Music - November 2011
Country
Little Bird
Paula Rhae McDonald
Play "Crazy as a June Bug"
from Little Bird
Story by Emily Drabanski
Whenever I stroll downtown to enjoy the Santa Fe art openings, my ear always pulls me into galleries with live music. The Kiva Gallery often has a fabulous country band fronted by Paula Rhae McDonald, who warmly sings in an alto range with the melodic twang of her native Texas. Most people enjoying her performances don’t realize that she’s the gallery owner. Santa Feans first heard McDonald sing at the now defunct Mr. R’s bar in the late 1970s, where two-steppers packed the dance floor.
She took a hiatus from performing and opened her gallery, which showcases primarily Native American art, in 1986. The singer focused her energy on the business and raising her family. Now she’s finally found the time to record Little Bird, with the help of Frogville Studio’s Bill Palmer.
McDonald kicks up her heels on the lively “Crazy as a June Bug,” a song she penned when she was 11 years old, based on the expression her grandmother had for her grandad. Upright bass player Susan Hyde Holmes adds a swingin’ slap to the tune.
In a nostalgic vein, McDonald’s jazzy-country rendition of Matty Malneck’s and Johnny Mercer’s 1936 song, “Goody Goody,” stands out. Backed by the fine fiddlin’ of Nashville musician Ollie O’Shea and the mournful pedal steel of Augé Hays, McDonald belts out this classic.
McDonald’s country crooning on Buddy Holly and Norman Petty’s “True Love Ways” brings new life to the 1958 song. (Petty—the late Clovis independent recording impresario—launched Holly’s voice into the national airwaves.)
“Snow-White Dove” has the ring of a country classic. A single mother laments, “I’ll wash the breakfast dishes while the kids go off to school … There’ll be no snow white dove today, there’ll be no knights in shining armor.”
Perhaps the occasion of this recording will coax this “Little Bird”—her family’s name for her—to spread her wings beyond her gallery walls, and perform more often.
