Kerry Dexter in Recreation News says, "Terri Hendrix has a direct and unique voice in folk music - sort of a combination of beat poet, political commentator, and insightful musician." Amazon’s Don McLeese reports, “Spirituality has rarely sounded more playful than it does on this album's title song. Though the Texas troubadour's matter-of-fact whimsy keeps her message from becoming overbearing, a seriousness of purpose underscores this song cycle about the ways in which spirituality informs everyday life.” Radio is paying attention, too. The Spiritual Kind is enjoying a #7 position on the Americana Music Association’s radio chart and is currently #112 and climbing on the FMQB "Triple A Public Breakout Chart."

Terri's raw talent is exposed in its most natural form on The Spiritual Kind, making it unquestionably her best album to date. On it, she sheds (though never permanently) her harmonica neophyte reputation and embraces her hard-core inner harpist. “What intrigues me about the harp is that it can sound like so many things: a voice, a fiddle, an accordion, even percussion.” Her solos on songs like, “No Love in Texas,” and the Jimmy Driftwood cover, “What is the Color of the Soul,” showcase her passion and desire to master what Terri describes as a “complex, beautiful instrument.”

The rest of the album displays Terri’s growing self-confidence, like a blossoming flower reaching past the garden gate to explore the world beyond. Each song runs the gamut from folk to pop to blues to jazz all the while casually carrying off the “anything goes” eclecticism that is typically saved for her live shows. “The idea was to venture into new territory,” says Terri. “There's not one song on here that has a pattern that we've done before.”

Terri’s foray into uncharted waters is most evident on “Jim Thorpe's Blues,” a song written for and about the Native American athlete who was stripped of his 1912 Olympic medal in a racially driven decision. The song, which comes later in the record, vibes with social awareness and a heated desire to change the very injustices that still plague the world today.

Hendrix taps into her soulful side on the album’s title track, “The Spiritual Kind.” The song was written about an old cross that Lloyd Maines found and gave to Terri. This little cross became a peace symbol of sorts, bringing her comfort as she faced one of the most difficult times in her life — being diagnosed with epilepsy. “I feel I have had epilepsy my whole life but was diagnosed with it in 1993,” says Terri. “I kept it hidden till 2003. It was then that I faced the music and began a life-long plan to keep myself healthy and face the illness.”

Terri shares her cross with her fans who are struggling, hoping that it will serve as a source of strength and peace for them as it did for her. The only catch: the power of that cross must be ever shared and passed on. “Spiritual people have always inspired me,” says Hendrix. “I try to be one myself — it’s a work in progress.” Currently, Terri’s cross is with a woman battling cancer.

Beyond her music, Terri continues to reach out to and inspire her fans through “Goatnotes,” her blog whose name is an affectionate throwback to her days on Williamson's farm. Terri shares her heart through her journals, showing others that absolutely anyone can do any thing when they work hard and dream even harder. With all of her heart in every self-produced record, it's Terri’s fans that keep her soul full. “The music has let me be part of my fans' lives,” says Hendrix, “and that is my true reward.”

In addition to recording and performing, Hendrix shares her creative spirit with the students in her “Life's a Song” workshops, a program she conducts periodically with Maines. Each session, all of which are consistently sold out, exposes songwriters and musicians of all levels to a positive, non-critical and creative atmosphere for a weekend. “We brainstorm, write, go on dolphin tours, walk on the beach and play lots and lots of music!” Each student also gets a Hendrix-penned booklet called, “The Part That Ain't Art,” an introspective look into the music business — warts and all — from this true industry veteran.

Terri's spiritual flame is ignited by the friends and mentors surrounding her, and it is fanned by the songs that branch off of that very foundation. The Spiritual Kind guarantees a diverse journey pausing only briefly to reflect on the beauty that life brings. And, then the journey continues.

The Spiritual Kind is available August 28 in stores and online at digital hotspots as well as at terrihendrix.com. Through the CIMS and Paste Recommends Program The Spiritual Kind will be available to sound check and buy at select indie stores nationwide for the month of September.

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Early Praise

... " a consistently engaging addition to Hendrix's catalog."
(4 Stars) -- Alex Henderson, All Music Guide, Allmusic.com

Terri Hendrix’s open, heartfelt, roots sound defies pigeonholing, edging from folk to pop and rock to blues and country. What unites the catalog is Hendrix’s light-hearted positivity, and multi-instrumentalist Lloyd Maines’s tone-perfect accompaniment. Maines joined Hendrix for her 1998 second album, Wilory Farm, and has lent his sturdy, seasoned hand ever since.

“I have a twang when I sing so I end up in country, but I don’t feel like I do that genre justice,” Hendrix says from her San Marcos home.

H endrix’s tastes run the gamut. She swears she even has ideas for a techno album. Last month she went on an iTunes buying-binge focused on Celtic music, particularly groups with bagpipes. This might not surprise those who caught her 2005 kids album, Celebrate the Difference, with the track “Nerves.” The infectious punkish track, which revels in children’s ability to rattle our senses, has proven something of a hit for Hendrix. “It gets about maybe 400 downloads a month, which is my car payment each month,” she says.

It’s not caviar and Cristal, but it’s a sign of an upward trajectory that’s likely to receive a turbo boost from The Spiritual Kind, a high-spirited album that ranges from mountain-tinged stomper, “Life’s a Song” through the energetic fiddle-fueled “Jim Thorpe Blues” and the finger-picked declaration of independence and perseverance, “Acre of Land.”

One of Spiritual Kind’s highlights exchanges Hendrix’s reliably upbeat ethos for a particularly candid admission of life’s unfortunate truths. On the poignant, frequently funny “If I Had a Daughter,” Hendrix confides, “If it talks like a duck/ and it walks like a duck/ then yes, it might be a skunk.”

Hendrix suggests that lately she’s begun to judge success on the truth she can wring from her songs. She realizes money comes and goes, great music endures. “There’s music I’m going to write and a place I’m going to go as an artist,” she says. “And I’m going there regardless of the consequences.” — Chris Parker, San Antonio Current

The music of Austin songwriter Terri Hendrix has long validated the idea that our inner search matters and moreover, that it's essential. Within the lines of her songs, Hendrix chronicles the experience of seeking that quiet, grounded, true place in a world filled with so much nonsense and noise.

With The Spiritual Kind, Hendrix continues a kind of 21st century Thoreauvian rumination that has made her past two albums so refreshing. Yet this record (produced, once again, by Lloyd Maines) is a little more lighthearted, more playfully spare, and at the same time more direct in its approach, than The Ring (2001) and The Art of Removing Wallpaper (2004).

In many ways, The Spiritual Kind honors the promise of a lyric Hendrix sang near the end of her last record about coming to grips with mortality, and being open to the conscience-song that exists within us all: "Quiet me, so I don't miss it. Keep me still long enough. ... so I can hear it: The sweet song of my life." Casting herself as a student of "the spiritual kind" on the new record, Hendrix is not afraid to reveal all manner of insecurity, frustration and self-doubt, things all of us relate to, for the sake of recognizing how small and fallible we are in the context of the glorious mystery. From this place comes discovery, and hope.

"If I had a daughter," Hendrix muses on this record, "I'd want her to watch the stars instead of her weight, love her body, feed her soul, dance with her curves . . . howl at the moon instead of her hair. And live, inside out." This is the way of wisdom, in the world of Terri Hendrix.

Recommended tracks: "Jim Thorpe's Blues," "Life's a Song," "If I Had a Daughter"
- Brad Buchholz, Austin American Stateman

Terri Hendrix's Website