For the uninitiated, Tracy Grammer rose to acclaim as one half of the duo, Dave Carter & Tracy Grammer. Called "one of the fastest-rising acts in folk music" by the Boston Globe, the duo released three internationally acclaimed albums featuring Carter's award-winning postmodern, mythic Americana song craft; toured with Joan Baez as her backing band and spotlight artists; and earned a diverse and devoted following with their indelible live performances at festivals and venues all across North America. (See www.daveandtracy.com for the complete Dave & Tracy story.)

Just as the duo seemed poised to receive much-deserved mainstream recognition, Carter died suddenly of a heart attack while touring with Grammer in July, 2002. He was 49.

Three years later, Grammer has emerged from the darkness of tragedy -- armed with the richness of her experience with Carter, and the help of a few new friends -- with her first full-length solo album, the beautifully textured Flower of Avalon.

Flower of Avalon, named after a song Carter penned as a gift for Grammer in 1999, features nine previously unrecorded Dave Carter gems, delivered with a loving clarity that only Tracy Grammer can provide. Multi-tasking masterfully here as co-producer, singer, and instrumentalist, Grammer digs deep into the spirit of Carter's poetic verses and haunting melodies to color each song with textures and flourishes that blur the boundaries of categorization. The result is a bold, rewarding, and transcendent love letter to the world, one of those rare musical experiences that compels the listener to drop everything and hear each song in sequence, start to finish.

As Grammer herself puts it, "Dave was a fearless songwriter. He searched well beyond the reaches of everyday influence and experience and wrote from the deeper realms of myth, sound, and dream. He dug deep, and wrote from a place where we're all the same. That's why his words resonate the way they do."

And they will continue to resonate among larger and larger audiences as long as the extraordinarily talented Tracy Grammer continues to celebrate and share them as she has on Flower of Avalon.