Sometimes progress moves in surprising directions; in Beth Bombara's case, maybe it's sideways, or even backwards. Bombara started dipping her toes in the live music realm at the age of 17. Ditching six years of piano training, she picked up the guitar and started an all girl punk band in her hometown, Grand Rapids, MI. Moving 45 miles east of St. Louis to finish college, her musical direction followed a sharp curve. She took a few steps backward as front woman to tour as backup gunslinger for newfound friends Jenny McIntyre and Samantha Crain. Somewhere in the middle of her trip from the front of the stage to the back, her own songs began to resemble, well, all three of the above, underscored by a musical octopus act of juggling multiple instruments in both her own recordings and her live outings. All these experiences sparked an early 20's renaissance, which found her drinking in the wealth of influences during frequent moves between Grand Rapids, St. Louis, Martha's Vineyard, and Oklahoma City. The principle challenge for such an artist is, of course, to retain and recast an identity through the hurricane of discoveries and changes; Beth Bombara's answer to that challenge is the Abandon Ship EP.

These six songs refocus and reunite the diverging threads of Bombara's musical coming of age, retaining the urgency of her punk origins through the rural southern and experimental mystic threads of her respective tourmates, and marking each with the touches of an unhasty maturity. The progress, again, isn't in any particular direction, but lateral, both forward and sideways, up to the microphone but with a certain clarity derived from time well spent in the shadows. Beth Bombara is singing and playing with a confidence that consistently delivers without over-reaching, continually proving herself while clearly showing that she's got nothing to prove. Her writing, her playing, her singing -- it's all moving in all directions at once, but just as quickly and inevitably inward, back to a powerfully grounded center, and it's just as sure to keep all listening ears coming back, over and over, to the source.

Beth currently lives in St. Louis, and also plays drums for the David Beeman Band, and guitar and keyboards with Circa.