Album Notes

“If you want to be great and want to have longevity, you might as well give it 110% or more”.

So says Linda Lopez who, in early 2005, canned her own debut CD in spite of her impatience to get in the game. In explanation, she offers “I needed to give myself more time to develop my sound, my vocals and my songwriting to feel content with the CD I was going to release.”

Now, two and a half years total since teaming up with her co-songwriter / producer / multi-instrumentalist Chris Wesley, Lopez gives you what she’s got on her 14 song debut CD “A New Beginning”. “I unleashed my dragon…” Is how she describes her method for creating a disc that tracks her personal journey of self-realization that she hopes inspires as well as entertains.

But don’t expect to hear a bunch of “woe is me” whining and “you can do it” cheerleading. From the first lines of the disc opener "Nobody Really Knows Me", Linda announces “Just because I smile, doesn’t mean I’m happy, just because I frown, doesn’t mean I’m down” and shows through her delivery that the lyrics can be deceiving if you don’t open yourself up to the full picture she is presenting. The song blasts you with crunching power chords while Linda wields her attitude with indisputable charm, turning a potential emo rant into a heavy rock song of brazen empowerment.

But then again, that’s what Lopez does...She compresses universal issues into individual tales of human complexity. Along the way she also introduces us to some of the unsavory people in her life through composite characters. In the song "It’s Not All About the Money" we meet a gold digging wife who asserts her superiority through finances with the words “you can say I have no skills, but my shoes cost more than your rent”. As the irony between the song title and its content continues, the character heads to the Bodhi Tree Store with her psychic to renew her spiritual core. While there, she pops pills and chases them with swigs from her flask to the alarm of her psychic.

With so much going into her lyrics and vocal delivery, Lopez insisted on someone who would give the music and production everything they had as well, and she found it in her collaborator, Wesley. Playing all of the instruments on the CD and providing a majority of the programming, he complements Linda with a moody soundtrack that articulates the varied emotions she expresses. Combined, the music and vocals create a metallic hard rock pop fusion for the alternative soul that keeps her stories as the center of gravity while the unique timbre of her voice makes full use of the sass and wit that are fast becoming her trademark.