Minton Sparks
BIOGRAPHY
Performance Formats:
Spoken word artist Minton Sparks is in a category all her own fusing poetry and her intoxicating gift for storytelling into a series of one woman performances punctuated with world class music. Sparks peeks over the edge into the warm spot where most would prefer sleeping relatives lie. In Open Casket, travel with Minton to a family funeral where most of the characters are alive and kicking. Minton Sparks is available for storytelling festivals, concerts, conference keynotes and writing workshops on "mining our own stories".
Sparks released her first book of poems with performance DVD in April, 2007. Desperate Ransom (Thomas Nelson Publishing) shares her memories of growing up in small-town Tennessee. Sparks' family may not walk the straight and narrow, but they're guaranteed to walk straight into the audience's heart and linger, leaving all with something essential to ponder. Her first novel, White Lightning (Thomas Nelson), will be published in April, 2008.
In the past two years, Grammy-nominated Sparks was featured nationally on the NPR's All Things Considered and internationally on the BBC's Bob Harris Show, along with the syndicated Woodsongs' Old Time Radio Hour. This past year Minton was the keynote performer at the International Art and Healthcare Conference sponsored by Vanderbilt University, she also performed at The Personal Historians Conference, National Women's Book Conference and The Southern Women's Writing Conference in Rome, GA alongside authors Jill McKorkle and Kaye Gibbons. Minton will be performing in the spring of 2008 at Vanderbilt University's Spring Symposium (Beyond Our Beginnings: Women Writers from Lower and Working Class Backgrounds) alongside writer Dorothy Allison.
Sparks has performed at New York City's Bowery Ballroom, opening for Ben Folds and at the Bowery Poetry Club in Manhattan's East Village. She performed at the Americana music festival MerleFest, receiving a thunderous reception, The Old Towne School of Folk in Chicago and toured with John Prine. In 2006, she wrapped up a four part Tennessee Performing Arts Series, Minton Sparks and Friends featuring Jessi Colter and Rodney Crowell, and played to sold-out houses and rave reviews each night. She received rave reviews in Santa Barbara, California at the Trinity Backstage Songwriter Series and has showed her slip at Mississippi Public Broadcasting's Thacker Mountain Radio recorded in Oxford, Mississippi and Georgia Public Broadcasting's Evening Star.
Minton Sparks travels extensively, performing at various Universities, clubs, conferences and music and poetry festivals sharing her brand of performance poetry and her workshops on creative writing with audiences nationwide. She most often performs with ace guitarist, John Jackson (see bio below). Sparks graduated from the University of the South with a BA in Psychology and then from Vanderbilt University in 1991 with a Master's of Education in Human Development Counseling. Awarded the "Leonard Bernstein Fellowship" in 1998, Sparks soon began to teach poetry within the Tennessee high school system offering classes that were funded by the fellowship. Sparks served as adjunct professor of Psychology at Tennessee State University for the past 13 years in addition to teaching several classes in Women's Psychology at Middle Tennessee State University as her writing and touring career blossomed. She resides in Nashville with her husband and two children.
Sparks most recent CD catalogue release was Sin Sick, produced by Grammy winning Gary Paczosa, (Reba McEntire, John Prine, Alison Krauss, The Dixie Chicks), and guides us into the soul's dark struggle led by Sparks' riveting spoken word and is punctuated with poignant comic relief. On this recording Sparks picks the lock on her family's hidden stories, drawing listeners into her world with charming familiarity and heart-breaking candor, pulling each character up into her arms for a memorable dance across the stage. Her collaborators on Sin Sick include Nickel Creeks' mandolinist Chris Thile, veteran Bob Dylan guitarist, John Jackson, piano virtuoso, Steve Conn and bluegrass sensation, Abigail Washburn.
Sparks' CD debut on Dualtone, Middlin' Sisters, was "one of the finest spoken word recordings issued in America in more than ten years" [Thom Jurek, allmusic.com]. On that recording she collaborated with the late, legendary Waylon Jennings, and current singer/songwriter sensation Darrell Scott. Her second CD, This Dress, won "Spoken Word Record of the Year" in 2004 at the Just Plain Folk Music Awards, and got the nod from the Chicago Sun Times for "Top Five Off the Beaten Path Records of 2003". This Dress features collaborations with artists like Keb' Mo' and Irish singer, Maura O'Connell.
John Jackson - Bio
John Jackson is a Nashville native. He is an A-list guitarist with a wide range of influences. Perhaps his most well known music is from the period when he played with Bob Dylan for seven years (1991-97). Most recently playing in the Twyla Tharp/ Bob Dylan new musical, "Times They are A-Changin" at the Old Globe in San Diego, California and on Broadway in New York City. Jackson has also made TV appearances on Jay Leno's Tonight Show, Late Night with David Letterman, MTV Unplugged and Austin City Limits. He's also played on the road with Lucinda Williams on her Grammy-winning "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road" tour, and with Shelby Lynne, on her "I am Shelby Lynne" tour. John Jackson and Minton Sparks have been on the road together for several years.
Recent press on Minton Sparks:
"The Nashville poet and storyteller unearthed another set of wondrous vignettes that once again drew an unforgettable picture of life in the South. Sparks has a unique niche that soulfully marries the Southern storytelling tradition with the strains of old-time music for a hybrid that is all her own." Chicago Sun Times
"Like a backwoods Lucinda Williams or Gillian Welch, or perhaps more accurately, an existentialist Jo Carol Pierce, Minton Sparks has an eye for detail and a flair for story telling that marks her as an unmitigated original" No Depression
"Minton Sparks sounds like my momma, and my aunt Dot, and my aunt Grace and even a bit like my Uncle Jack—only better and wilder and heartbreakingly more powerful." Dorothy Allison
"Minton Sparks writes with mysticism and satire and reads with so much rhythm and reflection she's an instrument all her own." Acoustic Guitar Magazine
"This Dress" is an album for everyone, no matter who they are or where they're from, the walk of life is offered here, step by step with roughshod grace, a twinkle in the eye, and the passing of another day. Brilliant." All Music Guide
