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Details:
Mardi Garcia â âMy Waking Eyesâ
By Don DiMuccio; MOTIF MAGAZINE, PROVIDENCE, RI
January 2, 2007
Weâre all too familiar with many of our favorite
music stars and their auspicious beginnings. Elvis
famously walked into Memphisâ Sun Studios to
record a simple demo for his mom and walked out
into rock & roll infamy. Brian Epstein descended
into a dank, dark, cellar nightclub and happened
upon four lads from Liverpool who would literally
change our world.
And what of New England born singer-songwriter
Mardi Garcia? Well, I think Iâll let her tell the tale:
âStanding on stage at about six years old and I was
supposed to sing âThe Little Drummer Boyâ and I
passed out. My memory is somebody carrying me
to the nurseâs office... I think it was stage fright, Iâm
not sure.â Ahh, auspicious beginnings indeed!
Luckily for us, Mardi not only got over her stage
fright, but has parlayed her penetratingly
constructed songwriting prowess onto the stages of
not only her indigenous Worcester area, but even as
far away as Europe.
Mardi Garciaâs sound is subtly and yet all the while
directly correlated to her territorial locale. Whether
recording in her adoptive home of Tucson, AZ,
touring throughout Spain during a six-month jaunt,
or performing back home, Garciaâs varied
songwriting fodder is made up of nothing short of a
geographical potpourri. "I tried to figure out where I
was going personally and musically. And when I
started writing 'My Waking Eyes' I actually left New
England again and went to Tucson for one week
and recorded (the CD). I insisted on Tucson
because that's where my musical roots are... So
there was the Arizona-influence obviously, but the
songs that I was recording were all written in New
England, and were all a wake-up call. When I came
back to New England I began to see what was really
going on in the planet."
Her 6th CD, âMy Waking Eyesâ, is as personal a
journal entry as any local songwriter has committed
to disc in quite some time. Each track recounts her
life in song, with some breathtakingly honest
standout examples. âHigh Times For Meâ
synopsizes her dubious days working as musical
director for a Christian radio station, directly
dealing with the prelacies of Pat Robertson,
Kenneth Copeland, and the infamous Jimmy
Swaggert Ministry (pre-sex-scandal days). âI left
just before all that happened because I saw how
hypocritical it was. And I write about it in some of
the songs on this new CD.â Indeed, Garcia painfully
recounts her flirt with fundamentalist religion with
an exacting honesty: âIâm baptized in the fire, Iâve
turned a new leaf, Iâve rid myself of this guilt and
this grief â You hang out in bars, unless you have
wings and hide in your shell, and you wait for the
rest of us to go to Hell.â
Another standout track âOver And Doneâ is
brilliant in its sparseness. âAfter I came to New
England everything was over that I had done in the
past and I was starting new. Thatâs how âOver and
Doneâ came about. I started to listen to more folk. I
started to really get in touch with the folk scene. I
went to a regional folk alliance, I joined the Rhode
Island Songwriterâs Association, I started playing
solo acoustic again. .. Iâll play everywhere and
anywhere I possibly can. Thatâs my missionâ
With such purpose-driven projects as âMy Waking
Eyesâ Mardi Garciaâs lofty musical mission is
without doubt distinctively accomplished.