I'm thrilled to share this wonderful review from Tulis McCall.
Tulis McCall, a superb critic from thefrontrowcenter.com, came to my show on November 9 and wrote this wonderful review! I'll paste it here:
Tina deVaron – Tuckerman’s Ravine – CD Re-release
Posted By Tulis McCall on Nov 17, 2015
by Tulis McCall
I don’t know under what rock I have been living to have not known about Tina deVaron. Now, that I do know, and have watched her perform her new CD, Tuckerman’s Ravine, I am feeling every so much better.
deVaron has been around long enough to have grown children and a loving husband. I only mention this because these relationships are the ones that serve as subjects for her songs. You don’t, by the by, have to be a mother or a spouse to relate. You just have to be a sentient being – because that is what it is all about. DeVaron doesn’t complicate, she illuminates.
Empty nests have their good and sad points in Other People’s Ground and No One Cries.
Sisters are lynch pins for other sisters (Sister Song) if they are allowed that intimacy. Or they stay in the shadow, like Dorothy Wordsworth, and use their genius to study remedies for illnesses that could kill a person in 1823 – William Wordsworth’s Sister.
What Sylvia Plath may or may not have knows is fodder for deVaron’s homage to the writer that drops like a weight on the end of a line dipped into a cold still lake. You want to turn away but you listen anyway.
Tuckerman’s Ravine ia another family song. Her father skied in the old timer way: he climbed up the the mountain to earn the right to slide down on seal skin covered skies. He was a man of many tales that he wove together without effort or fan fare. A man of vitality who has left his print on his daughter.
Some Things Will Never Change is a song of a mother’s love and loss as her child takes flight to land as far away as he can get and still be on the same planet. It is intimate and simple and singular.
Not all the kids are gone – part of the joy of watching deVaron is that her son, Nick Lerangis, appears with her on guitar and ukelele. The way he looks at his mother makes you want to pop up on the stage and grab a tiny city of that loving electricity traveling between them for yourself. They would not mind. They have plenty to spare. ALso on hand at Pandea were the extraordinary Jerome Harris on Acoustic Bass Guitar and Guitar and Nanny Assis on Percussion. Suffice it to say deVaron’s partners are every bit her equal and compliment.
deVaron is making a joyful noise unto the Lord, which, in this case, is LIFE. All the mundane bits turned into magic, and all the magic pulled apart and laid out to reveal its many intricate pieces like a glorious jigsaw puzzle. She makes you revisit places you had forgotten as well as those you thought you knew so well. This is the role of an artist – to reorganize our molecules and adjust our point of view. To make us feel alive and new. To make us say, “Me too.”
You can see the site at: http://thefrontrowcenter.com/2015/11/tina-devaron-tuckermans-ravine-cd-re-release/
