Music Around The Clock at Austin's MEOWCon • We Blog The World

We had another great time in Austin, playing at MEOWCon 13 and getting completely inspired by all the other artists (hello Leni Stern African Trio*, Bluebonnets & Suzi Quatro), while catching up with new and old friends (Katie Garibaldi, Sue Quigley, Willow &The Embers) with gigs at The Driskill and Cedar St Courtyard to bookend the conference experience.

MEOW Showcase, photo by Jo Wymer

MEOW Con 2013

Along with the live shows, there were several films that screened during MEOWCon. We met Seattle filmmaker Kay D. Ray on the shuttle to the hotel and were very happy we made a point of seeing her ‘director’s cut’ of Lady Be Good: Instrumental Women In Jazz. Containing extraordinary footage of, and interviews with, pioneering women musicians from the 1920s to the 1970s, it’s a deep, inspiring, troubling and enlightening film all at the same time. In other words, make sure you see it. You can find out more and support it’s release at Kay’s site. Very big bow of appreciation to Carla DeSantis Black, who rounded up an extraordinary mix of women in music that was the inaugural MEOWCon. Here’s to many more!

Deborah Crooks

Deborah Crooks (www.DeborahCrooks.com) is a writer, performing songwriter and recording artist based in San Francisco whose lyric driven and soul-wise music has drawn comparison to Lucinda Williams, Chrissie Hynde and Natalie Merchant.

Singing about faith, love and loss, her lyrics are honed by a lifetime of writing and world travel while her music draws on folk, rock, Americana and the blues. She released her first EP “5 Acres” in 2003 produced by Roberta Donnay, which caught the attention of Rocker Girl Magazine, selecting it for the RockerGirl Discoveries Cd. In 2007, she teamed up with local producer Ben Bernstein to complete “Turn It All Red” Ep, followed by 2008’s “Adding Water to the Ashes” CD, and a second full-length CD “2010. She’s currently working on a third CD to be released in 2013.

Deborah’s many performance credits include an appearance at the 2006 Millennium Music Conference, the RockerGirl Magazine Music Convention, IndieGrrl, at several of the Annual Invasion of the GoGirls at SXSW in Austin, TX, the Harmony Festival and 2009’s California Music Fest, MacWorld 2010, Far West Fest and many other venues and events. She toured the Northwest as part “Indie Abundance Music, Money & Mindfulness” (2009) with two other Bay Area artists, and followed up with “The Great Idea Tour of the Southwest in March 2010 with Jean Mazzei.