

-- Robert N. Macomber, award-winning Florida novelist

“Laura Nyro lives! I mean that as the highest compliment. What a pleasure to listen to Wendy Webb play her piano and sing her breathtaking songs. I could go on hours talking about her complex lyrics, but it is the sound of her voice that I find so haunting, the achingly beautiful voice of real experience. This seems to me real heartfelt music -- an endangered species in today's lets-make-a-quick-buck popular culture -- from a woman who has lived a full life asking those adult questions of herself and of the people she loves, not at high noon when it is always easy to put a smiley face on matters, but long after midnight when the shadows remain hidden.

I'm bowled over by Wendy Webb.”

-- Jeff Klinkenberg, columnist for St. Petersburg Times