"This lady has a voice that MUST be heard! I could see myself driving a couple of hours away to hear her in concert because it would be worth it." ~Darren Fox, Cutting Edge Voices ‘Making that voice heard’ was all she ever wanted to do. Singer/songwriter VK Lynne hails from Pennsylvania Dutch country, where she learned enough about the blues to sing them before she even owned a guitar. “Folks think that if you’re from that part of the country, you’re Amish”, she explains. “I tell them, ‘the Amish are there, but the white trash folks who live around them in trailers and such? Those are my people.’” After college, she moved to Philadelphia, where she recorded her first 10-song CD, The Key of V. “The title was kind of a joke; the band would ask me ‘what key did you write this in?’ and I’d just shrug- I didn’t know word one of music theory at that point- finally, one session the guitarist muttered ‘the key of V.’- so it made perfect sense.” However, staying in Philadelphia didn’t. So she packed up and moved to LA, where she began singing lead with Hollywood jam-band staple, Monogroove. “I really learned the scene that way- the clubs, promoters…and we were gigging constantly; Rin (the band’s founder) tossed me right into it; I was co-songwriter for the band, singing lead, playing rhythm guitar and harmonica- and to this day I don’t know how to play harmonica!” Once she found her footing, she began re-focusing on her solo material, and left the band to make her second full-length CD, Black Halo. “Sound guys would come up to me after a show and say ‘I can't believe that voice came out of that little body! You look like a little rock and roll angel up there!’. Then my band said, ‘Well, I guess a rock’n’ roll angel would have a black halo.’ Although my music is largely secular, I think you can be a rock star and have faith, even if the world thinks that gives you a black halo. By the time we were ready to do the CD, there was no doubt it had to be called that. It seemed to sum up who I was.” Black Halo took off in the indie music cyber-world, and VK spent the early 2000’s hitting the Hollywood club circuit with her backing band, making notable appearances at such places as The Key Club, Genghis Cohen and The House of Blues on the Sunset Strip (opening for Cross Canadian Ragweed). “[VK] is not only gorgeous, with an amazing international marketing appeal, but her music is bloody fantastic. VK Lynne is a name to travel and be famous..." ~Eat This Music Thanks to her enormous MySpace and internet radio presence, she began to garner pockets of fans virtually everywhere. One of those places was Scandinavia. In 2008, she was contacted by Danish producer James Thomas (Cher/Beth Hart). VK was just preparing to go into the studio for the third time, with a collection of new material she was inordinately excited about, when the opportunity to work with him presented itself. She and Thomas discussed the project, the fresh direction she wanted to take, the fact that she had a growing fan base in Scandinavia, and decided that it was time for her to take a new approach in a new place with a new face. VK gathered up her songs and headed to Denmark, where she and Thomas created the tracks that would become Whiskey or Water. “James listened to my lyrics and listened to my voice, and created a sound based on them- (rather than the narrow, sometimes obvious instrumentation ideas I lobbed at him)- a sound that I hadn't heard before. The sound of VK Lynne.” Heavily blues-based, but grounded in rock, Whiskey or Water chronicles the last 3 years of VK’s life and her spiritual journey throughout that period- Her struggles with anorexia, Hollywood, religious hypocrisy and love. There is tragedy here, yet hope. “What I am trying to say with my songs can be summed up in one scripture”. She smiles, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart- I have overcome the world.” Carrying on a tradition she began with her first release, Black Halo, of donating to a deserving non-profit, $1 from each CD sold will be donated to GEMS ( www.gems-girls.org), an organization based in New York that aids sexually exploited girls and their national campaign, ‘Girls Are Not For Sale’. For more on GEMS, the documentary Very Young Girls, which follows their work, is available on Netflix.