Pamela Means is a Brooklyn-based Out (spoken), biracial, independent, nationally and internationally touring artist whose “kamikaze guitar style” and punchy provocative songs have literally worn a hole in her guitar. Armed with razor wit poetry and irresistible charm, Pamela Means sets the status quo and the stage afire.
Means’ ardent commitment to interrogating social ills was fostered by her unique childhood experience. In Pamela’s own words, “as the adoptive daughter of a white mother and black father, I learned about dismantling systems of oppression from the inside-out.” She received her first guitar at the age of fourteen, just after her mother died of cancer, and it soon became Pamela’s primary vehicle for expression. It would also serve as a passport out of a life that consisted of poverty, foster homes, and the inner city life of hyper-segregated Milwaukee, WI.
Currently, Means performs over 150 shows a year at colleges, theaters, clubs, coffeehouses, and festivals. She is a favorite at Black History Month and Women’s Month celebrations, Gay Pride events, and Take Back the Night rallies. With Truth as ammunition, a Pamela Means performance brings the fight for social justice and human dignity to the forefront of a new generation.
Means has shared the stage with artists including Ani DiFranco, Joan Baez, Neil Young, Shawn Colvin, Richie Havens, Patty Larkin, Melissa Ferrick, Violent Femmes, Pete Seeger, Janis Ian, and Ferron.
Not only is Means an award-winning, politically-provocative guitar virtuoso, she is also a conservatory trained artist newly fronting her own jazz trio, Pamela Means Jazz Project, in which “Means takes her rightful place among contemporary superstar jazz vocalists such as Cassandra Wilson and Norah Jones” (Curve Magazine).
Means’s sixth and latest album, Pamela Means Jazz Project, Vol. 1, (Wirl Records, 2006) is a resurfacing of her roots in classical and jazz guitar study at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music. Pamela’s “velvet voice” and “tasty” jazz guitar are front and center on this “live in the studio with no overdubs” set, fresh and frisky in classic jazz trio with drums and upright bass.
Pamela Means’s fifth album Single Bullet Theory (Wirl Records, 2003), “Outmusic’s Outstanding New Recording – Female” award winner, was also produced by Means. Single Bullet Theory confronts the USA Patriot Act, racial profiling, and the Bush Administration, while advocating for the rights of marginalized identities. Through the song “O.D.,” “Means fires off what is easily one of the best musical summations of our current political situation..” (Bay Area Reporter, San Francisco, CA).
With her “dizzying acoustic guitar riffs” (Boston Globe) and “powerful songs” (Time Out NY) Means is “redefining acoustic music...”(Washington Blade). Means is currently working on her next acoustic record tentatively titled Annie’s Guitar, which will mark her seventh album release, slated for spring 2008.
