The Shows

Of the popular music of the Baby Boomers' youth it has been said that it cannot die until the last survivor of a generation that came of age somewhere between Meet The Beatles and Nixon's resignation draws a shuddering breath and utters "Freebird" for the last time. BlackWire makes the familiar surprising without losing the comfort of familiarity. Linda Davis' arrangements stretch the whole idea of staid string quartets and sextets with edgy invention that reinvent and reinvigorate the music. Bouncing off the traditional bass and drum bottom and backbeat, the jazzy-bluesy flexibility with just a pinch of mischief thrusts the original material into the 21st Century. More Turtle Island than Mantovani, BlackWire's strings carry melody, harmony, rhythm, organ, lead and horn parts, with a warp and weft that weave a whole new fabric from a well-established soundscape into something concurrently "forever young" yet "all grown up"
--Bob Millard