My Waking Eyes by Mardi Garcia

” 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 Garcia’s 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, Garcia’s 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, “My Waking Eyes”, 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. “High Times For Me”

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). “I 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.” Indeed, Garcia painfully

recounts her flirt with fundamentalist religion with

an exacting honesty: “I’m baptized in the fire, I’ve

turned a new leaf, I’ve rid myself of this guilt and

this grief – 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.”

Another standout track “Over And Done” is

brilliant in its sparseness. “After I came to New

England everything was over that I had done in the

past and I was starting new. That’s how ‘Over and

Done’ 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 Songwriter’s Association, I started playing

solo acoustic again. .. I’ll play everywhere and

anywhere I possibly can. That’s my mission”

With such purpose-driven projects as “My Waking

Eyes” Mardi Garcia’s lofty musical mission is

without doubt distinctively accomplished.

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