Kerry Wallace, drawing from an "Americana" musical background, has emerged with a sound and style that is memorable, both in her presentation and selection of songs. Her country style vocals have been described as powerful yet fragile, with phrasing that has color and clarity. Her voice floats effortlessly over her finger-style guitar and the added instrumentation of mandolin, dobro, fiddle, bass...conveying deep emotion and bringing a song's story to life. In songwriting, she reaches for the ties between people, places and time. A common event in her life was family sitting around her grandpa's kitchen table well into the night--playing and singing folk, country , bluegrass, gospel, and even some Beatles--the first music Kerry remembers hearing. Born of generations of country people and raised in the Rocky Mountains, music was a daily family activity and at a young age she was singing and playing piano and guitar with parents and siblings. Her song "Home in My Mind" recalls these memories in the line: "they'll sing till the night is gone, as if their troubles will be gone with the dawn..." She was inspired by the vocals of Emmylou Harris and the guitar of James Taylor, and focused first on finger-style folk guitar and later on the flat-picking styles of bluegrass and country. Other influences included Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, Don Williams, Vern Gosdin, and Merle Haggard. In her teens she and a small group of musicians followed a bookmobile throughout the remote mountains of New Mexico, playing folk songs to attract rural kids to books. She has performed in coffeehouses and bars to music festivals and showcases around New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota and Montana. In Kerry's words: "Like the boy in 'Tennessee Flat Top Box', I can never get enough of music. Songs move me. I love to play music with others. I love to perform. A song is something you can share with people you may never meet and yet touch them. Arranging music--vocals, phrasing, harmonies, dynamics, and instrumentation-- is not just for sound, but to give shape, color, depth, and emphasis to a song. Interpreting it in a new way can really open a song up and bring it new life." Songs to Sing and Tales to Tell is an engaging blend of four originals, eight covers, and two traditional folk songs that weave together the stories and the feelings that transcend the ages. Appreciating a luxury as simple as coffee ("Don't Forget the Coffee Billy Joe"), listening to the waltz of the wind ("Under the Wyoming Moon"), longing for home ("When the Work's All Done This Fall "), helplessness of a love grown cold ("Cold Wind Blowin"), loneliness ("Alone Again "), bravado ("Killing the Blues")...these songs are delivered with conviction, sensitivity, color and feeling that goes straight to the heart. The album artwork was photographed on a prairie homestead of Wyoming, the first week of January. "I wanted to see, hear, smell, and feel what it was like when the cabins and barns were still full of the business and warmth of everyday life of the homesteader, when these people sang their songs. The voices of the past were in the wind. I have come to love the winds. In the farming generations before me, I saw how the hardships shaped them, but to me it was what they did for fun that defined them. Often that was playing music together and that shaped me. The songs told their stories, united them, carried them, moved them. I want to keep passing that down. I can only hope those voices are still carried in the winds...and that the Winds of Wyoming will always blow in my mind."