Kyra Gordon's 'Soul Of A Show Girl' Album Release Concert Set For April

The music flows from the vicissitudes of her footloose life, glinting with insights she's gleaned along the way. Possessing a rich, multi-hued voice, she's equally attuned to wry humor, headlong passion, bountiful gratitude and abject longing. Slated for release on April 22, 2022, Soul of a Show Girl is Gordon's first album featuring her original material, and it introduces a songwriter with an outsized gift for setting emotionally incisive lyrics to beguiling melodic hooks. Join in for the album release concert, and a fantastic night of songs ranging from humorous to heartfelt.

About "Soul of a Show Girl"

"This album is about coming to terms with the artist that I am," Gordon says. "I've been all over the place and this is the first thing I've created that's really me. Each song has a deep story, and I think every story is emotional and reflective."

The title track is the anthem around which the project pivots. It's a bold confession of the need for an audience, a boast about the transporting power of music, and a celebration of the bone-deep desire for self-expression.

Produced by award-winning Berkeley songwriter Rachel Efron the album opens with "I Love You," a power-chord propelled profession of passion and devotion that builds to a beatific bridge. A different kind of grace infuses "Doppelganger Angel," a song that details Gordon's chance airline encounter with a beautiful young woman on a divergent path.

"She was a born-again Christian on her way to be a missionary in Japan. We were the same age, 21, the same size, both had brown hair, and both were searching for something," Gordon says. "We talked very deeply about our struggles and our lives, and when we got to the baggage claim she said, 'Can I pray for you?' I said yes, thinking that was an at-home practice. She got down on her knees in a crowded LAX terminal and laid her hands on me."

Rather than preaching the Gospels, Gordon's path had taken her to Zendik Farm, an artists' cult in North Carolina where she spent four years, from the ages of 20-24. "It was a radical artist commune started in the 60's in Topanga Canyon by beatnik poet Wulf Zendik and his young partner Arol," she says, and her song "Emotional Pirate" conjures the topsy turvy realm where she made some of her best friends but endured serious emotional abuse at the hands of the unstable Arol. "I have had a lot to unpack over the years about my time there," and this song provides a reckoning, without bitterness and with a compassionate, clear-eyed view of her younger self.

Written after a successful tour, the jaunty but bittersweet "Big City Lights" is an ode to living one's dream. With its rollicking, gospel-powered chorus set to a thrumming acoustic guitar it's a track that would have made a Nashville hitmaker proud. Set to a caressing melodic line reminiscent of Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne," the folky "Bravest One" is a luminous, organ-driven celebration of a friend's survival. And the moseying "Laredo Slim" is an affectionate, finely sketched portrait of the late, veteran songwriter, singer and guitarist Powell St. John (September 18, 1940 - August 22, 2021), an early Texas compatriot of Janis Joplin's and a founding member of the San Francisco blues rock band Mother Earth. Laredo Slim YouTube Link

Gordon connected with St. John and his family via her Loving Janis show (which included his tune "Bye Bye Baby"), and "after he died his wife asked me to come over and play it for her," Gordon says. "She sat by the piano and wept." Blues great Tracy Nelson, who co-founded Mother Earth with St. John, felt the same way and she contributes the potent backing vocals.

Gordon's "Who the Hell Does She Think She Is" opens with a classic couplet: "She was the biggest bitch I ever met/I wanted to be just like her." It's a manifesto for all the women out there breaking the rules and kicking the patriarchy in the teeth. In a brilliant bit of sequencing, she follows up that defiantly harrowing tune with "Greetings From East Texas," a gently hilarious country tune about an unexpected meal at a West Texas church fundraiser.

"In the bathroom was a sign that said 'Don't forget to wash your hands and say your prayers because Jesus and germs are everywhere,'" says Gordon, who appropriated the line for the song. "I took a picture and thanked them and went back to my motel. I couldn't sleep and I wrote most of this song that night."

The album closes with another gem, "Tender Hearts," a portrait in three parts that sketches the different kinds of bruises we pick up during our short visits upon the Earth. The felicitous marriage of lyrics and melody is utterly personal, but also elemental, as if it was a half-remembered hit that used to play on the radio.

Artist Bio

Kyra Gordon is a vocalist and songwriter known for her soulful tone and captivating stage-presence. As a founding member of the improvised Bay Area hip-hop collective "The Freeze" she thrilled audiences with her powerful and often hilarious vocals. Gordon has been a local favorite through her residency at San Francisco's 'The Rite Spot' over the last six years and has performed in cities all over the country including in Cincinnati, LA, Las Vegas, Boulder, Burlington, Brooklyn, Austin, Tucson, Iowa City, Omaha, Oklahoma City, Ithaca, as well as internationally in Paris, France.

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