Texas-born Cassell Webb has enjoyed a career for more than 30 years that has spanned the late-'60s psychedelia to country music, latter-day folk-rock and back to folk music that now embraces contemporary electronic technology. Her voice, which can sound ethereal or mournful crosses genres with ease. Born in Texas, she began playing guitar at 14, received classical vocal instruction and later gravitated to the psychedelic scene in San Antonio. She became a member of the Children, a psychedelic outfit that was part of International Artists' recording roster, appearing on their 1968 Rebirth album and several singles. She later joined Saddlesore, a Texas combo whose core members, Mayo Thompson and Rick Barthelme, were survivors from the Red Krayola. They stayed together long enough to record one single ("Old Tom Clark") on the Texas Revolution label before disappearing in the early '70s. Webb spent time in California and New York working as a session singer and acquiring knowledge of production as well and then returned to Texas, where she spent the next few years working with such country artists as Willie Nelson, Jerry Jeff Walker, Guy Clark, and B.W. Stevenson. It was around the time she began writing experimental songs, embracing Texas folk music and her own poetry. She also began her long association with composer/producer Craig Leon at that time. Cassell went to Europe in the early '80s, first to Holland and then to England. She began her solo career in 1986. Initially signed to Statik Records, for which she recorded her debut album, Llano, she later joined the roster of Venture Records, the progressive arm of Richard Branson's Virgin Records label, through which she recorded Thief of Sadness in 1987. Webb's most popular album is her third, Songs of a Stranger, which was derived from her concert repertory of other writers' music, including Jimmy Webb ("P.F. Sloan"), Nick Drake ("Time Has Told Me"), Townes Van Zandt ("If I Needed You"), and Phil Ochs ("Jim Dean of Indiana"). In 1990 she recorded “Conversations at Dawn†her last recording for Virgin. Webb remains based in England, where her work on such radio programs as Saturday Sequence, coupled with periodic album releases and projects, such as the ballet "Klub Anima" (co-written with Leon), and singing and production work with artists such as The Fall, Blondie, and Marillion's Steve Hogarth have sustained her career in music. Her poetry has also been published by Pen & Ink of Ann Arbor, MI and other publications. Webb's hauntingly lyrical version of the Rolling Stones classic "Tell Me," from her 1990 album Conversations at Dawn (which also included her covers of Bruce Springsteen's "Reason to Believe" and -- in a nod to her own Texas psychedelic roots -- the 13th Floor Elevators' "Splash One"), has been included on the Connoisseur Collection's Jagger/Richard Songbook CD, alongside recordings by the Flamin' Groovies, the Who, Mary Coughlan, Melanie, Marianne Faithfull, and Ike & Tina Turner.
Cassell continues to work in recording collaborating on classical production projects with Craig Leon that have included “Romance of the Violin†for Joshua Bell ,Elysium, Cinema Italiano,which features her vocals on the theme music from “Mediterraneo†along with performances by Sting, Luciano Pavarotti, Deborah Harry and Fillippa Giordarno.
Cassell has been influential in the production of the recent recordings by Craig Leon including "Nommos" and "Visiting".
