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Local folks
Kris Delmhorst, Holly Harris, and John Cremona
BY TED DROZDOWSKI

A brave, wise, slightly paunchy starship commander once told us that space is the final frontier. In exploration, that may be so, but in music, space is one of the fundamentals of mastery. Knowing when not to play, or when to play only what’s necessary, gives each sonic element in an arrangement — from the vocals to the snap of a snare drum — maximum impact.

That’s one of the reasons Cambridge-based folksinger Kris Delmhorst’s new Songs for a Hurricane (Signature Sounds) is so effective. If anything, it sounds as if she’d delivered its 13 numbers from the storm’s eye. Sure, her lyrics often evince an emotional turbulence that’s metaphorical kin to nature’s rage, but Delmhorst and her sharp studio team have placed them in a spare framework that allows the beauty and the grace of her music to come to the fore.

Right from the opening "Waiting Under the Waves" it’s obvious that Delmhorst is an extraordinary singer with a big pure tone and a vibrato that’s especially wicked when she employs it to make the high end of her voice shiver. The song is about the crumbling pressure that comes when troubles with a long-time lover set in, and how those complicated feelings can make you feel removed from your own body. The album’s loveliest song is "You’re No Train"; its slow pace and a texture spun from former Ani DiFranco keyboardist Julie Wolf’s piano, producer Billy Conway’s drums, Andrew Mazzone’s eight-string bass, and Mark Erelli’s electric guitar allow the 32-year-old singer to stretch her voice over the passing measures with languid elegance. The song could be a sequel to "Waiting Under the Waves," with the relationship now over and the narrator left alone. Delmhorst herself plays guitar, fiddle, banjo, and cello on the CD.

Other numbers explore the search for freedom and direction, and "Short Work" raises the break-up theme again, this time making short work of that problematic ex-lover. The closing "Mingalay" is an affirmation of survival, albeit one couched as a sailor’s tale about weathering a storm and regaining one’s bearings for port. It’s another showpiece for Delmhorst’s voice, which buoys the lyrics like a gentle homeward breeze.

The recurring theme of emotional disconnection makes Songs for a Hurricane a concept album of sorts, but if there was any guiding principle, it seems to have been that search for spare perfection. "By sticking my head into the lyrics and building the rest of the music around them, it created kind of suspended moments, where melodies and lyrics emerge," Delmhorst observes. "It brings things back to the chorus."

Twinemen and Morphine drummer Conway, who also produced her previous album, Five Stories (Catalyst/Signature Sounds), was an able partner in Delmhorst’s sonic quest. "When we first started recording," she says, "he insisted on having the lyrics for the songs, which for a drummer is relatively rare. We have a nice chemistry together. We’re more concerned about getting the right feeling for the songs in the studio than hitting the perfect notes."

Nonetheless, Delmhorst has a knack for hitting the right notes on CD and on stage. That helped her ascend through the Vinyl Avenue String Band to her present status as a solo artist who also works as a multi-instrumentalist sidewoman with Catie Curtis, Jimmy Ryan, and other Boston-based national performers. If you haven’t heard her in concert and you’re a fan of first-rate singer-songwriters based in folk music, you’ve been remiss: she’s a regular headliner at Club Passim and has been part of the "Family Affair" series of shows that have teamed her with Twinemen, Maybe Baby, and Jimmy Ryan — all friends who have recorded albums at Morphine’s Hi-N-Dry studio in Cambridge — at the Lizard Lounge and the Middle East. But you get another chance this weekend: Delmhorst will celebrate the release of Songs for a Hurricane with a concert Saturday at 8 p.m. at the Somerville Theatre. Pete Mulvey will open the show.

ANOTHER CELEBRATION will be taking place across the street from Delmhorst’s CD-release gig on Saturday: a blues party at Johnny D’s marking the 10th anniversary of disc jockey Holly Harris’s Blues on Sunday program on WBOS 92.9 FM. James Montgomery, the J. Geils and Gerry Beaudoin Quartet, Nicole Nelson, Weepin’ Willie, the Severn Records All-Stars featuring Sugar Ray Norcia and Darrell Nulisch, Bruce Bears, and even the Blues Project’s Danny Kalb will all perform, bringing musical echoes of the Delta, the Windy City, and Detroit.

