"I have seen Minton Sparks and if she's not the ghost child of the woman who wrote Wise Blood and the man who sang "I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive", then cotton doesn't grow in a cotton field." - Marshall Chapman

It’s mighty hard to envision singular performances by a poet and short story author, a character actor and a songwriter being offered on a single bill. That is, until one Minton Sparks takes the stage. For she is all three, a lean, literate livewire in a flower print church dress who balances writerly, theatrical and musical gifts as easily as she balances the prop pocketbook on her slender wrist. There was no existing script for what Sparks does, which can’t be said of too many artistic ventures in the 21st Century, so she’s written one herself these past ten years or so and come up with a name for her role to boot: speaker-songwriter.

A speaker-songwriter in action—Sparks being the only one—is a sight to behold. She writes flesh-and-blood vignettes about small town southern family members, teasing out the complexity below the surfaces of people’s lives in ways that tickle the sense of humor, prick the conscience and lodge in the soul. She delivers words in beelines of bluesy rhythm and worries the hooks—and there are hooks—backed solely by the nimble acoustic guitar work of John Jackson, who’s perhaps best known for having played with Bob Dylan. And she inhabits each character in full-bodied fashion; now buckdancing, now chicken strutting, now delivering gossip with a self-righteous shrug.

Sparks' new album, Live at the Station Inn, features 13 originals, some fairly new to her repertoire, others older favorites. “Fill Her Up”—a sly number about a mother making use of her womanly assets in the employ of a service station—falls into the former category, as do “John 3:16” (a story of downhome preacherly seduction set to Piedmont blues) and “Back of the Bus” (a hot and humid number about the wild times to be had on the way home from away games). “Obituary”—a wickedly funny piece that sets the record straight on the late Wicked Widow Potts, is a more recent addition. So is “Dixieland” (a shuffling, blues-talking account of an aunt wooing truckers over the CB radio), “Jesus, Kitties and Flowers” (the story of a transformative encounter with a weed-wacking woman in a world of pain), and the wild-eyed, syncopated self-portrait “I Am From.” Sparks sounds as musical as ever. “What’s happening in my work over time,” she offers, “is it’s turning into more songs for me. The whole thing is turning into songs.”

Minton Sparks has previously released three albums: 2001’s Middlin’ Sisters, 2003’s This Dress and 2005’s Sin Sick, two books: 2007’s Desperate Ransom: Setting Her Family Free and 2008’s White Lightning, and one performance film: 2006’s Open Casket. She’s performed as part of the American Songbook Series at the Lincoln Center, appeared at the venerable Old Towne School of Folk Music, served as teller-in-residence at the Jonesborough National Storytelling Festival—the biggest festival of its kind—gotten invited to the prestigious Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival, been featured on NPR’s “All Things Considered,” shared the stage with the likes of Rodney Crowell, John Prine and Nanci Griffith and gone over like gangbusters at the Tennessee Prison. A divinity school dropout, Minton Sparks makes her home in Nashville, TN with her husband and their two children.