Wheels by Patricia Lawrence

Then one snowy January morning while he was driving back into the City from their house upstate, he died.

"Seemed like the world just sort of caved in on me. The man I loved, the man who was the center of my world was gone...in one instant, just gone... and it seemed that everything was over, my life went with him," Patricia relates. "I sure didn't have the heart to sing and really just wanted to give it all up and crawl into some old cave and hide out." And so she did. For about two years.

Then, in the spring of 2001, she began writing again. One song led to another and by January of 2002, she was in the studio with her trusted friend and now producer, Rick Witkowski (of Crack the Sky) at Studio L in Weirton, West Virginia...just outside of Pittsburgh.

Gathering together some more old friends and some new, she and Ricky put together a killer core band with an amazing roster of additional talent from the area...beginning with Ricky on guitar and background vocals; Tommy Bellin on bass; Jamie Peck, on keys and sax; Tony Morra (Nashville) on percussion; then, Gary Jacobs, pedal steel; Roger Hoard, country dobro and mandolin; Art Labriola (New York) piano; Sidney Hill and Frankie Czuri of Pure Gold, doing back ground vocals on the doo-wop memory song; and Curtis Lewis and his singers from The Church In The Round Gospel Choir backing Patricia and B.E. Taylor on their duet, the gospel number, Psalm 911.

So, now you got the roots. You got the backbone. You got the heart and soul of deep lyrics and liquid voice. You got the harmonies and the acoustic and electric guitars. You got the sense that this is a songwriter and singer who tells the truth, whether it is the heartbreak of hopes and dreams that couldn't be, as on Sometimes At Night,

"If I could hold on tightly, I would never let you go

And if there were a way that I could make you stay

I would try, oh I would try, I would surely try."

or just rockin good blues, like Hot Rod Daddy, or Cadillac...

"I got a half talk of gas and a ten dollar bill

Gonna drive my Cadillac over the hill

Down that old dirt road to the tin-roof shack

Where they play that old time music in back

Gonna sit in a booth with a beer in my hand

I just might line me up another man

Gonna move on, Daddy, gonna move on

You're gonna look for me, and I'll be gone..."

With Tommy and Tony locking in on a sizzling rhythm track under Patricia's smoky vocals, it seems about as good as it gets, and then Jamie Peck puts it right over the top with a soaring sax solo which moves from there out into the final sax / vocal dance. Oh, Baby!! This one's gonna get you!

From the country-blues feeling of Big Man and Jesse, to the heart wrenching, haunting Lament, to the sweet and tender Josie's Song, to every song on the CD, Patricia delivers good songs in a good way for people who dig good music.

She says, "I've been through the darkness and hopelessness, I know what it is to be nearly dead with pain, and yet I also know the healing power of music. If it moves you, makes you feel, makes you dance, makes you cry, makes you wanna hold somebody, then it's real music. When I let the music open me up, I started to feel life again. I hope everybody who hears this will be moved by it as well."

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