Catch one morsel of Rosalie Sorrels' voice and you know you're in the presence of a person of real substance. She's over sixty, but has the hipness and youth of a woman for whom age is inconsequential.

Sorrels split her Idaho home at nineteen, married and had five kids, then divorced and took her children on the road with her while she traveled the country as a folksinger and storyteller. She now lives in her father's cabin in the mountains outside Boise and continues to release a batch of super records.

When she sings Sorrels brings forth a huge life brimming with adventure as well as tragedy -- indeed, the singer recalls the dark depth of Marianne Faithfull as much as the bright twang of Patsy Cline. For her album Borderline Heart, she wrote "Hitchhiker in the Rain," a sad, honest song about her son's suicide.

Sorrels is a master story-teller. In fact, even though last year's What Does It Mean to Love? was released as a children's record, the gritty between-song stories were so rich in meaning and texture that they weren't just for kids.

Her latest release is a tribute to Malvina Reynolds in celebration of the songwriting iconoclast's 100th birthday. An outspoken hero for the resilient folk counterculture -- with fans from Nanci Griffith (who wrote the song "Ford Econoline" about Sorrels' traveling motherhood) to Hunter S. Thompson.

“Sorrels has decried the music industry’s attempt ‘to homogenize women and ethnicity into something blander.’ She’s living proof that there are some things the biz just can’t whitewash.“ -- Chicago Reader

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