There are giants that walk amongst us. They could be standing on line next to you right now at Trader Joe's. Cindy Bullens is one of them. She is game. She's got game, and she has had an amazing story. She left Massachusetts for Los Angeles, crashed a studio party, meeting Elton John there, which led to singing back up for him in the 70's for three of his tours. That spawned a solo career. She was nominated for a Grammy for her contribution to the Grease soundtrack. Her second nomination for a Grammy came with a single from her first solo album, the song was "Survivor." If anything, that foretold her tale. She married and had two daughters, largely dedicating her life to them for the next decade. Reid is now 23. Sadly, Cindy's daughter Jessie passed in 1996 after a long illness, and a lot of the heartache and the questioning found its way into the 1999 album Somewhere Between Heaven and Earth. I couldn't listen to it without crying. Which I told Cindy after a performance in Boulder, CO. I think we were aware of being kindred spirits instantly. The next time I saw her was not long after that at the Cactus Café during a SXSW in Austin. She was a rocker chick personified. Walking with a swagger, slinging her Les Paul and her Strat.
Through the years she has swaggered, sweetly, among other giants as both a musician, and as a writer: Delbert McClinton, Ray Kennedy, Emmylou Harris, Steve Earle, John Hiatt, Al Anderson, Radney Foster, Wendy Waldman, Deborah Holland, and even Elton John, who contributed house rocking piano to the title tune of her last album, Dream #29. Cindy is coming off the heels of The Refugees project (which we brought you when Music Fog was young), and she has just released her 7th solo CD, Howling Trains and Barking Dogs. She continues to work with the best and the brightest as she follows her unmistakably original path. She brought some of them to us during Americana Fest, George Marinelli on electric guitar, Michael Kelsh on guitar and dobro, and Chris Donahue on bass. The new album lives in the land of groove and restraint, and here is one of the tunes from it, "Let Jesus Do the Talking."
- Jessie Scott
