Cindy Lee Berryhill

Cindy Lee Berryhill is a singer-songwriter. Berryhill was born in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Silver Lake, and grew up in various parts of California. Her debut album, Who's Gonna Save The World? (Rhino/Capitol) came out in October 1987 and was followed by the Lenny Kaye produced, Naked Movie Star (Rhino/WEA)[1] in 1989. In Allmusic's online Cindy Lee Berryhill Biography entry (2008), Richie Unterberger wrote, "The San Diegan's 1987 debut, Who's Gonna Save the World?, may be her best simply because it is her most straightforward. Then as now, she was most effective, ironically, at her most basic and serious."[2] By contrast, Stewart Mason in his four and a half star review of her third album, calls it her "first completely solid and intriguing effort".[3]

Berryhill, like Brenda Kahn, Paleface, Beck, Michelle Shocked and John S. Hall were early proponents of the New York City Anti-folk movement.[4][5] She is featured in the documentary "Mariposa: Under a Stormy Sky" along with Emmylou Harris, The Violent Femmes, Daniel Lanois and others.

It would be another 6 years before her third album Garage Orchestra (Cargo/Earth) would be released. Garage Orchestra was a tin-can-pop inflected departure from her earlier folkier albums and garnered a 4 star review in Rolling Stone. In 1995 her boyfriend and husband-to-be, rock writer Paul Williams suffered a brain injury and Berryhill put off the making of her next album until 1996's Straight Outta Marysville.

In 1999, Berryhill's novel, Memoirs of A Female Messiah was released along with a live album entitled Living Room 16. After the birth of Berryhill and Williams's son in 2001, she began a song cycle that included a song Beloved Stranger that was inspired by her experiences with her husband's brain injury and the awareness that many soldiers were coming home from war with similar injuries. In 2008 the album Beloved Stranger (Populuxe) was released.

Berryhill's second cousin was the venerable surfboard shaper Dale Velzy (his mother was a Berryhill) and her first cousin is Damon Berryhill who was a major league baseball player and now works for the Dodgers.

Berryhill currently lives in Encinitas, CA with her son, Alexander Berryhill-Williams. Her late husband, Paul Williams, who died on March 27, 2013 from the early onset of dementia due to a brain injury sustained in a 1995 bicycle accident, lived in a nearby nursing home. She is at work on her seventh album.

Partial discography

All U.S. releases unless otherwise noted

Albums

Singles & EP's

Compilations

References

  1. ↑ Naked Movie Star description at Amazon.com
  2. ↑ Allmusic biographical entry for Cindy Lee Berryhill
  3. ↑ Allmusic review of Garage Orchestra
  4. ↑ J. Bessman, "Rising singer/songwriters redefine folk in the '90s", Billboard Jul 16, 1994, vol. 106 (29), pp. 1 and 36.
  5. ↑ D. Kimpel, How they made it: true stories of how music's biggest stars went from start to stardom! (Hal Leonard Corporation, 2006), p. 7.

External links

Special Appearances 1988-1996 MTV/VHI 1988 Benefit for Writers of the Village Voice 1990 Mariposa Folk Festival Film 1997 Mountain Stage NPR Series W. Virginia 1999 Getty Museum Los Angeles (2 songs composed for and performed) 2005 Extreme Makeover Home Edition (song composed and performed) 2014 Covered California PSA/Commercial with her son Alexander (one version featured just the 2 of them, another used them in a montage)