A wonderfully lively, very funny, and enormously amiable entertainer, with a keen and wicked eye for the excesses of our fast-food, tv-happy, and noisome culture."

— Albuquerque Journal

A Buddhist monk in a twelve-step program trapped in the body of a singer-songwriter."

— Boston Globe

 

Cosy Sheridan writes songs about childhood and women, about longing and myth. She writes about the struggle to make sense of it all. She writes with love, with good humor, and with great intelligence. I love her voice, her guitar playing, and her songs.

She entered the music world in style in 1992 by winning songwriting contests at both the Kerrville Folk Festival and the Telluride Bluegrass Festival. Since then she has released 10 CDs and written a one-woman show called The Pomegranate Seed – An Exploration of Appetite, Body Image, and Myth in Modern Culture.

The Little Train that Could is one of those songs I can’t stop singing once I start. It uses the story from a classic children’s book to deliver a very different message. Her strong connection to childhood and her ability to use those memories to connect with us is another thing I love about her work. Her writing takes me back to the good memories and to the bad ones too.

Cosy says that My Mother’s House is a song about all the things of childhood that she no longer has. I find My Mother’s House haunting. I suppose it takes me to the childhood I wanted to have or maybe to the one that I tried to make for my children. The fretless bass (Kent Allyn) suspends me across the unfolding picture as it’s being painting. Listen for yourself and let me know what you think.

The last song on the playlist is from Cosy’s most recent release, Eros, and is called Do You Love the Life You Made. Good question. Great song.

At the end of the playlist, I’ve posted the two songs of Cosy’s that I recorded. Lullabies was on Dream, and The Land of 10,000 Mothers was on In White Light You have to know that if I have actually recorded a song, then I think it is brilliant, and both of these songs are jewels.

The first video, George and His 88 Keys, is a song I have alway loved. Now, as I watch my mother suffer from Alzheimers, this song hits me in an even more powerful way. When I hear the line, “he can’t understand his clothes,” I think what a cruel disease Alzheimers is. I love that I can post a live version of this song because you get to hear Cosy’s wonderful introduction about her grandfather and some of her very funny memories of him.

Cosy has a number of funny songs that pepper her live sets and Botox Tango is one of them. The introduction, which is a bit cut off in the video, shows Cosy talking about what an image consultant told her. After a song like George and His 88 Keys, Botox Tango is a wonderful and much needed release.

You can click on Cosy’s photo to visit her website and that the iTunes button will take you to her music there.