She's got
her mojo going
Portland m usician
Lynn Frances A nderson
plays well w ith others
by
L isa B radshaw
There’s a lady standing on a lake bank
Singing, “Oh what a Beautiful Morning”
And her voice sings like an Angel singing,
“Oh what a Beautiful Morning"
SK
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PHOTOS BY
M a ry G u it r o n
AND
M a r ty D a v is
I DARE YOU look into my eyes— touch
my skin— turn around, turn around —
Assault Me, Again!
Anderson grew up in St. Helens, Ore., and
came out to her parents at 17.
“1 was confused,” she recalls. “I was a kid
from a small town, and I just wanted someone
to listen and help me, because it didn’t make
sense to me. What I was met with was anger.”
That parental rejection has never been
resolved. She’s now 35 years old; her parents
continue to ignore her identity and even her
life partner. This struggle is part of My Famous
Friend. Abuse is another part.
“That was just life in our house. It was
tough,” Anderson says. “You learn by being in
a household where somebody can hit you at
any moment, you learn how to watch your
back.”
Anderson found some solace in music.
Every summer she went to her grandparents’
house, where her grandpa taught her how to
play the guitar. She said goodbye to grandpa’s
guitar at age 18, when her parents bought her
one— “I still have that guitar,” she says, “and I
still play it.”
Continued on Page 21
PHOTO BY MARTY DAVIS
- —
'
O
n a recent beautiful morning, I met with
local singer-songwriter-guitarist Lynn
Frances Anderson at Touchstone Coffee
House in Northeast Portland. She is
about to release her second independent CD,
Beautiful Morning, and is busy rehearsing for
her C D release concert at the Aladdin Theater
on June 3.
“I feel like I did a good
thing with this last one,”
she says. “1 think it’s good.”
It ought to be.
Anderson has pulled
together some of the finest
musicians in the country to
help create this upbeat,
bluesy array of songs, which
collectively represent, she
explains, “a celebration album.”
The emotion is a far cry from the overall
feeling of Anderson’s 1997 debut, My Famous
Friend. Although that album’s sound is light
blues and easy listening, its lyrics portray tough
and painful times.
“With the first CD, everything was a fight,”
claims Anderson. “Everything was a struggle.”
I ask her what she was fighting, what was
she struggling with, and she repeats “every­
thing.”