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ALICE COOPER DUBS HER ‘THE OTHER GIRL NEXT DOOR': SULTRY SINGER-SONGWRITER WENSDAY
BRINGS A FIERY FUSION OF EDGE AND SOPHISTICATION TO CREATE THE EXCITING NEW MUSICAL HYBRID ‘TORCH ROCK'
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This Versatile Performer's Producer On Her Debut Is Legendary Rock Guitarist Dick Wagner (Alice Cooper,Lou Reed, Kiss, Aerosmith), Who Helms Wensday's Powerful Reworking Of The Cooper Classic He Co-Wrote, “Only Women Bleed”
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Wensday Is The Flagship Artist on Phoenix Based Label Desert Dreams, Which Is Launching Her With A Four Song EP To Triple A and Non-Commercial AC Stations Before Releasing ‘Torch Rock' On February 28

A sultry and sweet chanteuse one minute, a bold and edgy rocker the next, singer/songwriter Wensday brings a magical multiple personality to her explosive debut album whose title forges an exciting new musical hybrid: Torch Rock .

Her diverse musical backgrounds as a jazz and rock singer, combined with her blues and classical training make Wensday simply way too cool to peg. Try pigeonholing her as a person, and you fail wonderfully as well. Since graduating with a drama degree from NYU she's complemented her sophisticated jazz gigs with work as a body piercer in renowned tattoo parlors in Miami and Atlanta and teacher, director, vocal coach, playwright and Associate Director at the All Children's Theatre in her hometown of Providence, RI.

The good news is, we don't have to label Wensday; we can just listen to the explosive mix of power rock ballads and uptempo pop songs on Torch Rock and let none other than rock legend Alice Cooper—a native of Phoenix, where Wensday moved to pursue her career last year—sum it up this way: “Wensday is the other girl next door.”

Gearing up for the February 28 release of Torch Rock, Wensday had her local coming out party in the desert at Christmas Pudding, the annual event Cooper does every year for The Solid Rock Foundation, the organization he started to benefit local Christian youths. Sharing a bill with Don Felder, Stephen Stills, pop metal band Tesla and American Idol finalist Ace Young among others, Wensday moved the crowd with heart searing versions of “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” and “Only Women Bleed,” the classic pop ballad Cooper wrote with longtime collaborator and legendary guitarist Dick Wagner (Alice Cooper, Lou Reed, Kiss, Aerosmith, Hall & Oates, AirSupply, Meatloaf, Burton Cummings, among many others). A big fan of Wensdays from the moment he first heard her sing. Wagner produced and wrote or co-wrote all 13 tracks of Torch Rock.

Wensday's powerful take on “Only Women Bleed” draws fresh and renewed attention to its enduring theme of empowering women to overcome the cycle of domestic abuse. It joins three other emotionally compelling songs—“The Rise And Fall Of Love,” “After You” and “Arizona Man”—on a four track EP that Desert Dreams (led by music industry veterans Alex Cyrell and Suzy Michelson) is using as part of a unique incremental radio marketing approach to introducing Wensday's remarkable talents to music fans in North America.

Rather than pick a specific single themselves, Cyrell, Michelson and Wagner are eager to let programmers at Triple A and non-commercial AC stations (public radio, college, etc.) play any and all of the four songs before the label approaches mainstream AC stations. The full 13-song album (which includes two bonus tracks) will hit online outlets like Amazon and CD Baby on February 28, with regional brick and mortar stores following thereafter.

  “After a long time trying to figure out what style I do best, I truly get to do it all on Torch Rock,” says Wensday. “No matter the vibe or tempo of the song, they all convey the most important thing that I'm a singer, and no matter my personal tastes and background, connecting emotionally with people is what I am all about.  It's an honor to work with a producer who is legendary writer and musician, but I think of myself as something of an old soul, so it's a good match. All of the songs on Torch Rock,” are about love, relationships and female empowerment…basically about issues that are meaningful to me.

The first song they wrote together when Wensday moved to Phoenix was, appropriately enough, “Arizona Man,” which is not only geographically relevant but also a declarative statement about Wensday's ambition as a singer/songwriter. “It came from a totally different riff I wrote on the piano, and is about a relationship I got involved in shortly after arriving in Arizona. The question was, what's more important to me, a relationship or my career? The attitude of the song is female empowerment, like you want me but I'm free and independent, and this is the road I'm traveling on.”

Wensday learned jazz from her parents' extensive record collection and from her first voice teacher at age 13, so she gravitated early to the “torchy” part of Torch Rock. She later got into opera and punk rock and was heavily influenced by her friend Melissa, a goth singer/songwriter. She did some studio recordings while attending NYU, but then stopped singing for a few years when she moved to Miami and started working as a body piercer in South Beach. After a relationship that took her to Atlanta didn't pan out, she moved back to New England. One day she happened into a vintage store in Massachusetts, saw a gorgeous 1940s cocktail dress, thought about Billie Holiday and knew she had to get back to singing.

“I was very happy with my life in Providence,” she says. “I loved the balance of working with children during the day and then singing in nightclubs and restaurants at night. I was about to cut a jazz album when everything happened with Suzy and Alex.”

When Michelson and Cyrell came to Providence to check out Brown University for their daughter, they heard Wensday sing and offered her the chance to come to Phoenix to record a demo with their friend and colleague Wagner. The one song demo grew into a three and four song demo, which evolved into a production and management agreement with Desert Dreams, which is launching with Wensday as their flagship artist.

“The rest is in the process of making history,” Wensday says. “My dad has always been my #1 fan, and if I can make him happy by singing, I know I can make the world a better place with my music. It's never been about fame and money for me because those only follow when you do what you love. I just want people to like it and to understand where I am coming from. That's what this great journey is all about.”