Teresa Lynne and the Dreamboats

It would be easy to refer to a legendary blues mistress such as Etta James after listening to the roadhouse blues of Teresa Lynne, too easy. Yes, she has been influenced by the greats in the blues: Sonny Boy, Muddy, Cotton. However, Teresa for sure has her own personality and we are impressed by her abilities on the Mississippi saxophone. This lady has talent folks, and she should be performing on big stages, not only in her own country. The people from the Monterey Blues Festival already are convinced, all the others should listen carefully to that great cd she released in 2006, called "Mistress of the Blues". Her harp playing is not just ok, it is superb. Music like that shouldn’t be a secret!

- Vasco

BLUES BUNNY WRITES: This certainly caught our attention. After all, women blues guitarists may be rare, but a woman playing blues harmonica? We just had to check this out. While she may be no Big Walter Horton or James Cotton - but then again who is - she can nevertheless hold her own when it comes to blowing a good tune. Not only that, she contributes six of the ten songs on the album as well.

Actually it is the husky voiced, down-to-earth delivery of her own material that really shines through. In particular "Should've Been Mine" and "One More Lie" both with a fine slide guitar backing, are real standouts, although the piano backed "Whisky, Lies and Alibis" is not to far behind. Of the cover versions a slightly rockier and more up tempo version of Willie Dixon's "I Just Want to Make Love to You" is the one that catches your attention.

A great all round performance by the lady in question to go with some well written songs of her own definitely make this worthy of your consideration.


- Blues Bunny

By Mr. David Booker
June July 2004
Blues Holler

Teresa Lynne is the first female artist to be featured in this series and it's about time for our local club bookers to get this lady gigging in our local clubs-she's been around for the best part of 20 years in the Denver, singin', gettin'the crowd movin' and groovin' and playing her blues harp in front of her always-rockin' band. To date, I've swiped at least three of her former band members and made them into Alleygators, or members of my Swingtet! She has a great ear for using musicians with "Chops" in her bands, and has that authoritative stage presence found only in a few blues women.

Let's back up a little...like all seasoned performers she's been around quite a bit, muscally speaking; all over the United States, in fact and as I experience talking to her and previous subjects in this series, everyone without exception, has so much information and so many stories that there is never enough space to recount it all. Although Teresa tells me she was "basically" out of Shreveport, Louisiana, she was -as she put it - an "Air Force Brat" moving to where ever her dad was stationed. Mississippi, South Carolina and Florida were mentioned, and the sounds that first turned her on were those of Cream and John Mayall (two of my favorites). Her dad, being a country music fan, had some Charlie McCoy records and thats where she developed that "harmonica thing."

McCoy of course was a Nashville session player, notably playing on many a Bob Dylan record and the two cult classic Area Code 615 albums (now on a CD two-fer; see my review in Holler, October-November 2001). When McCoy heard the lady play harp he hired her to do "ghost" work on some sessions when he was double booked. When asked who her "fave" harp players were, she mentioned Delbert McClinton, James Cotton, Toots Theilemans and the late Paul Butterfield.

Teresa moved to Nashville in the 70's, playing gigs in Printers Alley, where she befriended steel guitar player and studio owner the late Pete Drake-another Dylan session guy and producer. Many nights were spent doing odd sessions and hangin' out, learning the "board" and general recording techniques. (She ran the board for Pete while he did late nite overdubs on the "Stars of the Grand Ole Opre" collection set. After passing through Denver on various attempts at doing the "L.A. thing." Teresa moved to Denver sometime in '84 (and I recall our first meeting, when she sat in with my band-"The Captain and the Red Hot Blues Band"- at Lauderdales a club long gone.) She's been here ever since, playing and gigging like we all do, having to deal with the instability and unreliability of certain club managers and bookers who - for lack of a better expression- "jack you around incessantly" (we swapped a few stories about this during our interview!). Currently she's taken the early part of the summer off to get her first CD together for an anticipated July release. The band consist of Jerry Alan on drums; Jim Trujillo on bass; Matt Curtis on Sax: Rick Ross on Lead guitar. Teresa is shooting for a July 23rd release party at Sambuca: after the CD is available, I know we'll be seeing her name out on gig scene again, and folks will be digging her Etta James and Bonnie Raitt roadhouse approach to the music. Teresa has contributed 6 of the 10 songs on the CD.

If you are a club owner/booker reading this, and you want a dynamite rockin' blues act you can call her at ph: 720-373-7644 and everyone can check her website at www.mistressoftheblues.com or www.teresalynne.com you will get a HOT band fronted by this attention-grabbing-in-your-face lady, who plays a wailin'blues harp. Over the years she's played 'em all...Little Bear, Herman's, Buffalo Rose, Brendan's...the list goes on...you name it, she's done it; we wish her luck with the new CD, Go Girl!

