Kim McLean's Rapunzel Escapes the Ivory Tower

New Music from Award Winning Songwriter Turned Artist Kim McLean coming in 2009

A songwriter loves the art and solitude of creating songs that make the whole world sing. It’s a wonderful life, when that same songwriter realizes that people a world away can sing or recognize a melody born out of that creative alone time. However, when one spends their entire career in the songwriting cavern, and finally steps out into the sunshine only to find out no one knows they are the creative force behind the songs, everything takes on new meaning.

Such is the story of artist Kim McLean, formerly songwriter, Kim Patton-Johnston. With over 200 song credits to her name from notables like Tim McGraw, Lee Ann Womack, and recent Grammy nominee Bettye Lavette, Kim McLean has certainly proven her chops as a genre-less creator of quality song. But for every note she’s lived, Kim realized that her calling was not only to share songs through others but to share them with others by stepping into the artist spotlight herself.

From her first forays into artistry, Kim McLean has gained the support of country music royalty, like Dolly Parton who joined Kim for a beautiful duet called “Angels and Eagles” on Kim’s Happy Face CD. Stepping forth with true songs of experience that deal with addiction, broken relationships, motherhood, and making lemonade out of life’s lemons Kim McLean speaks to the heart of the wise woman who’s done it, and lived to see the other side of it. For every person, man or woman, Kim McLean writes songs that speak of reaching into the sky and grabbing that Divine ring of purpose we are all called to grasp.

In February 2009, Kim McLean’s follow-up to her Happy Face CD on Hippie Chick Twang Records will be released. It is an autobiographical explosion of joy marking one woman’s portrayal of dreams-become-real in Rapunzel’s Escape, a collection of fourteen songs that tell the truth and nothing but the truth. Weaving contemporary sounds of hit country with Appalachian roots, thumpin’ gospel, and R&B, this North Carolina native shares the secrets of a lifetime in an album that bounces with groove and anthemic challenge. Kim McLean’s music is a hybrid sound of mountains-meet-Memphis coined “Appalachi-groove”. Some songs on the Rapunzel collection have been hits for others, but McLean’s version sounds different, perhaps because many of the stories are her own, or the stories of those close to her.

Her own victory over addictive illness, a series of broken hearts, and missed chances are named, claimed, and renovated in her melodic ode to happiness, proving that joy is just as sweet when it is hard earned through experience. This isn’t the latest “teen- craze-I-just-got-my-first-boyfriend-crush-and-I-think-he-likes-me-back” kind of project. It’s meaty, with the grit and stamina of a survivor who has walked through the fire, yet wears her scorched heart with grace. She’s escaped the ivory tower of society and the supposed constraints of the industry, into a big sky, and a new glorious taste of freedom, grateful for the past that gave her the ability to fly in the first place.

Kim McLean’s new CD, Rapunzel’s Escape will be in stores, on radio, and on-tour beginning in February 2009. Available on iTunes, Amazon, CDBaby, and wherever fine music is sold, Kim McLean will be launching her new CD via Digital Rodeo. Kim McLean can be found on ReverbNation, myspace, facebook, and on her own website, www.kimmclean.com.