NEW! On October 2, 2025, Zillions Magazine, an online indie music publication, reviewed Part of Me from the Secret Stage album. Here's an excerpt:

The song is centered around Parks’s extraordinary path as an artist who took up fingerstyle guitar at 45, now revelling in her most genuine creative phase. “Part of Me” is an anthem to resilience, to gratitude, and the ties that bind. Penned in honor of her best friend, who donated her kidney when Parks’s own inherited kidney disease finally caught up with her, the song has a deeply personal weight that’s impossible to ignore.

Parks’s voice is raised by a spread of harmonies, and accomplished violinist Mads Tolling contributes layers of texture that finesse the folk foundation into something closer to country grace. Her partnership with her husband, Gary Parks, adds an extra dimension to her life. Their love story is gently woven into the music’s fabric, infusing the track with sincerity. In a world clamorous with flash and dazzle, Rebecca Parks reminds us about the quiet power of truth.

On September 25, 2025, Tinnitist Magazine, an online indie music publication, reviewed and premiered the Secret Stage album. Here's an excerpt:

Parks is a true-blue, Bay Area musician, proudly representing the social justice tradition that spans the Grateful Dead through Green Day’s American Idiot opus. Even the melding of influences within her work reflect the wide-eyed, anything-goes eclecticism of her community. One music industry professional who caught a live show remarked: “People don’t expect to hear classical and Broadway influences in coffeehouse music.”

Parks has come closer to distilling the essence of her singular aesthetic over the course of her three albums. As her confidence has grown, she’s peeled away the bells and whistles of fancy studio production...

Secret Stage is a guide to knowing when to take life in stride, and when to take a stand.

On August 20, 2025, Americana Highways Magazine, an online indie music publication, reviewed and premiered Part of Me from the Secret Stage album. Here's an excerpt:

This song operates on several levels, one of which is the literal level, as Rebecca wrote it on tribute to her best friend who donated a kidney to Rebecca. And then there is the emotional connection and gratitude that’s carried along as well, for anyone who is a part of the fabric of our lives. The music is richly recorded with Rebecca’s honest vocal style, which results in a very relatable and moving song.

On July 31, 2025, Zillions Magazine, an online indie music publication, reviewed the Secret Stage title track. Here's an excerpt:

From its crystalline piano to its blooms of layered harmonies, the song curls in on itself like pages of an intimate journal. Parks’s voice, haughty but hauntingly adorned with a killer vibrato, sounds weathered in all the right ways, and it has the kind of emotional gravitas that only time and the truth can cultivate. The lyrics contained in many love songs stretch and grasp for drama, while “Secret Stage” remains grounded in the everyday magic of communal creativity...

Parks’s storytelling is as subtle as it is sentimental. There’s a knowingness in her timbre, a wryness that seems to have burrowed through decades of hard-lived moments, and every split second is now refracted through the prism of melody and reminiscence. “One evening when I was practicing and Gary was drawing, he said to me, ‘Your music is the soundtrack to my evenings,’” she says. That casual comment grew into the germ of a song that blossoms here into something universal, the magic of being seen, heard, and prompted to dream by someone who knows every note you’ve ever played.

On July 17, 2025, It's Psychedelic Baby Magazine, an online indie music publication, reviewed the Secret Stage album and premiered the title track. Here's an excerpt:

Rebecca Parks has spent decades gathering the kind of stories most songwriters only hint at.

With ‘Secret Stage,’ her first album in a decade, she finally lets them breathe. At this stage of her being, she’s distilling a life. Thirteen tracks dive deep into aging, justice, illness, and love, all filtered through a richly personal lens. Parks picked up fingerstyle guitar in her mid-40s, and here it’s clear she made it her own. Her voice, textured and confident, glides alongside her husband Gary’s harmonies, their creative partnership anchoring the album’s emotional weight. The recording hums with unvarnished honesty, captured live in all its raw, breathing beauty by producers Cookie Marenco and Robert Berry.

There’s grace in the details: a song sparked by a quiet evening at home, lyrics shaped by past trauma and healing. It’s folk, sure, but shaded by classical precision and Broadway verve.

Selected Quotes from Music Industry Professionals: Most were received at West Coast
Songwriters conferences and song screenings.

“You're a great songwriter and you have a naturally beautiful voice.”
         Renee Richardson, KFOG deejay

“You’re better than most writers at song structure.”
         Steven Melrose, Vice President of A & R at Virgin Records

“This song moved me. I'm a working woman.”
         Cindy Wilt, formerly of Word Entertainment, in response to “Working” on Night Ship

“It gave me chills.”
         Carla DeSantis, former Editor in Chief of ROCKRGRL Magazine, in response to “You Will Find Me” on Night Ship

“These are the most intelligent lyrics I've heard in a long time.”
         Peter Jansson, President and CEO of Janssongs, Inc., in response to “Working” on Night Ship

“This is an example of really good songwriting.”
         Rex Benson of Rex Benson Music, in response to “I Don't Want to Tell You” on Night Ship

“Very pretty melody and an unusual subject. Well done.”
         Mark Cawley, cofounder of songjourney.com, in response to “Other Ways to Fight” on Night Ship

“Thank you for playing this song. There's some really great songwriting in it.”
         Brian Rawlings, former Vice President of Music Publishing at Disney, in response to “Fade to Black” on Night Ship

“I'm a fan of Rebecca's music.”
         Scott Haugen of Pitchfork Music

“Your songs are good. Few songs have real lyrics anymore.”
         George Horn, Chief Mastering Engineer at Fantasy Studios, in response to the Messiah Refugee CD

“You have all the ingredients. You’re a great singer, songwriter, and piano player.”
         Robert Berry, Grammy-nominated artist and Messiah Refugee CD producer

Kay Harrison worked at The Howard King Agency as assistant to Howard King during the 1960s. She was in charge of choosing which acts to book and coordinating publicity. The agency worked with Stan Zucker Management, which managed rock and jazz artists, the most famous of which was Roy Orbison. Now retired, she wrote the following letter to my mother-in-law after listening to the Messiah Refugee CD:

Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to listen to and to experience Rebecca Parks' Messiah Refugee work.

What an extremely talented artist Rebecca is. The music and the arrangements are really outstanding, and yes, the lyrics have a focus and a cause, but even without listening to the words, the music itself is very soothing and uplifting, and her talent and love for what she does really rings true.

When I hear work like this, it makes me wish I were still involved in the music business enough to be able to pass this along to someone who could really run with it—but, most of the people I worked with back in the 60's are either retired or are no longer with us. It's a tough business.

I hope Rebecca will keep on producing, writing and recording. It is such a pleasure to be able to listen to music that makes sense and is so easy to listen to.

I really can't say enough great things about this work. I really, really enjoyed it.

Warmest regards,

Kay