Subject: RE: Review: Iris Dement
From:
GUEST,Arkie
Date: 22 Sep 05 - 03:09 PM
I hope there are no rules against this but I am posting below the review of the Mountain View concert that appeared in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette.
REVIEW Music : DeMent gives crowd a warm, witty show
BY JACK W. HILL
Posted on Tuesday, September 20, 2005
MOUNTAIN VIEW — Singer-songwriter Iris DeMent opened her concert at the Ozark Folk Center on Saturday night with an appropriate song, "These Hills," sounding just as much at home here in these Ozark hills as the late Jimmie Driftwood always did.
Indeed, DeMent said more of her life in her songs and in her between-songs musings than most performers reveal in decades of work, and she has been writing and singing for only 13 years and four albums. Born a little more than 100 miles away in Paragould, DeMent seemed to warm to the circular Folk Center auditorium and its fine acoustics and the several hundred fans in attendance, who filled the place to about twothirds its capacity.
Accompanying herself on acoustic guitar and the upright piano she moved to for the middle part of her set, DeMent went against convention by doing only two songs from her current CD, Lifeline, the well known hymn, "Blessed Assurance" and her own composition, "He Reached Down." Her set included three songs from each of her first three CDs, however, along with a heart-wrenching version of Johnny Cash's "I Still Miss Someone," and a showending singalong of the Carter Family's theme song, "Keep on the Sunny Side."
The 17-song set also included a gospel song that her father and his brothers used to do, plus three new songs that proved the creative well has not run dry for this singer with the appealing dry wit. The first one, she said, was about her 87-year old mother, and the song's "non-Hallmark card" sentiments were inspired by how her mother "was always telling her truth... and there was no back burner on that stove."
Another winning new song concerned her conclusions reached after years of reading self-help books, "tryin' to unravel myself," but realizing, at long last, "I been livin' on the inside too much" and that "pullin' weeds works just as well."
Of her low-key marriage to fellow singer-songwriter Greg Brown, DeMent seemed almost giddy to be able to reveal that she had gone and gotten married again a few years ago, and that she had been inspired to write an anniversary song after looking out her window on a cold December day, watching Brown burn the trash and that "I'm thinkin' this love's gonna last."
And though DeMent played for only an hour and 35 minutes, the depth of her revealed sentiments and feelings — conveyed via a voice that's so strong, yet so vulnerable — were such that I doubt that anyone left feeling cheated of some serious substance. DeMent certainly ranks up there with our other nativeborn musical greats, including Cash, Driftwood, Levon Helm and Louis Jordan.
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sj
