Chicks with Guitars

Angel with the Blue Dress on: Iris Dement at the Bluebird, Bloomington, IN: June 5, 2010

Why see this show?

If you are already a fan: 2 hours of music, much of it previously unrecorded.

If you are asking, Iris who? You can get the digest of this Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter in a number of places, but that’s hardly a proper introduction to this disarming, unpretentious and genuinely entertaining woman. You can expect a church-like attention from the audience and a least a few moments where you are forced to confront the inspired and poetic agonies of real life.

So what did you miss?

(Here’s a video of a show in Evanston a couple of days earlier to give you a sense of what you missed. Paul Regan has some great photos of the show on Flickr.)

Dement took the stage alone in a simple blue dress, patterned stockings, and red shoes precisely on time. During her set, she confided in the audience that the dress was an old one that she hadn’t worn in a long time. She was delighted that it seemed new to her because she hadn’t worn it in a long time. In a way, that dress was a metaphor for her music – her style has a warmth and affection that is both comfortable and exciting. People have told me that she appeared so nervous in her early performances that one almost felt concerned that she wouldn’t be able to continue. Over the years, she has developed into an extremely confident and charming performer, professional without being polished. Her songs and stories are engaging without being needy.

She played the whole concert solo, accompanying herself on the piano for most of the show, and playing guitar on only three songs in the middle of her set. The show was an unusual one at the Bluebird, which usually features rock acts. Dave Kubiak, who produced the show, said it was the only time he could remember there being a piano on stage. The dance floor was filled with folding chairs that, like the piano, were rented for the occasion. It was not a typical Bluebird crowd, either. The Indiana University students who usually frequent the club are, for the most part, out of town and the seats were filled with a very enthusiastic group of graying baby-boomers who hung on every note Dement sung and played and whooped their enthusiasm in between songs. This was a room of listeners who shot me dirty looks as I scampered around the back of the club, searching in vain for a good sight line for a Hipstamatic photo or Flip video clip.

One of the most impressive aspects of Dement’s performance is the tremendous control she has over her voice. “Mama’s Truth” featured a tasteful solo in the middle and a slower tempo vocalise at the end that made one appreciate her gifts as an instrumentalist, vocalist, and arranger. She spoke about her relationship with her ninety-two year-old mother, for whom Dement is the primary caretaker, after the song. Noting that this is the first time she and her mother have lived in the same state since Dement was eighteen, she said she sees herself in her mother now. “I think she’s worth the trouble. I hope she’d say the same about me.”

A couple of songs later, Dement took the tempo down with “Morning Glory,” a love song for a flower in her garden. The chorus is representative of the bittersweet simplicity of many of her lyrics:

Morning glory, fuschia and green
My sweet little Jezebel in a garden of dreams…

After “Morning Glory,” Dement told a story about compromises she and her husband, the folk singer Greg Brown, have made in their garden. Dement said that not only did she want the garden to be organic, but she intended not to use a rototiller for fear of disturbing the earthworms that lived there. She had to relent on the rototiller when faced with a stretch of solid clay soil. Brown tried to cheer her by pointing out that the rototiller wouldn’t kill all the worms, but she surmised that “the worms that survived wished they were dead.”

The next song was an upbeat honky-tonk, New Orleans style piano number about a hill in Dement’s front yard. The bridge makes an unusually adventurous modulation in the middle before returning to the home key.

Things got more serious again in the following song, “Living on the Inside,” which almost sounded as if it could have been written by Jackson Browne. Introducing the song, Dement said that it was written during a darker time in her life in which she was reading self-help books and “getting all perfected.”

After “Living on the Inside,” Dement left the piano and picked up her guitar, a gleaming cherry-sunburst parlor acoustic that had been sitting on the stage on a stand since the beginning of her set with a capo that remained on the third fret the whole time she played. Before she played, she fumbled around for a suitable pick in a well-worn box that sat on top of the piano.

Dement said that the empty streets of Bloomington had made that afternoon feel like a Sunday to her, inspiring her to perform the “Sunday Morning Coming Down,” the Kris Kristofferson song that Johnny Cash made a hit in 1973. She followed with “This Love’s Gonna Last,” written about her relationship with Greg Brown. (Here’s a video of her introducing the song.) Its lyrics beautifully celebrate the simple pleasure of observing one’s committed partner in everyday life. A brief, tasteful instrumental interlude in the middle showed Dement’s prowess on the guitar.

After “How Not to Pray,” Dement returned to the piano and noodled around a little, saying “I can’t figure out what mood I’m in.” She settled on an upbeat mood, playing “There’s a Whole Lotta Heaven,” a song written in response to critics saying that her songs were too dark.

Next came “All the Time in the World,” in which Dement proved she could wail as well as the best of the country crooners. Her voice was drenched in emotion. The tag at the end of the song was clever and refreshing.

The raw emotion of “All the Time in the World” was followed by an instructional tune, Merle Haggard’s “Pray” from his 2007 album, The Bluegrass Sessions. The chorus encourages the listener to “Get your mind off yourself. Think of somebody else.”

After “Pray,” Dement explained that Haggard was a hero of hers. She told of having been invited to the recording session for the first of the two of her songs that Haggard covered, “No Time to Cry,” released on his album 1996. The song first appeared on Dement’s own album My Life. She said that she was in the kitchen when Haggard called, said he wanted to record the song, and invited her to the recording session. As Dement tells the story, Haggard’s process of preparing for the song required her to make two separate trips to Tally Studios in Redding, CA. All that happened in the first trip was three days of Haggard coming into the studio where all the session musicians and engineers waited, reading the lyrics, saying he was going to get a sandwich and leaving for the day. In the second trip, Haggard had one more day of lyric-reading and sandwich-getting. The second day he did not read the lyrics. Instead he recorded the song in about five minutes. Dement said that she was so humbled by Haggard’s version that she almost stopped playing the song herself. (I, for one, was glad she didn’t.)

“No Time to Cry” was followed by “Going Away Party,” a Cindy Walker song that Merle Haggard recorded. The upbeat shuffle of the music belies the lyrics – this is “a going away party for a dream I’m telling goodbye.”

At this point, it seemed as though Dement’s comfort on stage was to the point that her song introductions were stream of consciousness. Perhaps she was getting tired, having performed solo for over an hour and a half. She admonished herself for wearing red nail polish because it was distracting when she looked at her fingers while playing the piano. Then she introduced a song as a “little tune.” “Why do I call it a little tune? An average-sized tune about the Good Samaritan.” The tune was “He Reached Down” from Lifeline.

Two more ballads ended the almost two-hour set. Dement was beckoned back on stage by a standing ovation. When she returned to the stage, someone in the crowd yelled something about Jason Wilber, a local guitar hero from Bloomington who has played lead guitar in Dement’s touring band in the past. Dement said that Wilber was currently on tour with John Prine. Dement’s own collaboration with Prine on the album In Spite of Ourselves earned her a Grammy nomination in 1999. The Jason Wilber fan’s subsequent offer to play on the song himself was politely declined as Dave Kubiak delivered an amber pint to Dement. Her first encore was “My Life,” the title track from Dement’s 1994 album. The person to my left said he thinks it is one of the best songs written in the last twenty years.

Dement invited the audience to sing along on the final encore, saying “I don’t need all the singing space to myself.” The tune, James P. Johnson’s “Old Fashioned Love,” was either unknown to the crowd or they were too taken with Dement’s own performance to chime in.

July 2, 2010
Categories: REVIEWS . . Author: cwgguy . Comments: 2 Comments