2009.09.26
Homegirl Debrissa McKinney is on the latest Karl Denson's Tiny Universe CD
Photo courtesy Roger Gupta
We love Debrissa McKinney here at the cutnscratch blog. After all, she was always a highlight during roanoke.com's ill-fated and rarely remembered TimesCast.
She'd come in every now and then and do the weather for us (we liked to use excellent guests for our meteorology-bereft weather segments), and she was always so sweet and nice and open to our goofiness.
As we've reported before, the James River High School graduate moved to Asheville a while back, to join the funky Laura Reed and Deep Pocket. But as you can tell if you go to the band's MySpace.com page, Reed took some time off to have a baby. McKinney, though, has been staying busy.
She and Reed both sing harmony vocals on the recently record from jam/jazz great Karl Denson's Tiny Universe, "Brother's Keeper." Go check it out. It's a hot disc.
McKinney didn't play sax on the CD, but she wrote in an e-mail on facebook.com, "I did take my sax with me to record so I could get a lesson from Karl and it was awesome."
Lately, she's been touring with Josh Phillips Folk Festival. The band was in an Internet voting contest to go on Jam Cruise 8, which launches from Florida on Jan. 3. It lost by just 23 votes to Ryan Montbleau Band (which played Roanoke's Kirk Avenue Music Hall earlier this year), but the cruise invited Phillips to bring himself and a couple band members on board. McKinney will set sail with the trio, and I'm sure she'll blow some minds.
