TITLE: Big Broad
ARTIST: Juliana Luecking
click here for track listing and sound samples

LABEL COMMENTS: A wordcore album that sneaks up on you from under the table with stories about secret lesbians, city street scenes, bodily fluids & taking risks.

DESCRIPTION: Widely played on college radio, Big Broad has thirty spoken-word pieces written and performed by Juliana Luecking, featuring music by Steve Elson, and filled with characters, humor, and experiments with ambient sound.

ARTIST COMMENTS: Try listening alone, with headphones on, in dim light or darkness. Why? I guess because Big Broad can be a personal CD, something that needs attention, with quiet ideas and interesting sound effect choices.

REVIEW: [Headline - Poetry as performance art. ] Flourishing in the glow of today's poetry revival is the rebirth of "spoken word"--loosely defined as performance poetry. Unlike the traditional rhythm and rhyme of poetry, spoken-word performances combine words with acting and, often, music. Brooklyn-based punk poet Juliana Luecking, left (picture), has several independent-label recordings. Popular in gay bars and coffeehouses, the trend has spread, showing up on last summer's Lollapalooza tour and on MTV Unplugged specials. Producers are mulling a spoken-word series. (USA Today, Weekend, December 2-4, 1994)

REVIEW: Luecking is the Mother Teresa, the Aesop, and the Lily Tomlin of punk rock. Her missionary zeal and imaginative wit first charted an unlikely home for her poetry in between hardcore bands in Washington, D.C., eight years ago. Since she moved to New York in 1992, her rib-tickling, heartwarming character sketches have found an audience Downtown ... With her Dixon place run and her upcoming CD, Big Broad, Luecking is riding the crest of two '90's waves: spoken word and lesbian chic. Yet like poetry and sapphire love, her work transcends trends.

Luecking is a mimic genius. In Big Broad, ... she switches from riot grrrl to British matron to prison inmate to pillow talker simply by shifting facial expressions and tone of voice. Her portraits of lesbians at peace with their difference are beacons of strength. (Evelyn McDonnell, Village Voice, June 14, 1994)

REVIEW: Luecking is one, if not the brightest performance artists/spoken worders around, just about annihilating everyone else in the field with a quiet, biting sense of stark reality. (Groundbelly, Summer 1994)

REVIEW: Luecking is a born star, the k.d. lang of spoken word. (Ann Powers, Village Voice, April 1994)

REVIEW: With each postcard or spoken-word piece, you get passionate emotions that feel too real to be passed off as another ranting shtick. (Jason Cherkis, Option Magazine, July/August 1995)

REVIEW: [4 and 1/2 stars] Why I am giving Juliana Luecking's album such a high rating is not because she is star bound rock & roller imitating the voice of familiarity to gain popular acceptance. She is completely original, intellectual and humorous. She knows exactly who she is and expresses herself well.

The pieces on the album are composed of poems, anecdotes, and stories. Some are sung, some spoken to music, others performed in the appropriate voice of the personality she is representing. Their is no rock music. It is her voice expressing her ideas. I recommend it because her style is not-threatening, humorous and offers a "big broad" slice of perspective. (Heidi Soll, Paperback Jukebox, December 1994)

REVIEW: The first piece, OH, on Juliana Luecking's full length CD of spoken word, Big Broad, works well as an introduction to what follows, gritty, biting, and expressionist works, framed by erotic musings and common sense truths. "I think she's got a gun." As a poet Ms. Luecking's voice represents the alleys and sidewalks, parks and boroughs of the city, but it doesn't lose its power when the writing is set in the country. For content she draws on the experience of being a lesbian. For context she places us, impressively, into all areas of life, survival, relationships, work and play. What makes these poems and stories interesting is the intelligence with which they are written. What value they have for us is a functional look at lesbian culture. (Box Boy, Oya #15)

REVIEW: Against a backdrop of sinewy music samples, Luecking--in a beguilingly gentle manner--tells slippery tales about curious intimacies between women. Entirely disarming, she's a wily conjurer of secret erotic moments. (Brian Parks, Village Voice, August 3, 1993)

REVIEW: Though a lot of spoken-word performers come off as stand-up comics without the jokes, Juliana Luecking has a knack for creating edgy, yet humorous, tales about endearing, oddball characters. Get an earful of her off-kilter characters ... (Alan Benson, The Phoenix, Boston, Worcester, Providence, December 9-15, 1994)

REVIEW: On Big Broad, Luecking is joined by composer Steve Elson in a series of 30 stories that range from seven seconds to five minutes long. Some have a sexual bent, while others are gut-busting funny. (Caroline Palmer, Paper Magazine, June 1994)

REVIEW: ...a lucid, loose-limbed storyteller ... this jaunty, big-boned dyke, whose new CD, Big Broad (Kill Rock Stars), offers female characters who are "bigger than your daddy's hand, safer than your treehouse, tighter than your fist," is charting new paths for others. (Victoria Starr, Out Magazine, October 1994)

REVIEW: ...her tightly scripted narratives reveal women in moments of absolute vulnerability, absolute frustration, absolute triumph ... making comedy that is sharp, revolutionary, and gentle. (Elizabeth Zimmer, Village Voice, September 28, 1993)