Iris DeMent

Iris DeMent is one of my favorite musicians. Like Laurie Colwin, I've gotten to know her only very recently. And like Laurie Colwin, she's one of the people I look to to get me through life when it gets tricky.

I know her as a guitar player and folk singer. Her voice is really odd. A little twangy, a little fragile and shaky. Even a little grating at times.

I was first introduced to Iris DeMent with her song, "Sweet is the Melody," which is still my favorite (see the video below). It is poetry:

"The dance floor's for gliding and not jumping over ponies.
Where boots and gold bracelets come and meet as they should."

Pure synecdoche. I love the picture in the chorus of bending a note:

"Sweet is the melody, so hard to come by.
It's so hard to make every note bend just right.
You lay down the hours and leave not one trace,
But a tune for the dancing is there in it's place."

I love the idea of laying down the hours and those hours being replaced by a tune for dancing.

I love Iris DeMent's very cliche husband and wive as opposites duet, "In Spite of Ourselves."

I love her singing old gospel music. The theology of her songs reminds me a lot of my Pentecostal upbringing (it turns out that she, too, was raised Pentecostal). Most of them channel the old gospel theme of looking forward to heaven in the midst of this valley of tears. "Let the Mystery Be" says she doesn't want to dive too deep in doctrine (it also moves the focus from the next world to this one).

Her songs are incredibly localist--they're about her town and her family. They are incredibly melancholy. So many are about leaving, about love that's over. They're strong, but they're also vulnerable. And they have a healthy dose of nostalgia: in her song, "Childhood Memories," she sings about penny candy at the corner store, something that's also part of my childhood (having a quarter to spend on candy that cost two or three cents per piece was honestly probably a pretty big part of developing my renowned financial savvy).

I went to hear Iris DeMent perform last weekend in Annapolis. I knew her primarily as a guitar player, before, but evidently about seven years ago she switched to the piano. She didn't play the guitar at all when she performed--it was all singing and piano.

She performed primarily new music from the record she just made. I cried like a baby through "Easy's Gettin' Harder Everyday" (okay, okay, through a good many songs). And was uber-disappointed that they didn't play my favorites, "Hotter than Mojave in My Heart" and "Sweet is the Melody."

She was very private and self-deprecating. She said that she had the hardest time taking compliments until someone told her to just say thank you. Now she knows what to do, she said, no one compliments her anymore. She said, too, that she is leaving for a cruise with her husband next week and that she bought a lovely red bathing suit back in November, but didn't lose the last 10 pounds before the cruise. She didn't say much, specifically, about her family, though. She didn't mention the little girl that Wikipedia says she adopted with Greg from Russia.

She talked about musicians she admired, such as Tammy Wynette, and some not so famous ones, such as the cross-eyed preacher's wife with a terrible voice who sang with so much passion that Iris imitated her singing and her hairpiece and her crossed eyes.

Before she performed, her step-daughter, Pieta Brown, performed (they have quite a musical family--Pieta's [what a cool name, huh?] father, Iris's [also a very cool name] husband, is also a musician). They said that being on tour together they spend loads of time talking until their voices hurt. As the Fug Girls would say, they both seemed like exactly the sort of girls I would want to talk with until my voice hurt. Invite me to join the tour! I'm not really sure what I could contribute besides talking, though. I mean, I'm not really sure what I contribute in life besides talking, anyway.

Francisco and I were the youngest people in the entire crowd. You could tell it in the clapping to bring her back for an encore, which was just embarrassingly weak. It wasn't that people didn't like her; it was just that they were too old to clap really loudly. That is another thing that I could contribute to her tour--enthusiastic clapping. After just one encore, people grabbed their coats and left as fast as they could (I think she would've kept playing if people would have begged for more. I was personally ready to beg).

She performed in a small venue called Rams Head, which was incredibly comfortable--you sit down at a table, and there are waiters who serve you drinks. I had a wonderful Dreamweaver wheat beer, which I mention here so that I don't forget it and can find it again someday (I have only very rarely met a wheat beer that I didn't like). And of course, Annapolis is always lovely to walk around in.



 
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