Community Songstress: Terry Radigan

On a recent night at the 12th St. Bar, Terry Radigan leaned forward into the microphone intimately, smiling sweetly as soulful lyrics slipped out of her like a healing tonic, and she tapped her foot to the rhythm. She is a country girl, from deep in the heart of Brooklyn, and she is just the kind of country girl who knows instinctively how to gather and connect people through song.

I first met Terry when she was doing some bartending at 12th St., a local pub just a block away from my house and on the same block as hers. We would come in with our kids for brunch, and she would throw down the coasters on the bar in front of us and ask us with her big bright smile and maybe a wink, “What can I getcha?” I could hear the luring vibrancy of her tune before I ever heard her sing, before I ever knew she was a brilliant songwriter, and I was hooked.

I think it was a mutual friend, music promoter, Pati DeVries, who first told me about Terry’s amazing songwriting skills, about her Nashville days and the songs she’s written for the likes Trisha Yearwood and of Patty Loveless and on her own albums. I was trying to get people interested in helping to bring arts to PS81 in Bed-Stuy where I’d started tutoring and then created my arts education non-profit, InspireCorps, and I was creating a showcase of talent at my kids own elementary school's Fall Festival. Terry agreed to show up with her guitar and damn if she didn’t get those reluctant kids writing songs and singing them too! Wow. To sing your heart out, literally, is probably the best medicine there is, and I watched, amazed, as Terry got people to do it, gently, patiently prodding them out of their shyness to share their thoughts and emotions through song.

I was sold on Terry that day, that I needed her for my program, and it wasn’t long afterward that she began coming with me on Fridays to PS81 for our first ever lunchtime residencies. Her wide eyes and huge smile never left her face despite being thrown into a classroom of some highly energetic kiddies whose job, it seemed, was to make teaching them songwriting nearly impossible. But…as she does, Ms Radigan persevered. She just kept coming back, week after week, with her guitar and her smile. That was three years ago, and she’s won over those kids the same way she wins over the crowd every week at her Radigan Roundups at 12th St., the way she has won over all the other amazing songwriters she gets to so happily join her there.

“I recall a great story about Pete Townsend, who was going to see Eric Clapton, and he said, ‘here’s a guy who’s gonna put us all out of business…’” Graham Norwood smiled as he told the tale into the microphone and nodded at Terry, who’d taken to the sidelines to make way for her friends. “And I feel that way about Terry, she’s such a killer songwriter.”

Terry humbly nodded and took a slight almost imperceptible bow. She is much revered by the great songwriters who show up, like Mr. Norwood, to try out their new material or play old favorites of theirs or other great country singers. On this evening, the crew included Mr. Norwood’s sometime bandmate Cliff Westfall, a Western Kentucky boy who drove hours through traffic on Father’s Day from his upstate home (his daughter showed up during the evening with flowers for him from the bodega); Benjamin Cartel and Kieran Mulvaney, Chris Daltry and a guest appearance by Carmela Ramsey, in from Nashville, who sang with Terry on a song Terry wrote for Patty Loveless, who Ms. Ramsay has long toured with.

As the singers sang their tunes, from Mr. Westfall’s Paul Simon-like harmonies and acoustic guitar alongside Mr. Norwood’s vibrant electric guitar stylings to Mr. Cartel and Mr. Mulvany's, catchy rhythmic pop romps, to Mr. Daltry’s tunes memorializing his Southern Virginia home’s “great battles, that weren’t so great,” Terry’s neighbors and friends came and went, waving hello, blowing kisses goodbye. I am always amazed at Terry’s power to gather community. Her songwriting friends more often than not sign on or off the mic with, “I love you Terry!”

And I say that myself to her, or mean to, all the time, as Terry has been helping me design flyers and my website as part of her Radigal Graphics biz, which started because of the killer flyers she designs for her Sunday night Roundup at 12th St. It’s amazing she finds the time to teach and design for InspireCorps given that she’s recently been working on a new album entitled “MORE!," for which she has been running a successful PledgeMusic campaign. She has also helped use music to counteract the PTSD of soldiers, and sometimes their spouses, for non-profit Songwriting With:Soldiers, written songs for the Bushwick Book Club and plays often with her awesome band, VickiKristinaBarcelona, which features the music of Tom Waits along with originals from Terry and her inimitably talented bandmates Rachelle Garniez and Amanda Homi.

Whew. Ms Radigan is a whirlwind, and an amazing inspiration on so many levels, to me, to the children and to so so many! Let her inspire you! Check out her website to get the full low-down (www. Terryradigan.com), show up at the Radigan Roundup for a real taste of country-style community most Sundays, or come to one of VickiKristinaBarcelona’s upcoming shows: this Thursday, June 22, at Fox n Crow in Jersey City. This Friday, June 23, at the Steeplechase in Coney Island, opening for American Nomads, or June 30 at Rockwood Music Hall stage 3.

Thanks Terry, for the inspiration!!

Shalom. Inshallah. Peace be with you.