Album Notes

Musical Biography of Pat Wynne

Pat Wynne\'s musical history is extensive, varied, and quirky.

She graduated from Music and Art High School and Hunter College in New
York City. At Hunter, she joined the Gilbert & Sullivan Society and
played Katisha in The Mikado and Lady Jane in Patience.

Among her Manhattan theatrical experiences were singing and acting in
God Created the Heavens and the Earth but Man Created Saturday Night at
the Cafe Cino in Greenwich Village and writing the music for the Off
Off Broadway show Sue Barton, Student Nurse, Meets Frankenstein (book
and lyrics by Carl Larson).

After she moved to San Francisco, she sang and acted in Dorothy Parker,
Dorothy Parker at the Goodman Building. As a member of Frank and Tony\'s
Garage Theater Company, she was music director of a production of
Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s Three Penny Opera at Fort Mason. With
the same company, she music-directed Strindberg\'s Ghost Sonata, for
which she wrote incidental music.

Striking out on her own, she began writing her own songs and performing
them in concert, either solo (with her own piano accompaniment) or with
various backing groups, including the four-piece Topical Beat Band.
She’s performed her songs from coast to coast. One Mid-West tour earned
standing ovations in Chicago, Springfield, Madison, and Omaha.

Somewhere in the 1980s, inspired by Ronald Reagan and his
down-trickling idiocy, she formed the satirical trio The Welfare
Cheats. Her songs often focus on things that are going on right now: on
women\'s issues, on work, satires about the political situation, peace,
and the disconnect between what is happening and what should be
happening. Her music is blues-infused and informed by a love of jazz
and gospel.

Another of her interests is people’s history. (Howard Zinn is a fan.)
Working with an actress, she’s toured a show called Working Women\'s
Stories and Songs, which pairs stories about powerful women who are not
famous with songs that evoke their lives.

Her song “A Bag Lady Asks What Is Life?” is on the Folkways album,
Original Folk, which is now part of the permanent holdings of the
Smithsonian Institute. Her song, “I Stand With Cindy Sheehan\" is on the
CD, Hail To The Thieves, III.

For 10 years Pat has been the director and conductor of the San
Francisco Bay Area Labor Heritage/Rockin’ Solidarity Chorus, which
meets at San Francisco City College and at Laney College in Oakland and
performs at union and peace events throughout the area.

She is a founding member of the Freedom Song Network and still sings at
demos, rallies, picket lines, benefits, and banquets.
Her new CD, Singing Is Believing, includes eleven of her favorite
original songs, backed by a great band with a strong sense of groove
and two world-class harmony singers. So far, response has been very
strong. Ronnie Gilbert and Holly Near are among those who have sent
congratulations.

Pat says, “My old friend Nina tells me that her daughter-in-law, a
concert violinist, plays the album every day in her car as she drives
to work and back. She just loves it. What better tribute could I have?”