Terri Hendrix
“Own Your Own Universe” 

When Terri Hendrix walked away from her opera scholarship in college, it was only because she found the classical music path too narrow for her free spirit. But there was just no shaking her love of music. Armed with the Mississippi-John-Hurt-style guitar chops she learned from her mentor, Marion Williamson, in exchange for milking goats on the philanthropist’s Wilory Farm, Hendrix began hauling her own P.A. in the back of her beat-up pick-up to gigs throughout the Texas Hill Country. From her native San Antonio to the live music hotbed of Austin and every small town honky-tonk and coffee shop in Texas, it wasn’t long before the fans started adding up and Hendrix had to recruit some of them to help her keep up with her mailing list. All this in the pre-email/Web site dark ages of the early ’90s.

By the time she got around to recording her debut album, 1996’s Two Dollar Shoes, Hendrix did what most artists still did at the time, and shopped around for a record label. She was turned down by three, none of which are still in business. She released the record independently, and never looked back. Now, nine self-released albums later, Hendrix is still thriving — and grateful she made the fateful decision more than a dozen years ago to not only follow her own path through her music career, but to ultimately “own her own universe.”

Hendrix readily attributes this tenacious goal as one of the most important life lessons she learned from Williamson, who died in 1997 but continues to serve as a constant source of inspiration. Hendrix has paid tribute to her late friend through the name of her own label (Wilory Records), her choice of mascot (a stubborn goat, of course), and, perhaps most profoundly, in her song “Acre of Land,” from her 2007 album, The Spiritual Kind.

Hendrix’s own acre of land (1.7 acres, to be exact) is tucked away in the Central Texas hippie college town of San Marcos. But her days of playing the same old regional honky-tonks on a weekly basis are far behind her. In the wake of her breakthrough 1998 sophomore album, Wilory Farm, and 2000’s Places in Between — both of which were met with widespread Triple-A, Americana and public radio support — Hendrix’s grassroots fanbase spread like wildflowers across America and all the way to Europe. Fortunately, by then the World Wide Web had caught up with her, enabling her to better manage her label, bustling e-commerce store and mailing list (at that point up to 50,000 fans) from both home and on the road. For the last decade, Hendrix has toured constantly, packing listening rooms and theaters from coast to coast and also playing before thousands at such premiere events as the Newport Folk Festival, the Philadelphia Folk Festival and, closer to home, the Texas State Fair at the Cotton Bowl, the Austin City Limits Music Festival and the Kerrville Folk Festival. She’s also appeared on the nationally syndicated World Café and Mountain Stage radio shows, and her songs have been included on numerous compilation CDs by Putumayo World Music and influential radio stations like Philadelphia’s WXPN, Austin’s KGSR and Tucson’s KXCI (among others).
What’s truly remarkable, however, is the fact that Hendrix still finds a way to connect with her audience with the same intimacy on which she launched her career. No matter how big the gig, she spends at least an hour after every single show signing CDs and greeting fans old and new — and old and young. Hendrix says that’s its not uncommon for her to find three generations of fans at her shows, including many who’ve been onboard since before her first album, and she credits that to the years she’s put into winning them over, one show at a time. “I’m in this for the long haul,” she says, noting the many ways in which she’s seen the music industry change over the last dozen years. Today, it’s not unheard of for an independent artist to not only bypass label deals but also achieve almost overnight mainstream success, thanks in large part to the rise of MySpace, YouTube and the hype-happy blogosphere. More power to them, but short cuts have never been Hendrix’s style. “What gets lost in that,” she observes, “is the sense of connection that you’re able to make with people through your music when they have a chance to grow with you. I’ve always thought of my fans as friends, and they’re lifelong listeners of what I do.”

The appeal is easy to understand. Hendrix is one of the most strikingly original singer-songwriters working today, as befits an artist who cites the varied likes of Ella Fitzgerald, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Sonny Terry, John Prine, and even the British techno-country-blues ensemble Alabama 3 among her biggest influences. Across the eclectic breadth of her catalog, which in addition to the aforementioned albums also includes 2002’s The Ring, 2004’s The Art of Removing Wallpaper, 2005’s Celebrate the Difference, Hendrix has covered every genre from folk to country to pop to blues to Celtic to Tex-Mex to jazz to Western swing. She even scored a satellite radio hit in the punky scream-along “Nerves” from the kids album, and co-wrote a Grammy winning country instrumental (“Lil’ Jack Slade”) on the Dixie Chicks’ multi-platinum 2003 album, Home. Factor in her charming stage presence, top-notch musicianship (guitar, mandolin and harmonica), lyrics as smart and thought-provoking as they are heartfelt and personal and a classically trained but twang-kissed voice that’s as potent as an intimate whisper as when she pushes it to a full-on scat, and it’s no wonder why Harp observed, “Anyone with a heart is hooked.”

Hendrix covered all production, manufacturing and publicity costs for her latest release, The Spiritual Kind, through pre-orders on her Web site alone. The album was also a featured release on iTunes, spent several weeks on the Americana Chart and topping the Roots Music Report’s Folk chart and landed Hendrix on the cover of the nationally distributed Texas Music magazine. Not surprisingly, it garnered some of the best reviews of her career and found a home on many critics’ year-end Top 10 lists. “Though the Texas troubadour’s matter-of-fact whimsy keeps her message from becoming overbearing, a seriousness of purpose underscores this song cycle about the ways in which spirituality informs everyday life,” wrote Don McLeese for Amazon.com. And the raves kept coming right into 2008, with Performing Songwriter spotlighting the album as a lead “DIY Pick” in May.

As one of the few artists anywhere who can proudly lay claim to owning all of their own masters, Hendrix is indeed a DIY queen. Though she’s consistently insisted she’s “not a business person,” she’s worked as hard at “the part that’s not art” as she has the part that is art — and shares her creative spirit and seasoned wisdom on both with the students in her periodic “Life’s a Song” workshops. Each workshop exposes songwriters and musicians of all levels to a positive, non-critical and creative atmosphere for a weekend.

In addition to preparing for this fall’s two sold-out “Life’s a Song” workshops in Port Aransas, Texas, Hendrix will spend the rest of the year touring the country in support of The Spiritual Kind and road testing new music. She also has a book in the works — a collection of her road journals and popular “Goat Notes” newsletters which, just like her songs, come straight from this one-of-a-kind, Own Your Own Universe-er’s heart.

“Simply put, Terri Hendrix creates the kind of music that makes you feel good, conceived and delivered with utter sincerity.” — Texas Music Magazine