Although the amiable Harris has held down her 9-to-midnight Sunday slot on WBOS for a decade, winning a "Keeping the Blues Alive" award from the Blues Foundation and the New England Blues Society’s first "Mai Cramer Award for Excellence in Blues Radio" along the way, her career in radio actually began more than 20 years ago on WMFO 91.5 FM, the community radio station based at Tufts University. "Then I was heard on WGBH as Mai Cramer’s occasional fill-in," Harris recounts. But musicians knew her first as a friend and a fan. She was instrumental in starting the Boston Blues Society and establishing the annual Boston-blues-band battle at the club Harpers Ferry, which sends one local group each year on to the international competition.

Harris was bitten by the blues bug at 16: "When I first heard B.B. King, it hit me like a lightning bolt and I started collecting the music." While attending Berklee, she says, she realized that "being a performer wasn’t for me. But I loved the fact that I could get the message across." She sees that as her mission, both as a blues DJ and in her day job as a social worker. Spending time with artists who make the music she loves — from B.B. King to Koko Taylor, Champion Jack Dupree, Luther Allison, and local luminaries like Weepin’ Willie and Sugar Ray — has been her primary reward for her work as an on-air personality. "We have an amazing blues scene here in Boston. It’s inclusionary. You can come from another place and if you’re a decent player, you’re accepted. In some cities you have to pay your dues all over again."

Of course, these days, almost everybody in the blues business is paying dues of some kind. Fewer clubs are open, and audiences are sparser. Sales of blues discs are down. Gigs are tough to come by for all but the highest-profile players or the most-aggressive road dogs. "In a way, I’d expect the blues to be taking off right now, because when people are feeling bad, they might turn to the blues for solace," Harris observes. "There will always be waves and resurgences, and I think there’s a lot of great blues and a lot more people who might be willing to enjoy it. After all, it’s happy music, too. It’s uplifting. My hope is that there’s a new generation coming to the music now, as listeners and players, and that as a result there’s going to be more blues being made and more places to hear it. That’s especially important, because enjoying the blues is really about hearing live music."

THOSE TWO EVENTS will keep you hopping Saturday night. But if you’re looking for some live music by day, let me direct you to the loading dock at 319 A Street, where singer-songwriter John Cremona will be performing as part of the Fort Point Boston Open Studios at 3 p.m. this Saturday and Sunday. These are the first full-fledged concerts Cremona has given in roughly 15 years, since he left the local music scene to devote more time to exploring conceptual art. His interest in performing and songwriting rekindled recently, and the result is the self-released Rain (Xob Music).

Given his experience as a visual artist, it makes sense this would be a concept album. "What I wanted to do with this album was to be somewhat positive. I started with ‘Peace of Mind’ and ended with ‘I Know a Place,’ which are both about finding inner peace. In between, in the other songs, we go in and out of Hell a few times."

Hell, for the residents of Cremona’s songs, is a place awash in alcoholism, abandonment, and misery — reasonable enough. But even his dark stories are buoyed by the light in his voice. It’s a gentle, relaxed instrument with an appealing tenor range set in the service of generous melodies. Most of the tunes center on his acoustic guitar and have a folk- or country-rock orientation, with occasional standout flourishes like the slide guitar that sidles up to his lyrics in the title cut.

Although these shows and Rain are just now announcing his return to the stage, Cremona already has another album’s worth of songs written. And people are hearing his music’s positive ring. The hushed "I Know a Place," which starts with the lines "I know a place where compassion is true/Where the foot is always in the other shoe/Where all your illusions are left behind/And what you really need you find," has been accepted by "New Songs for Peace," a project of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) aimed to promote peace, cultural acceptance, and understanding worldwide.

Kris Delmhorst and Pete Mulvey perform this Saturday, October 18, at the Somerville Theatre, 55 Davis Square; call (617) 628-3390. James Montgomery, the Jay Geils and Gerry Beaudoin Quartet, Nicole Nelson, Weepin’ Willie, the Severn Records All-Stars featuring Sugar Ray Norcia and Darrell Nulisch, Bruce Bears, and the Blues Project’s Danny Kalb perform this Saturday, October 18, at Johnny D’s, 17 Holland Street in Davis Square; call (617) 776-2004. John Cremona performs this Saturday and Sunday, October 18 and 19, at 3 p.m. as part of the Fort Point Boston Open Studios; call (617) 423-4299. He’ll also appear Wednesday November 12 at Zeitgeist Gallery, 1353 Cambridge Street in Inman Square; call (617) 876-6060.


Issue Date: October 17 - 23, 2003
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