Whats the difference? Well, first of all, with Mednick, its all about the music. As a keyboard player, accordionist and saxophonist, she has worked with a stunning range of musical artists: New Orleans R&B great Earl King, New Zealand pop-accented rockers The Chills, eclectic musical master Alejandro Escovedo, alterna-pop goddess Juliana Hatfield and Texas songwriting legend Ray Wylie Hubbard, to name some but hardly all. As well, she is a recording and performing artist in her own right who has also been a mainstay of such bands as Pop Decay andThe Song Dogs. But she doesn't write songs in order to have something to sing. The songs come to her, so she feels obliged to follow the call of her muse and present them to any and all listeners. Im not a diva, okay? Mednick explains with a laugh. Rather, shes a devotee of the art and the practice of creating music.

Her second album and Texas Music Group debut, Semaphore, is a collection of 12 unique musical and lyrical messages from the soul of a genuine artist. On it, she fashions her own distinctive code from melodies and harmonies, rhythms and grooves, and language and emotions, crafting an album of seductive musical beauty and poetic lyricism that transforms modern pop music into high art. Semaphore is a work where the contributions from some of Austin's best players as well as master guitarist Greg Leisz and longtime friend Peter Holsapple are woven into her compositions rather than merely played and arranged. Mednick sings them in an airy voice that mixes wisdom, desire and vulnerability while her keyboard and accordion playing cast alluring melodic spells that captivate the heart and mind. The music strikes a vibrant balance between musical tradition and contemporary innovation, transcending the all too common pitfalls of genre and styles to become a listening experience that is as unclassifiable as it is captivating and satisfying.

Mednick's personal and musical background is as wide-ranging as the styles, moods and flavors found in her music. The daughter of university professors, she grew up in Boston, Berkeley, Ann Arbor and Washington, D.C. A house we rented somewhere along the way when I was about five years old had a piano in it, and I started picking out songs and asking for lessons, she recalls. Around the home, Mednick absorbed everything from The Beatles to African music to American folk icons like Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly and The Weavers; later inspirations include The Band, Little Feat, Miles Davis, Patti Smith, Bob Marley and The Neville Brothers.

After dropping out of the University of Michigan to play music professionally, she traveled through Washington, D.C. again (where she played on an album by Half Japanese) before landing in New York City and starting her first band, Pop Decay. A 1981 single by the group, Dont Ask Questions, won critical acclaim, and Pop Decay regularly gigged at such Manhattan hotspots as C.B.G.B. and Maxs Kansas City. Her interest in jazz then led Mednick to study with the late, great jazz pianist John Malachi at Howard University. Her love of deep grooves prompted her to follow that with a journey to New Orleans, where she studied saxophone with Charles Neville and spent her first Mardi Gras in town playing with Earl King. She also recorded an album and spent four years playing with The Song Dogs, one of the Crescent Citys most popular acts.

At the end of the 1980s, Mednick migrated to Austin, where she made a name for herself in the acoustic duo Ship of Fools and was a core member of the Alejandro Escovedo Orchestra. In 1991, she was invited to record with The Chills on their Soft Bomb album and then joined the band for the subsequent world tour. A stint playing with Michelle Shocked followed before Mednick returned to Austin the next year to start her band Friendly Fire.

Artifacts of Love, Mednicks 1994 debut album, earned praise as a dark, swirling gumbo (Utne Reader) that was richly evocative (Austin-American Statesman) and marked by artful songcraft (Rolling Stone). The disc was co-produced by Greg Leisz, known for his work with k.d. lang, Dave Alvin, Joni Mitchell and Bill Frissell, among many others. It featured such guests as Lucinda Williams and Charles Neville alongside master drummer Kenneth Blevins (John Hiatt & The Goners) and Austin stalwarts like cellist John Hagen (Lyle Lovet'ts Large Band), bassist Sarah Brown and the late and beloved fiddler Champ Hood.

Mednick describes herself as an introvert who prefers working with other musicians to taking the spotlight herself. To get up and do my own songs is completely against my nature, she explains. But I was inspired to do my own thing after working with The Chills. Martin Phillipps [leader of The Chills] is also an extreme introvert, and I saw him do it, so I figured I could do it too. I feel that I have good songs that merit being heard. To wit, her compositions have invited comparison with everyone from Williams to Brian Eno to Robbie Robertson to The Velvet Underground.

With eight years from one album to the next, Mednick admits that her own career up to now has kind of been an on and off thing with me. Ill probably always be a side person as well because I really enjoy that. What I like is the experience of being in a group and working with other musicians. During the interim between releases, she has played with Tanya Donnelly, James McMurtry, Amy Rigby and Radney Foster.

Semaphore reflects the fact that Mednicks musical vision is one that comes from a process of creative brewing and distillation. My intent with recording is to make up a bed track that can convey the emotion of the song without the lyrics so that the listener can hear the music and get the same feeling that they would get with the lyrics in there. Its a piece of art, like a book, to be absorbed by listeners on their own terms, she explains. When I perform live, its a more direct delivery of the material. I care about the musicianship and want the musicians in the band to be as involved in and pleased by what occurs as I am or the listeners. And its got to have a groove, even if it isnt a groove you can jump up and down to. And it has to have melody.

Or in other words, for Mednick its about the music, and the metaphorical music found in words blended with rhythms, harmonies and melodies. And instead of positioning her creations within a certain sound or category, she prefers to think in terms of textures, moods, emotions and sensuality. The approach marks Mednicks work as a rara avis where the music truly sets the tempo and calls the tune rather than any outside considerations. The reason I record my songs and perform them in public is because I wrote them, she says. For in the end, Lisa Mednick describes who she is and what she does in very basic terms. Im a musician.

Albums by artist:
Semaphore

Listen:
To listen to sample tracks, click the album of choice above.