BENITA KENN: Roads

Benita Kenn

Roads

© 2004 BenKenn Music (783707667522)

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Original, sophisticated urban folk often infused with Celtic flavorings. At the intersection of folk, blues, Celtic, jazz and rock, Benita Kenn's music is influenced by a vast array of passions and experience.

tracks

1 Train
2 Keeper of the Flame
3 Reach for Me
4 Prayer
5 Sir Isaac
6 New York City Christmas
7 Garden
8 Better Days
9 Sword and Shield
10 If You Had It Your Way
11 Paris
12 Shine
13 Letter Bomb
14 Roads

notes

Benita's is the quintessential overnight success story that only took two decades to launch. She performs original and traditional Celtic and urban folk music, both solo and with her band Peregryn, for enthusiastic audiences at music festivals and local venues. Benita has been singing and playing guitar and piano since childhood. A native of Fort Lee, NJ, she began writing music in high school.

Benita first ventured out professionally in New York and Boston, performing at venues like the legendary Bitter End and The Other End.


Blessed with a full, articulate voice and a love of musicals and jazz standards, Benita performed regularly throughout the Northeast for many years, including stints in piano bars, coffee houses, and even as a singing waitress on Martha's Vineyard.

After moving to California in 1990, Benita was swept into the burgeoning Celtic music revival, which had a major influence on her guitar and writing style. She is now a highly regarded part of the San Francisco Bay Area music scene.

Benita's first CD, Roads, co-produced by the incomparable Joe Weed, was released in early 2004. Roads features Nashville guitar greats David Grier and Marty Atkinson, multi-instrumentalist Joe Craven, bassist Derek Jones (Nickel Creek), harmonica virtuoso Norton Buffalo, Celtic finger-style guitar wizard William Coulter, US Mandolin Champion Radim Zenkl, and Celtic fiddler and songbird, Valerie Rose.

reviews

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  • A gifted ear. Music of great beauty.
    author: Kevan Breitinger

    She’s generous, this Benita Kenn. Listen to her debut CD just a few times, and you come away with the sense that there has been no withholding. She pours out the deepest corners of her heart for your listening pleasure; in itself, no small feat. ...Themed around the journeys of life, Roads is part therapy, part expression... Her songs share lessons learned, observations of the human experience seen through Celtic folkie eyes. ...Kenn has wisely assembled a superior crew of players, and almost every cut features a standout instrumentalist. “Sword and Shield” seems to me to be a definitive Kenn song, words of gentle guidance to a troubled friend, containing great heart and wisdom. ...She has a gifted ear and an outstanding ability to put together music of beauty.

  • A veritable treasure trove of therapist material!
    author: Kevin McCarthy

    Laden with distressed seekers, doubting souls, mismatched couples, and a sprinkling of love and lust in interchangeable order, Benita Kenn's release is a veritable treasure trove of therapist material. The strongest points are Kenn's strong, clear voice and excellent diction, along with exquisite instrumental backing from a number of well-seasoned musicians. Altogether, this is a release very pleasing to the ears and a 'textbook' of and for the rootless and loveless to keep trying to get it right.

  • author: Arthur Elliott, host of Sidestream, Brisbane, Australia Radio 9

    Interesting lyrics, variety in presentation, and some high-profile backing musicians. I plan to include tracks from Roads on my show soon.

  • A great recording!
    author: Truman Ingalsbe, Host of Meanderings, WDIY, Allentown, PA

    Roads is a great recording! I have been using it on my radio show and loving it.

  • An Amazing Talent
    author: Michael Meier

    Excellent production; showcases her talents as a writer, musician and singer.

  • Roads is a damn fine piece of work!
    author: Danny Carnahan

    Benita Kenn has a gift for intriguing, nuanced personal stories and the guts to sail confidently across genre lines to tell them. A worldly hopefulness holds the songs together. Kenn's voice and her talent with a melody keeps these songs pleasantly repeating in the mind.

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