Miss Minnie Pearl with Miss Linda Hill  
     
 

Born alongside the Santa Fe Trail with no running water, the Wild West was in her blood from the beginning. At the tender age of three, Hill's performing career began at the VFW Hall with a five year old neighbor, Kenny Trebbe. (Who later became Kenny Starr with a #1 Country single, Blind Man in the Bleachers) Their fathers would set them up on the bandstand while the Saturday night honky-tonk combo took a break. The duo did a perfect imitation of the Collins Kids singing "Walking the Floor" until their dads had a hatful of coins to keep them in beer for the rest of the evening.  

When the four room tar-paper family shack burned to the ground when she was ten the family which had always been poor was suddenly po'. It was time for the youngster to think seriously about how to help the family out financially, though the small cash prizes she won for various writing contests brought the family more in pride than money. She also earned a reputation at the local church around this time as a beacon of spirit when her buck dancing took over the aisles as she became full of the Lord and formed a Gospel Trio, touring churches in a three state region.

Growing up in the Bible Belt—Kansas to be exact—insured a strong pioneer spirit and a firmly ingrained work ethic which found Linda working at the age of 12 as a truck stop waitress. Needless to say, she came to appreciate the beauty of a well-driven big rig at a tender age and moved up to head waitress of the driver's section until a smash up of her FIAT 124 Sport Coupe ended her dream of moving to Reno to become a Keeno girl.

Disaster becomes destiny however, for while still recovering in a wheelchair, Lady Opportunity opened her arms and clasped Linda to her magnanimous bosom. The local paper, The Abilene Reflector Chronicle, had lost its news staff after hiring a college man with a lot of journalistic awards.   Railing against "some kid" trying to change what had been fine the past 48 years, they walked out in a huff, sure they'd be back before supper. Instead they called the high school and Hill became the new Society Editor and for the next 3 months just Linda and the college boy, put out the 8 page daily on their own - it was a crash course in lay out, writing, photography, interviewing and research all on a daily deadline. She learned her lesson so well in fact that after a year and a half, she was lured away by The Dodge City Daily Globe to become their Community Life Editor at twice the pay.  

It was about this time that she started her first country western band, Lady L and the Lariats, as the lead warbler and they played just about every weekend at the private club, Cowtown. They were such a rockabilly party band that they were listed in the yellow pages under bar fixtures. As notoriety spread about Linda's "wild side" and her outrageous attire ("I had treated life as one giant costume party ever since childhood," Hill explained.) the managing editor, Lee Finch, who looked like the result of a mating between the Pillsbury Dough Boy and the Michelin Man, suggest she might either want to reel her personality in or seek employment elsewhere.

She went elsewhere - all the way to San Francisco in fact where she had been offered a chance to become Manager of a Vintage Clothing Store, Old Gold. She loved the store and working with the styles of the past. She also loved the thrill of the hunt - thrift shopping her way across America twice not only for the store but for private clients in need of quality Kitsch. When the owners split up, so did the business but Linda was offered a job by one of her clients as an Office Manager in his real estate firm, Evans-Pacific. The President of the company soon paid for her schooling to become a Real Estate Agent when she sold an apartment to a wrong number on the switchboard.

Finally, of course came Linda's true calling in comedy and she joined an all-female comedy troupe called Femprov and soon all the improv groups in San Francisco invited her to join also. She is still a charter member of National Theatre of the Deranged. The next step was to become a stand up comic, which became a great venue for Hill leading to radio voice work, television bookings and film roles.

Moving to New York over a decade ago, Linda Hill has made a name for herself in the world of alternative comedy and downtown theatre, hosting the "No Shame" series for two years at the Joseph Papp Public Theatre, co-founding the Movie of the Month Club and starring in several of their underground films and premiering 5 separate solo character shows including Incognito Sex, Too Many Clothes and Star 69. Her characters such as blues singer, Miss Angel Drake and performance poet, Negateeva have done entire solo shows as themselves receiving recognition without the public realizing that they were in fact Linda Hill. Hill even went so far as to stage a feud with herself as Angel that the press covered for several months.  

Although she has worked with Robin Williams, Whoopi Goldberg, Father Guido Sarducci, directed emmy winner, Camryn Mannheim's solo show, "Wake Up I'm Fat!" and appeared on PBS, Cinemax and HBO as a George Carlin's discovery, to date her biggest thrill was to meet and become friends with Miss Minnie Pearl, who brought her to Nashville for the Ralph Emery show, Nashville Now. Currently Linda is doing a personal homage to Miss Minnie with her new character, Lindy Loo, who appears weekly at the Honky-Tonk Happy Hour every Friday at Snitch on 21st Street & 6th Avenue from 6 to 11 p.m. with Gotham Rodeo Gang. Lindy Loo will be a big part of her new solo show, Big City Hick.