It has been said that the mark of a great songwriter is the ability to take their own personal story and convert it into a song that delivers that truth in a way that is universally understood. If that be the case, then Cindy Alexander is one of the greatest songwriters ever, and her latest effort, Deep Waters, is the crown jewel in her songwriting career.
Alexander has previously delivered seven studio albums that showed us her angst, her frustration with the dating scene, her struggles with self acceptance, and her battle with and victory over breast cancer. With the release of Deep Waters, she provides us with songs about the beauty of true love, and the culmination of her quest for it.
After working with producer and good friend Dave Darling (Boxing Gandhis, Meredith Brooks) for many years, this time out she partnered with acclaimed artist, writer and producer Colin Devlin, best known for his solo work and as half of leading Irish duo, The Devlins.
Needless to say, this change did not come without apprehension. “When you’re scared to make a change you should do it anyway,” Alexander says, with the conviction of one who has faced her fear and come out the other side. “You’re not given gifts to hold them back.”
Set up by Blue Élan Records founder/president Kirk Pasich, Alexander and Devlin went on the musical equivalent of a blind date. “The first thing we were trying to do was see if these two strangers could create anything without having any rules or parameters about what we were going to say or how we were going to do it,” she says. “I usually write all my own lyrics. This time, there was someone else’s experiences and life coming in and adding more meaning and context into every song.”
The resulting partnership was a success, as reflected in the first track they wrote together, the turbulent title track, which talks about unreservedly abandoning oneself to another person. “That’s the beautiful thing about art,” she says. “You can dive in and go to places that may be too scary to go to in real life.”
After hearing their first batch of songs, the label recognized their creative chemistry and asked for a full album. Alexander ultimately wrote or co-wrote eight of the album’s 10 tracks. She also does a stunning cover of Jann Arden’s “Good Mother.”
Every song on Deep Waters hits the mark and delivers what will surely be seen as a milestone in Alexander’s career. Alexander sums it up well, “I feel like you can’t stop me now. I’ve got this,” she says. “When you’ve experienced any kind of brush with your mortality, you want to thrive, not just survive. The fact that I get to live my dream and make music for a living, I don’t take any of that for granted.”
Indie Voice Blog is proud to highly recommend Deep Waters as one of the best albums of 2016 and strongly encourage you to grab a copy of it when it is released on July 15. If you’re lucky enough to live in the Los Angeles area, Alexander will be celebrating the release with a show at one of her favorite venues, Saint Rocke in Hermosa Beach on July 17. Check out her website or Facebook pages for more details, and don’t forget to follow her on Twitter as well.
Thanks to publicist Melissa Dragich-Cordero of MADInk PR for providing the background material.
