Singer DeMent effortlessly confronts emotion

Singer DeMent effortlessly confronts emotion

Gifted songwriter brings honesty, talent, elegance to country
music

By Michael Tatum

My father died a year ago today

Rooster started crowing when they carried Dad away

There beside my mother, in the living room I stood

With my brothers and my sisters knowin’ Dad was gone for
good

Well, I stayed at home long enough just to lay him in the
ground

And then I caught a plane to do a show up north in Detroit
town

Because I’m older now and I’ve got no time to cry.

­ "No Time to Cry," Iris DeMent

When most rock music fans think of great songwriters of the past
25 years, they usually think of someone like Bob Dylan or Elvis
Costello ­ two men who have made their names on lyrics that
strive to be "poetic," purposefully loaded with dense wordplay and
convoluted irony. It’s an approach that more than a few talents and
a great many hacks have attempted to copy.

Iris DeMent stands as the rare, gifted songwriter who can show
that strategy for the sham that it can sometimes be. While others
make a point in dodging their emotions and couching their true
feelings in literary corn, DeMent (performing two shows at the
Troubadour today and tomorrow) allows herself no such defenses.
It’s the rare person who can express herself with such directness
in this day and age without decorating what she has to say with
excuses and pretenses, but DeMent does it ­ and unlike lesser
mortals who tend to force such conceits, she makes it seem
effortless and natural.

"It’s the only way I know how to write," she told The Bruin
during a phone interview, "it’s not really something I set out to
do consciously. I just prefer a straightforward way of expressing
things … I’ve always been drawn to music written in that style:
Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash, Lefty Frizzel. I’ve always preferred
lyrics that aren’t really a great effort to unravel."

Like the above country legends named, she also shares an
affinity for open, honest music. The songs on her two records,
"Infamous Angel" and "My Life" (both on Warner Bros., the first a
reissue of an independent release) have little to do with the
Hollywood gone to Nashville high jinx of most of the so-called
artists ­ Vince Gill, Travis Tritt, Billy Ray Cyrus, to name a
few ­ that seem to hog up the contemporary country
marketplace.

Her music could just as easily have been recorded 30 years ago;
her lovely, heartbreaking voice reverberates with a timeless
Appalachian spirituality, recalling only the greatest country
chanteuses: Loretta Lynn, Kitty Wells, the early Dolly Parton. Her
unadorned and unaffected arrangements, a sad reminder of what
country music sounded like before it sold itself to the city, are
ironically what prevent her music from being played on most
mainstream country radio stations. As journalist Michael McCall
pointedly notes: "She’s just too country for Nashville tastes these
days."

When asked about the state of country music today, DeMent says
that much of it ­ with the exceptions of people like Dwight
Yoakam, Mary Chapin Carpenter and Lucinda Williams ­ strikes
her as being largely false. "A lot of it seems out there only to
make money, though to be fair, that’s true with a lot of music
today, not just country music. I’m not adverse to making money,
that’s just not my goal. Even if I didn’t sell a hell of a lot of
records, I’d get more out of creating things that made me happy."
Does that mean she would forsake sales for the long haul, a piece
of history? "Oh definitely!"

But DeMent doesn’t make "keeping the faith" a deliberate
undertaking, just as her songwriting doesn’t spring out of a
premeditated scientific formula ­ like her emotional
directness, the integrity of her music comes instinctively: "You
just love what you do and do it," she states. "I’ve never had the
desire to ‘keep with tradition,’ just to keep doing what satisfies
me."

For a primer on what satisfies DeMent, look no further than her
album "My Life," which, judging from the seemingly unanimously
glowing reviews from critics, satisfies plenty of other people as
well. The vulnerable breakup songs, "You’ve Done Nothing Wrong" and
"Calling For You," are unique in the way that DeMent never sinks to
self pity ­ she shares the responsibility for the failures in
her relationships, without resorting to the callousness and hollow
anger that mars other such songs. When she sings, "Just because I’m
hurting, that don’t mean that you’ve something wrong," she intends
no hidden meaning ­ she means it. Others, like "Childhood
Memories" and the intensely moving "No Time To Cry" focus on
recollections of her father and the pain she felt after his
death.

Much has been made in the press of DeMent’s breaking away from
her fundamentalist Christian upbringing, something which she
clarifies when the subject is raised. Unlike others from similar
backgrounds, she neither regrets or resents her experiences. Though
she has since adopted different views than those of her parents and
their church, Dement in fact views their influence as being largely
positive.

"In many ways I think I benefitted. I certainly gained my love
of music at church," she remembers fondly, claiming that whatever
talent with which she might have been born certainly blossomed from
the Sundays to which she always looked forward.

Which of course leads to the matter of live performance,
something reputedly to have made DeMent nervous in the past. Not
that she really has anything to worry about ­ though her
concerts consist solely of her and her guitar, she doesn’t seem to
need much else. According to legend, when she sang in bars and
clubs early in her career, her voice proved so powerful in its
clarity, the stage managers elected to turn off her microphone.

So now that she’s in a position to tour with a larger band, why
not? Or, why not record an album on her own? "A lot of people ask
me that," she says. "I do like playing by myself. But the attitude
I bring to a live show is to do something that I don’t feel I can
do on record. I could perform on stage with a band, or vice versa,
but I think a lot of things would be lost."

One gets the feeling that DeMent might be a tad over-critical of
her talents, and even she admits that while she’s appreciative of
the attention thrust upon her, it nevertheless strikes her as "a
little weird." For all of the depth of her work, she still finds
the amount of time given to analyzing her work amazing, and even a
little intimidating. "I don’t find I have more or less difficulty
writing than I used to," she says, but adds with a laugh, "I’m more
aware of having an audience that likes hearing good songs!"

But that’s where part of her appeal lies. As she sings in the
beginning of one of her most lovely songs, "Sweet is the melody, so
hard to come by." While it may seem mysterious where her muse is
and when she’ll strike again, she makes the beauty and grandeur of
her art, so undeniable in its elegance and grace, seem so easy.