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(Brenda Wilkinson and Pat Duran)
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| Front Cover of Our CD |
The "Halfway to Heaven" CD is available
and ready to be shipped. See below to order yours from CD Baby!
Welcome to our web site!
Songwriting duo Brenda Wilkinson and Pat Duran have been
writing songs together since 1997. Halfway to Heaven, their first collaborative CD, is a collection of original material,
as well as a few covers of selected works with a connection to their home state of New Mexico.
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| Pat Duran |
Pat’s musical background started early in Albuquerque’s south valley.
As a small child he and his mother would sing together to pass the time while waiting for Pat’s father to get
home from late night shifts at work. She taught him how to sing harmonies, which
seemed natural to him. He was startled when, later in life, he learned that not
every family sings harmonies together. He soon picked up the guitar and was playing
in bands by the age of twelve.
In the early eighties he joined the Army. His musical ability didn’t
go unnoticed there either, and he ended up winning military talent contests and was ultimately chosen to trade his combat
boots for a microphone for a year in a USO-type tour called Showtime USA. After
the tour was up he returned to combat related positions for the remainder of his tour of duty.
Duran returned to his hometown of Albuquerque and started performing as a solo act for the first time, with a variety
act including everything from ‘40s jazz to country to rock and oldies. He
took his act on the road but eventually landed up in Albuquerque. He found that
the music scene was thriving there with jam sessions and songwriter competitions popping up everywhere. He jumped right in and won four New Mexico Songwriter of the Year competitions in the 90s, resulting in
his music or performance being on four albums resulting from the New Mexico’s Best project.
It was at one of these competitions that he met singer-songwriter Jim Jones, leading to a popular club act Duran and
Jones and the album Tucumcari Tonight. His harmonies still with him, one writer
for the Albuquerque Journal called Duran and Jones “the Simon and Garfunkel of Country Music”. They made it to Nashville in the Charlie Daniels’ Talent Roundup (similar to today’s Nashville
Star) and a spot on national TV. Of the Nashville experience Duran says: “It was like a splash of cold water on my face. The whole big fish in small
pond type story”. This is when Pat realized that great imitations of other
acts was great for the club circuit, but to go to the next level he’d need to find his own style. Pat performed with other bands as well, opening for national acts like The Judds and the Bellamy Brothers.
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long after this he met songwriter Brenda Wilkinson…
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| Brenda Wilkinson |
Brenda was sitting in a Cultural Anthropology class at UNM in 1992, troubled
by a rocky relationship. As she was taking class notes, her thoughts and emotions
ended up on the paper too, in the form of her first song It’s Over Forever Again. “It would have no more occurred to me to write a song than perform brain surgery” says Wilkinson. “It just spilled out on the page and that was the beginning”. She continued to write songs, but not being a part of the music world, didn’t know where to go from
there. Her career had taken her to Socorro, an hour south of Albuquerque, where
she met Pat Duran in 1997 where he had a gig at the Sports Page. The two got
to know each other, and when Pat looked at her portfolio of songs he realized that she had something.
What she had was a gift for the turn of a phrase, and for using words to make
an emotional connection with the listener. “Working out the flesh of a
song and the lyrics, and properly telling the story always seemed to be my greatest challenge.” says Duran. “Working with Brenda on the first few originals I quickly realized that these were her strengths”.
Brenda had a gift for telling a story and conveying emotion, but without a
background in music she had limitations. “That’s where Pat came in”
says Brenda. “He taught me about the structure and parts of a song, and
his confidence and guitar playing ability really took things to another level”.
“Our strengths really complement each other” adds Brenda.
The two ended up writing about 60 songs over the next eight years. Brenda is the primary lyricist and Pat is the primary creator of melodies and arrangements, but “every
song happens in a different way” say the two, “sometimes we trade places”.
After an eventful hot air balloon
ride in Albuquerque, Pat called Brenda and said “Hey, we’ve got to write a song about ballooning; it’s such
a part of the Albuquerque and New Mexico experience”. Brenda started
working on concept and began penning some lines. Pat came down to Socorro and
they finished the song, the title track of the new album “Halfway to Heaven”.
The two call their songwriting partnership Rockin’ WD, and their logo is a brand.
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| Penny Davis |
Pat heard Penny Davis sing at a jam session and knew that hers was the female voice the album
needed. Penny has performed with local bands and won the Bud Light Searchlight contest when she was 21. She is now raising
her two boys and is a full time student at the University of New Mexico, and on the Dean's List we might add.
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