Anne Marie Menta - When the Love Ran Deep - Music & Performance - CD

Anne Marie Menta's new CD, 'When The Love Ran Deep' is her second release of a dozen original tunes. A native of Hamden, CT, Menta comes from a family of three brothers where playing & listening to music was their great passion. Her musical credits include fronting various rock & roll, folk, and country bands as a singer/guitarist, including The Wanderers, Sugar Moon, Sky Riders, and Rodeo Radio. Menta released her debut CD, 'Untried & True', in 1999 to critical acclaim and gained air play on CT's acoustic music programs. Her second release, 'When the Love Ran Deep' was also recorded and produced by Vic Steffens at Horizon Music Group in West Haven, CT. Released in 2004, the new CD has a more expansive and diverse feel than her intimate debut CD, with touches of fiddle, piano, mandolin, and 12 string Rickenbacker Byrds-like guitar. For fans of heartbreak songs, there are Karla Bonoff -like confessional ballads such as 'Open Door,' or wistful reminiscences such as 'Lilac and Dogwood.' There is also a Cajun flavored up-tempo tune called 'World I Live In' and a jangly folk- rock anthem called 'Nothing Remains the Same.' The personnel on the CD reads like a who's who of Connecticut area musicians, including Armand Morgan,Steve Combs, John Redgate,Vic Steffens, Ken Rieske, Dick Neal, Jon Rodgers, Shellye Valauskas, Kriss Santala, Paul Neri, Jon Peckman, Brooks Barnett, Kate O'Brien, Tom Hagymasi, and Tom Hudson. The long list of musician credits does not distract from the ensemble mission projected by these players in the service of what is really a songwriter's record. The listener is taken on a musical journey that swings from young love and optimism to the lonely acceptance of the closing track, 'Lights Out.' In between are vignettes of heartbreak and happiness, observation and reflection set to haunting melodies and catchy choruses. The poignant ballad, 'Lilac and Dogwood' from 'When the Love Ran Deep' and 'That's My Sister' from the 'Untried & True' CD landed Menta a spot as a finalist in the 2004 South Florida Folk Festival's Singer Songwriter competition.