aNo one really looks like Barbie, so come to the table and eat!
So goes the chorus to the song "Barbie" by Mare (pronounced "Mary") Wakefield. As a teenager, Wakefield had struggled with an eating disorder, an experience she chronicles in the song.
"Barbie" is humorous and deceptively light-hearted, but girls everywhere
responded. "Because of that song, I got my first taste of fan mail," Wakefield recalls. "Girls sent me alternatively-proportioned barbies in the mail, or wrote asking about my struggle and detailing their own. This was the first time I truly realized the power a song could have."
Though "Barbie" came out on Wakefield's first record (Girlfriend, 1997), she's never forgotten that lesson. Three records and nine years later, Wakefield still strives to impact her audience through song. Residing in the wide open spaces between contemporary folk and alt-country, Wakefield tells her stories. Her latest release, Take Me Home, guides listeners on a journey from cross-country road trips to home-sweet-home, from failed relationships to forever love. Songwriting alternates between starkly autobiographical ("Lullaby," "Take Me Home") to flights of fiction ("Leroy," "You Don't Know"), but always Wakefield alights upon a universal truth."
what folks are saying...
"More than your typical fly-by-night coffeehouse folk artist, Wakefield is musically sophisticated, weaving elements of jazz and bluegrass into her compositions ... Don't pass up the opportunity to see her perform."
Cheryl Eddy -
San Francisco Bay Guardian -
San Francisco, CA
"At times soft and soulful, at others riotous and rowdy ... a unique and wholly self-evolved performer with that special ingredient."
Mark Wehner -
Producer/Host Americana Tonight -
Nashville, TN
"Poignant story-telling, diverse scenarios. Wakefields humor and technique shine from a powerful voice that reaches both ends of the scale."
Nicki Ehrlich -
Victory Music Review Magazine
"Cozy brilliance ... Could she be the merger of Maria McKee, Natalie Merchant, Shawn Colvin and Dolly Parton?"
Michelle Manker -
Louisville Eccentric Observer -
Louisville, KY
"Wakefield is Oregon cafes, small Texas towns and twangy Nashville rolled into one. Her guitar and vocals ache in all the right places."
Cranky Crow Music Reviews (online) - Seattle, WA
"Reminiscent of Dar Williams, conjuring up the ghost of Johnny Cash. Her voice is sweet without being saccharine, familiar without sounding like anyone else."
Theresa Hogue - Gazette-Times - Corvallis, OR
