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The road to musical success has been long and winding
for singer/songwriter Tina Thornhill and her band Thornhill. The group just released its first CD, Center of Town, and Tina is
euphoric. “It’s amazing. We’re flying high,” she
says. “I hold the disks in my hand and can’t believe what
I’m seeing.”
In 1983 Tina and her band moved to
Springfield, where the group, which included Patty Kniss on drums, played
the bar scene and became known as the only local group that could
righteously cover songs by Rush and Heart.
Eventually the band went into
hibernation, but Tina continued to write and play in an acoustic combo with
guitarist Joel Zulauf. A few years ago, Tina’s sister Lynna took up
bass duties, and Kniss rejoined the group. Then, with a concentration on
original music and the addition of Terri Patterson on backing vocals, the
band Thornhill came back to life. “We’re friends and
family,” Tina says. “We’ve come to learn signs and
signals from each other that are just second nature when we’re
playing. I think we have a real synergy.”
That combination of friendship,
kinship, and musicianship gives the CD cohesion; Tina’s lyrics and
expressive vocals ride the wave of the band’s strikingly tight,
smooth music. The recorded sounds are distinctly modern and pop-rockish yet
rootsy, inventive, and unique. The original tracks were recorded at Joe
Tury’s Red Room, in Williamsville, then taken to Ric Major at
Springfield’s Middle Option Music for mixing and mastering and
especially for finding the sounds Thornhill heard in their collective head.
“Ric is the best,”
Tina says. “He’s great at listening to the direction and
ideas we have and then helping us really shape the songs and make them come
to life.”
Center of
Town, the recording debut for both band and
songwriter, is a song perspective of Tina’s residence in downtown
Springfield during 2002. The lyrics of the title track
picture her stay as a soothing, healing visit — a centering
experience, one might say. “The culture downtown is
therapeutic. I wrote many of the songs on the CD while I was living
there,” she says. “Most of these songs are from a such a
personal place, but what’s wonderful is when people
claim them and make them their own. That’s one of my favorite things
about being a songwriter.”
Thornhill
hosts a CD release party celebrating its debut, Center of Town, at 8:30 p.m.
Saturday, March 31, at the Hoogland Center for the Arts. Proceeds from the
sale of CDs will benefit the American Cancer Society and the American Heart
Association.
Contact Tom Irwin at tirwin@illinoistimes.com.
This article appears in Mar 22-28, 2007.
