home bio press
tour dates website

With Grand Design, her debut recording for Wind River Records, singer-songwriter Cosy Sheridan takes a different direction from her previous albums. Instead of chronicling the wide range of moods and humor that make up her concerts, she explains, "I wanted to make an album that was of-a-piece. My approach was, 'if this were the last album I could make, what would I say?'"

True to form, she has said plenty. Notorious for musically mouthing off about subjects other singers seldom address- from AIDS and legalized prostitution to anorexia and environmentalism, Cosy's musical approach places her in a class apart. As the Boston Globe has observed, "Her user-friendly musical philosophy sets her happily apart from the myopic, self-involved songwriter so often lambasted by everyone. She's a wonderfully lively, very funny and enormously amiable entertainer, with a keen and wicked eye for the excesses of our fast-food, tv-happy and noisome culture."

Cosy showcases a new maturity on Grand Design. It is the fifth album - and her best work to date - in a short but prolific career as an unapologetically tuneful singer-songwriter who doesn't shy away from the most uncomfortable corners of life, and whose often intimately personal songs bring out the best in our shared humanity. The bulk of the songs on the new album were written within a three-month period with the exception of "Masterpiece," a reworking of a song from her first cd, 1990's Late Bloomer. Recorded in Boston and L.A., Grand Design enlists a small ensemble of instrumentalists in support of Sheridan's warm alto voice, with some startling results. The darkest cut in the collection, a song about abuse titled "A Bad Cliche", uses the normally upbeat banjo as a solo instrument to add chilling poignancy to the lyric narrative.

The album opens with "Don't Go in the Water", a powerful song akin to Bruce Cockburn's "If I Had A Rocket Launcher", about a uranium mill which sits adjacent to the Colorado River near her home in Moab, Utah, leaching toxic chemicals into the water.

Halfway through the collection Cosy shifts gears with the optimistic "I Won't Worry Anymore" and the gospel-tinged "Tell Me It All Works Out In The End"; and the album concludes with the title cut, a brief but joyous song based on a favorite book from her childhood, "Harold and The Purple Crayon." "Harold is the ultimate metaphysical hero," Cosy maintains, "He draws his world into reality."

Another children's book, "The Little Engine That Could," is the springboard for "The Little Train," with its seemingly cheerful resolve to climb whatever mountains life puts in the way: "I think I can, I think I can." But Sheridan adds a final line, "I think I can slow down," explaining, "It's about, 'How much is enough?'. And is there ever enough? I have friends who are trying to be Supermoms, to have it all; but they're unable to slow down in their lives. It takes a toll."

In 1994 Cosy moved to the canyon country of southeast Utah. "I wanted to get a long way from any other noise and see what I could hear within," she explains. As evidenced by Grand Design, she has heard a great deal. Insight is a major component of this album, one of those rare treasures born of an artist's self-challenge to make a definitive statement. These are songs that come from her heart, from the triumphs and challenges that with Cosy's deft turn of phrase also move outward from a singular, personal experience to a universal one.

"I've been lucky to have gotten a lot of life experiences in a survivable form," Cosy muses, "in a low enough dosage that I could write about them. Practicing wakefulness is extremely important in my own life, and for me music is a means to that awakening. I want people who hear my music to come away feeling awake in their lives."

There are two ways to purchase any of the CDs on this site. 1) Just write down the names or stock numbers of the items you are interested. When you have chosen your items, go to Rediscover Music and type them into the "Search" field. 2) Click on the "Order Now" link next to the item you want to buy. This link will take you directly to that item at our Rediscover Music site. Once there, click "buy" to put the item into your shopping cart. If you would like to order more items, use your browser's "Back" button to come back here and continue browsing, or use the links to the left of the screen to see more items. You will be able to browse through all our available titles and view the song listings, too!