Lina Koutrakos and The Low Country

New York Times - "Why isn't she a national name?"

New York Post -"This is not your average singer. This is a gold mine waiting for the right promoter."

New York Daily News - "Koutrakos is like a smoky volcano of passion, when she erupts it's as if all her raw emotions come roaring from her very core"

Backstage - "Koutrakos burns a song into your consciousness like a vocal laser beam. Her big, sexy smoky voice carries emotional impact and explodes with wild energy."

The Village Voice - "She's white hot. And while she may have started in cabaret, she covered the distance from there to raunch rock with the amazing grace of a confident aerialist. When she sings a song, it stays sung!"

Time Out - "Koutrakos started off in cabaret but her driving intensity gives her genuine blues/rock credibility: a cross between an earth mother and an earthquake."

- Newspapers

Billboard
Chuck Taylor - Senior Editor

Somebody needs to let Lina Koutrakos know that when she sings, "I might be lightning in a bottle," the cork has been sprung. This tornado of a talent ignites a musical maelstrom with every fervent note she delivers, and somehow, she just keeps getting better at it.

An established fixture in New York's blues/rock scene, Koutrakos has been headlining quarterly at downtown live music sanctuary the Bottom Line for a couple years now, gradually relinquishing her persona as cradling earth mama for an authoritative turn as razor-sharp, rafter-raising rock virtuoso, down to her Heart-inspired leather and lace rig.
Show-opener "Here I Am" is quite the call to arms, with equally fiery "I Don't Wanna Be a Fool" baring the raw soul of someone who's been there and can't wait to tell you what they've learned. And yet even as she and her eight-piece, all-guy band knocked about with the intensity of a wrecking crew at her two March 29 shows, Koutrakos upheld an allegiance to the often-neglected fundamental elements of her craft. Without fail, her anthemic, sing-along choruses are wrapped around resolute melodies with honest depth, fronting such universal adult motifs as to have and have not, the inner strength of women, and the regales of mutually consenting seduction.

Despite the gleeful squall of electric guitars (Jean Pierre Perreaux) and kaleidoscopic keyboards (Tony Lauria), the finest moments in Koutrakos' 90-minute set rise from those interludes that are less raucous. The aching ballad "For Now," written and sung with gifted pianist Johnny Rodgers, is old-school country, clawing for Faith Hill and Tim McGraw to bring it to the masses. "Bury Me Deep," a steeple-spun spiritual Koutrakos wrote along a Carolina roadside -- and a signature of her show for many years -- remains a calling card for her appreciable versatility.

And the exotic and undulating "Matia Mou," written with drummer Dan Gross and acclaimed Turkish composer Ayhan Sahin, oozes with luxuriant sensuality, extending a restrained elegance that seldom works so well in a show that's primarily branded by its plugged-in gear. Clearly, Koutrakos is at liberty to choose whether her musical muse sweats or swoons, and she is a master at uniting two distinct styles under one hell of a resonant roof. Fire and ice have never been better bed partners.


- Billboard

LINA KOUTRAKOS Calling Baby Back
PRODUCER: Steven Haigler
WRITERS: L.Koutrakos, M. Harman
PUBLISHER: Plyner Publishing, ASCAP
WKF Music 122 (CD promo)

Ladies and gentlemen, an invitation to feel the pulse of some of the finest blues/rock east of New Orleans. New York-based Lina Koutrakos is beyond simple comparison with her overwhelmingly expressive voice, capable of explaining crisis in soft, pained whispers, then turning at the song's peak into a big earthy mama begging for her discarded man's return: "I been looking in the face of total strangers/Looking for forgiveness in my baby's eyes/There ain't no trace of the moon, and the sky is totally black/And there ain't nobody can hear me calling my sweet baby back." Koutrakos writes her own songs (accompanied on music here by Mark Hartman), assembled her own eight-piece band-driven to beefy perfection by producer Steven Haigler (the Nixons, Fuel)-and has performed before hungry audiences around the Northeast for years.
In addition, she's been splashed with accolades like The Village Voice's best newcomer in the rock category, France's Petit Piaf Award for best foreign performer in Paris, and as a participant in ASCAPS's Advanced Songwriter Workshop and Showcase.

Last Updated ( Thursday, 18 August 2005 )


- Billboard

LINA KOUTRAKOS:Love Grows Here (4:40)
PRODUCER: Richard Barone
WRITERS: L. Koutrakos, D. Gross, JP. Perreaux
PUBLISHER: WKF Music
WKF Music (CD promo)

New Yorkers in the know have been watching rock and blues singer/songwriter Lina Koutrakos' star rise for years now, but at a recent Sept. 11 tribute concert at the famed Bottom Line, she stunned the packed room to a hush and outsang a number of nationally known contemporaries. "Love Grows Here" is a radiant, ambling anthem that pays homage to strength and tenacity. The power of Koutrakos' voice is testimony enough, with a soul-nurtured, robust timbre that hints at both time-worn worldliness and a gracious, positive outlook, independent of the cynicism that so often accompanies social commentary. Her instrumental playmates-acoustic guitar, the shimmer of a cymbal, an insistent bongo beat, and near-tribal background vocals echoing alongside-add an organic texture that is like so many arms wrapped around, as Koutrakos rocks steady with, "Woman bravely/Dreams of moving sea and earth/Trying to define her worth/To know that she's existed." You'll feel yourself breathing in and out in unison with this pied piper of a vocalist, whose ability to blend grit and femininity is a blessed example of true artistry. This song is a gift, this singer is a treasure. Savor for yourself at koutrakos.com.

-CT
- Billboard

LINA KOUTRAKOS
Here I Am (5:05)
Producer: Jean -Pierre Perreaux
Writers: L.Koutrakos, T. Lauria
Publisher: Next Trip (ASCAP)
WFK Music: (CD Track)

* Singer/songwriter Lina Koutrakos is the ultimate tease. Her 1st album was released a decade ago. At last, she issues a new collection of 11 songs on "lightning in a Bottle" led by "here I Am" a powerhouse anthem with which she often opens her concerts. The CD version likely seared the studio walls with the intensity that Koutrakos knocks out here as it builds to blowtorch proportions with patient deliberation and passion. The message is about self-empowerment, spiced with a life lesson or two. This lady uses her poignant words to teach and her mighty melodies to coach the masses. A welcome return-CT

- Billboard