Jackie Minton’s silky vocals flow through the speakers, carrying thoughts and words that resonate. “Time To” opens with a simple observation about life’s linear path, for instance, while setting the stage for a profession of a love that’s deeper than the dewy-eyed declarations de rigueur of most pop tunes: “Every day is different than the last/With so many days you think that finally it would be the past….” When singing in her low register, which she does throughout, her timbre positively shimmers, reminding me of Carly Simon.
As sweet, Minton borrows from the construct of Ecclesiastes on the chorus. To everything there is a season, after all, and a time for every purpose under the heaven, including when to laugh, cry, dance, and look someone in the eye and say, “I love you.” Think “Turn! Turn! Turn!,” as popularized by the Byrds.
Anyway, although she has an album based on the Bible’s seven books of wisdom on the way, Minton is pursuing a dream beyond music—a teaching career in France, not her native Texas. She’ll soon be imparting the ins and outs of adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, nouns and verbs, aka teaching English, in a public elementary school. (One can almost imagine her, guitar in hand, singing to a classroom full of kids such schoolhouse classics as “Conjunction Junction” and “Noun Is a Person, Place or Thing.”)
The Old Grey Cat 