Search - Gwin Spencer :: Addicted To the Motion

As she began recording demos for songs that would later help make up her solo debut ADDICTED TO THE MOTION, Gwin Spencer received aid from a most telltale benefactor. "A friend of mine Pete Matthews played Diane Hendrix a killer version of 'Addicted to the Motion' that he and I had done, and he told her I was trying to make some demos," Spencer says. "She told him she heard Jimi in my playing." Soon after, Spencer received a $500 check from the Hendrix Family. "She told Pete she just wanted to help me, which was really unbelievably cool," Spencer says. While Spencer cites Hendrix and a host of other artists as influences on her songwriting and guitar playing, her music sounds anything but derivative. ADDICTED TO THE MOTION confirms the arrival of a singular talent, someone who has ingested nearly a century's worth of Mississippi Delta blues, Stax soul, British metal gods, and fellow Memphian Elvis's sexual magnetism to create an idiom all her own. ADDICTED TO THE MOTION is a raucous, soul-bearing meditation on both the pain and joy love generates. On the record Spencer melds eloquent songwriting with the sort of musicianship that has caused old bluesmen to shake their heads in wonder to achieve a plainspoken honesty that harkens back to her musical forerunners. "I think rock went from being something that moved back and forth to something that was stationary and hard-headed," Spencer says. "It's 'rock,' not 'cement' we're talking about here."