AT the San Diego Roots street festival this weekend I had the great pleasure of meeting a first-rate Washington State songwriter and performer named Linda Allen. She sings with verve accuracy, and style, and her songs are coherent, rhythmic, with beautiful images and lovely phrasing in the best traditional vein, although often placed in modern context.
She has a website here, which includes the follwong blurb:
Her songs have been sung and/or recorded by many artists including Rebel Voices, Seattle Women's Ensemble, Wisconsin Women's Chorus, Cindy Mangsen, Frankie Armstrong, Judy Small and Faith Petric. They have appeared in publications such as Sing Out! and Broadside, in books and song collections, and have been used for numerous educational radio and television programs.
Her albums and CD's have featured outstanding artists including Margie Adam, Betsy Rose, Frankie Armstrong, Alison Brown, Geof Morgan, Cary Black, Julian Smedley, Philip Boulding, Nina Gerber, Tracy Spring and Erin Corday.
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A prolific writer, Linda is also a song collector. In 1988/89 she was Resident Songwriter for the State of Washington's Centennial Project; she also worked extensively with the Washington Women's Heritage Project and the Washington Grange Music Heritage Project.
Linda has organized two community folk centers and in 1991 was awarded an Artist Trust Fellowship. She teaches classes, retreats and workshops throughout the year, serves as an artist-in-residence and enjoys going into schools, communities and conferences to give customized workshops on history, spirituality, singing, songwriting, and creativity Linda Allen is a passionate and engaging performer whose songs are rooted in tradition and honed by years of commitment to an art that both informs and transforms. Her songs are bold, poignant, funny, informative, insightful and best described in a review from Folknik which called her music "…good holistic medicine for the spiritI have invited her to come hang out here at the Mudcat, and I think she will be a natural.