Liz Frame's Music for Grown-ups

LIZ FRAME and THE KICKERS

Sooner

Self-Produced

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True story. I was walking down a Newburyport street last summer, spied an arts market, and then heard a voice that froze me in my tracks. It belonged to Liz Frame, who was providing some street entertainment with her band The Kickers. Check out her new CD and I sincerely doubt you’ll get much done until the last of its ten taut tracks has finished.

In an age of saccharine sentimentality and little girl whispers, Frame offers a mature alternative, both in her real life-marinated song themes and in her powerful far-ranging voice, which she ornaments with tasteful catches at appropriate moments. The music lies in that ineffable intersection between country, rock, folk, and blues. Call it country chutzpah if you have to call it anything. Don’t expect any of those lame “Baby, baby, you light up my world” kind of lyrics; a Frame sampler–all originals–includes: “Don’t take more than you can handle/Don’t chase what you can’t outrun/Don’t love nobody so much that you can’t watch them walk away/Don’t play with guns” and “I want to feel your love in my hands/I want to feel the sweat in my pores.” Oh yeah. Put some edgy electric guitar to that, add some sexy bass lines from Lynne Taylor, and it’s get-on-board or get-the-hell-out-of-the-way. The Kickers is an apt name for Frame’s band–like she, they are brassy, bold, and rootsy. This is music that dances on the razor’s edge between danger and ecstasy. You know–just like the deal really goes down outside of Fantasy Land.

So pay attention the next time you walk past an arts fair; you never know what diamond in the rough might lie amidst the spangled crocheted dolls.

You can sample Frame’s music on her Website: http://www.reverbnation.com/artist/song_details/10884169 Please go to www.lizframeandthekickers.com to buy her music and to keep abreast of her performances.