- David Booker Blues Holler

James B. Meadows - the Night Crawler
Fri., July 8, 1994 - Rocky Mountain News
Night Life, Spotlight

The next Neanderthal who says Teresa Lynne plays harmonica pretty good for a girl, had better watch out, lest he find a Hohner Special 20 jammed between his molars.

In the first place, whether it's train riffs, excruciatingly piercing high notes, or foot-stomping boogie-woogie, Lynne can flat-out blow harp. In the second place, those ringlets of hair, slate-blue gamine eyes and arched eyebrows may give her the look of a slightly wicked cherub, but she'll be 30 in 13 days, and , dude, she's way more woman than girl. and in the third place, she's had a bellyful of being told what she is - and is not - capable of.

"When I was little, my father wouldn't let me play with his harps," she says in a voice that sashays to the rhythms of Shreveport, La. "He'd hide'em, and I'd find 'em. He'd tell me I'd never be any good. I vowed I'd be better than him. And I got better." As Lynne tells the story, there's a no-nonsense look around her eyes. Probably the same look that appeared when an old boyfriend used to call her unfaithful. ("He said I was 'mistress to the blues.'") It's probably the same look that appeared after she'd spent 10 years in and out of Nashville, trying to make it, hearing her studio work appear on other people's records without so much as a credit (or a check) and learning "that's what they call payin' yer dues." Still, for all the pain and nonsense she endured in the capital of country music, Lynne recalls, "I had a ball." After all, she did get hired to do "ghost studio work" for country harp player extraordinaire Charlie McCoy. She did get to play with those legendary pickers known as "the Nashville Cats," who made her an honorary member. She did get to hone her harp playing and singing while doing session work for Bob Moore and with the late Pete Drake. Besides, Nashville toughened her up for a seven-year odyssey during which she "hop scotched" around the country, from Tennessee to California to Michigan to Texas, playing in honky-tonks where she was protected from flying beer bottles by chicken wire, hoping for the Big Break that never came. At least it hasn't yet. Not that Lynne has given up. Ask for her goal and she looks at you like you're nuts for asking. "Why, a Grammy! That'd be better than winning the lottery."

Right now, she's content to be working on a tape, which might become a CD sometime in the winter. She's more than OK playing mountain towns (Breckenridge, Crested Butte, Vail), when she isn't singing and playing in Denver clubs like Billy Blues (Thursday) and Patrick's (July 21).
Overall, you could say, it's been a genuine pleasure for her to wake up and discover she's put down seven years' worth of roots in Denver-especially when you consider her peripatetic past. Not only have there been those musical wanderings, but, even before that there was all that jumping from Shreveport to Biloxi,Miss to Homestead, Fla. to Greenville, S.C. to - wherever her Air Force father's assignments took the family-often with the harp as the only leitmotif. I can't remember ever not playing harp," she says, adding, "I think I must've teethed on 'em." In any event, she was familiar and confident enough with the instrument to be slipping out of her parents' home when she was in her teens and winning all sorts of local competitions at bars she was too young to drink in. "But I couldn't ever spend all the money,' cause then my parents would've found out I was sneakin' out." Ultimately, she had to reveal her secret life because she'd won a contest that required parental permission for her to compete for the $5.000 grand prize. Her father gave his OK-with the stipulation "that when I lost, I'd give up this music nonsense, go to college and be a regular person." Naturally,she won. Naturally, her father insisted she go to college first and then he would manage her musical career. Naturally, she didn't listen. "Now, I sort of wish I'd listened to my father," says Lynne, sipping on a Coke in a restaurant near Red Rocks Community College, where she is working on a degree to become a medical professional. Not that she has any doubts about what she does best.

"It's like I always say, 'Harp players do it better - and women blow em harder.'''No sooner are the words out, than some brawny guy at the next table turns to look , not quite sure if he's eavesdropped correctly. sensing this, Lynne can't help unleashing that wicked grin. But, hey, just because the lady plays a harp doesn't mean she's an angel.
- Rocky Mountain News

The Monterey Bay Blues Festival wrote:
Denver based singer songwriter "Teresa Lynne has been called the "last Red Hot Mama" for her Etta James-style roadhouse blues, not to mention her gender-defeying mastery of the harmonica. A Louisiana native, 20 years ago Lynne settled in Denver where she became a local favorite. Traveling with her kickin' blues band MBBF music lovers are about to discover one of the Rockies'best-kept secrets. Teresa Lynne will perform on the Garden Stage June 23rd at 7:30pm
Held in Monterey Bay California June 23-25 2006

go to www.montereyblues.com for more information

- Monterey Bay Blues Society