Coyote Records

Myra Holder

New York City is home to many people whose hearts belong somewhere else. Myra Holder is one of those people. Her debut album, Four Mile Road, is a postcard home to the people, towns, and backwoods of North Carolina that inspire her music. Four Mile Road was produced by fellow North Carolina expatriate, Chris Stamey.

Myra has been performing in and around the New York area since the early '80's. Her first band, The Problem, was a naive pop group that Interview magazine cited as one of the highlights of the New York Noisefest of 1981. Her next band, Never Never, a tough, Crazy Horse-style, girl combo, featured Karen Hagl (of Band of Susans) on guitar. Myra is currentiy performing with Peter Moser (The Bottlecaps, Tall Lonesome Pines) on drums, Tom Quinn on mandolin, Jim Nordstrom on bass, and Dave Schramm (The Schramms, ex-Yo La Tengo) on guitar.

In her teen years Myra belriended a Clowd of young musicians in Winston-Salem. Chris Stamey, Peter Holsapple, Will Rigby, Mitch Easter, Faye Hunter, Gene Holder, Don Dixon and other musicians were part of a so-called "combo corner" of longhairs and other R. J. Reynolds High School misfits.

One of Myra's earliest musical memories is of falling in love with the songs of Roy Orbison. She pays homage to the late, great Roy with a cover of "It’s Over" on Four Mile Road. Indeed, Myra's music shares an emotional link with Roy in the haunting songs of loss and Ioneliness... dark but hopeful and stirring in spirit. Her favorites of the nine original songs on the album are "Rosa,' featuring Tom Quinn's mandolin 'epiphany,' "Pretty Blue,' which is actually a melancholy pep-talk Myra penned to herself, and 'Never Never,' capped by Dave Schramm's moving guitar solo finale. Also covered is Alex Chilton's "Blue Moon,' a grown-up lullaby that Myra was born to sing.

The real Four Mile Road exists in rural North carolina near Myra's birthplace. A lonely blacktop in the woods, 'It seemed like a place of great romantic mystery and possibility... I always wondered what went on down that road,” says Holder. She recently traveled the road for the first time with her new husband, Tom Quinn. Tom and Myra are expecting their first baby around the time of the release of Four Mile Road.

- from Myra’s 1989 bio from Coyote Records