"As a producer, she has crafted her best record yet..as a songwriter, she sculpts each song with elegance and grace..utterly exquisite album.."
--Michael Tearson, Sing Out!, August, 2006
"A gritty feel and for-the-ages mysticism..her smoky alto drips with inner strength and sensuality..a compelling mix of dreamy imagery and direct emotion.."
--Michael McCall, Nashville Scene, August, 2006
"Colleen McFarland hollows out the hurts of lost love with a gritty realism and encapsulates solid songwriting that is all her own."
- - Joey Hood, American Songwriter, July 2006
Colleen's uniquely sweet, bluesy voice and songs can appear rough around the edges, but also beautiful and haunting, with the kind of mind crafted lyrics that critics and music lovers are fortunate to discover from time to time. While glimpsing into McFarland's journeys of sorrow, deep introspection and determination, fans will translate her songs into their own self discoveries. With the new release of her third CD Beautiful Lie, McFarland exposes her strength as well as her vulnerability. From the gritty, rhythmic pull of "Ten Years" to the sultry "I Don't Wanna Be Good", listeners will be pulled right along beside her on an emotional roller coaster of love, lust and loss. While Beautiful Lie displays a cohesive, well sewn tapestry of sparse, but lush arrangements and rich musical ideas, it also shows that McFarland's influences are diverse.
The youngest of nine children, Colleen grew up in a small, three bedroom, one bathroom house on the outskirts of Jennings, Missouri, singing whatever music her parents, and one brother and seven sisters played on the radio and family turntable. After years of singing in church and school, Colleen became a professional entertainer at the age of fifteen, singing in local bands and orchestras. Discovering folk and soul at an early age, she listened to the songs of Neil Young, James Taylor, and Aretha Franklin, joined by the likes of Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt and Marty Robbins.
Colleen graduated with honors in music performance from the University of Missouri in St. Louis, paying her tuition by moonlighting in the smoky nightclubs of the Midwest. She moved to the Northeast for an extended period of time to write and perform her original music at many venues including the Tin Angel, The Point, The Lansdowne Folk Club, and The Bitter End, while also performing in coffee shops and at festivals, including the Newton Colony/XPN Music & Arts Festival in Collingswood, NJ featuring The Mavericks, and Lucinda Williams.
Colleen recorded and co-produced two independent cds, Speaking In Rhymes, and Three Miles From Odessa which received airplay on many college and independent radio stations, and worked as a voice-over talent and jingle singer, recording commercials and industrial spots for Nike, Fox Television, Polygram Video, and was the featured soprano for Bernard Herrmann's (of Alfred Hitchcock fame) post-mortem Opus 6.
Since moving to Nashville in 2003, Colleen has performed at 3rd & Lindsley, The Bluebird Cafe, Borders Books & Music, The Basement, Douglas Corner, The French Quarter Cafe, and The Family Wash, where she also sits in with the band Soul Food, led by guitarist/pedal steel player Pete Finney from the Dixie Chicks. She has shared the stage with Freedy Johnston, Kim Richey, Jeff Black, Jeffrey Gaines, Lucy Kaplansky, Reeves Gabrels, Frank Black, and Entrain to name a few. Colleen licensed two of her songs to Universal Studios in January of 2006 for the dvd release of the television series Northern Exposure. She also recently performed to a sold out audience at Pub Ampfield in Gjovik, Norway. Her songs can be heard on radio stations across the country including WRLT in Nashville, WXPN in Philadelphia, and as far away as Paris, France, on NSEO “Keep It Country”. Colleen is also currently being featured on "The Miller Tells Her Tale", a popular Americana internet radio podcast from Edinburgh, Scotland, and BBC Radio2 with Bob Harris. Beautiful Lie has received stunning reviews in major songwriter magazines including Maverick Magazine (Oct. '06), Performing Songwriter (Nov. '06), and Sing Out! (Aug. '06) Colleen was also recently featured as the 'Critics Pick' in the Nashville Scene for the August 2006 issue.
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