Album Notes

Over the past eleven years Quinn has logged 35,000 nautical miles cruising the Caribbean and the eastern seaboard on her thirty-six foot sailboat. Miss Inclined is Quinn's fifth CD; it's clear that she's out for the long haul both as a cruiser and a songwriter.

For confirmed Quinn fans, her newest offering explores known territory: songs about sailing and living aboard boats that blend humor and poignancy. She makes light of the small stuff that frustrates all boaters, such as docking in tight places, and then draws our attention to bigger issues of personal relationships and independence. But there's a slight edge to this CD largely not found in her earlier albums. She challenges listeners who are living their lives by default. Quinn draws on her cruising lifestyle, both literally and metaphorically, to encourage us to escape from convention and conformity.

The message is at its most direct in "Always A Choice":

you've got yourself a mortgage
a day job, a wife
may not love it right now
but you've got yourself a life
but there is always a choice

The bluesy title track, "Miss Inclined", is a Mae West take on stepping outside of established mores in the quest for love and adventure:

hear those whispers on the wind
my good name maligned
they used to call me Miss Upstanding
now they call me Miss Inclined

In "Where Have All The Pirates Gone?", Quinn skewers the Caribbean cowboy whose dreams of a Buffett-like existence never extend beyond his perch on a bar stool:

he'll bluff about the beaches
the bikini babes, the boats
and the endless sea of overproof
on which this whole myth floats

The theme of taking control of one's life appears again in the hard hitting "Sailing On". A terminally ill sailor chooses to cruise rather than submit to the false hope of a miracle cure. This song, though painful, is a fierce celebration of independence:

well I rage against the darkness
with each heartbeat since he's gone
but I sure as hell won't tell you
the choice he made was wrong

For all the weighty material, this is a very funny album. Quinn is a clever lyricist and her songs are packed with wordplay and double-entendre. There's the wayward sailor "searching for true luff" and the unfaithful snorkeler announcing, "honey, look, I got a case of crabs". And Quinn knows only too well from personal experience that knocking out the pump-out station while attempting to dock will "raise a royal stink".

In terms of musical genre, there's a contemporary sound to the album that's difficult to pigeonhole. Quinn likes to call her work "bluewater music" and while there's a definite blues tilt to many of the tunes, folk and country rock influences are also apparent. The final song,
"Dancing With The Moon", is probably best described as gypsy music. It closes the album with a hedonistic call:

farewell toil, hello pleasure
tonight escape the careful measure
that keeps us all so neatly pinned
throw caution to the wind

Good citizens be forewarned. Quinn is downright subversive.