Ginny Wilder grew up in a small town outside of Charleston, S.C., and spent a number of years getting a formal education while trying to remain true to herself through songwriting and performing. Lessons in Life & Love is her third CD and features stories in song, mainly laments and lost loves, hidden loves, old loves, parental loves, silent loves and yearnings.

Wilder has a voice as languid and soft as a feather running across your skin, a pleasant and easy listening format. Her acoustic guitar playing is placid and tranquil. Her lyrics tell stories of pain, love and longing, but are tentative about exposing raw emotion. Most of the songs hint at very strong emotions lying beneath the skin but they are veiled, controlled, they don't get out.

I liked the first cut the best. "Lay Your Baggage Down" is strong and tender, and has a powerful sound that touches a chord deep within when she invites "Come, come, lay your baggage down."

"Wash it all Away" describes a painful, slow, controlled, burning emptiness. Her soft voice smothers the pain in the words and this delivery perplexes me: "This anger that covers my body burns like a liquid heat/All the things I should say to you, nothing comes when I try to speak.../I keep listening for the words I love you/Just before they come/And then I wash them all away, wash them all away." "Little Girl, Little Boy" is a tantalizing ballad about a life-long love story, addressing sweetness and innocence.

Wilder is an angelic-sounding herald, bringing a luxurious sound to trapped emotions and silent longings and internal eruptions. She speaks and plays with a southern graciousness and I think this CD is a musical tribute to our internal selves and would have great appeal to those who are on a similar odyssey.

- Rambles
written by Virginia MacIsaac
published 6 April 2003