DANA FALCONBERRY Biography
Dana Falconberry is a musical natural. Hailed by the Austin Chronicle as one of the city's "most promising singer-songwriters" and "most arresting female vocalists," her distinctive talents and singular creative vision find full and brilliant fruition on her debut full-length national album release, oh skies of grey.
It's one of those rare musical works that defies any immediate references and transcends the usual genre pigeonholes, prompting listeners to hear Falconberry on her own unique and highly engaging terms. And what you'll delightfully discover is a "voice [that] is a study in paradox: delicately soft yet powerfully dynamic, warmly inviting yet brazenly defiant, emotive yet wise beyond her [now 28] years," as the Austin Chronicle observes. She applies that gift to "thoughtful, beautifully written songcraft," as the Chronicle puts it, citing her "astounding" songs rich with "achingly intimate narratives" and "brazen, bluesy power," among their many compelling qualities.
But rather than describe, categorize, parse or analyze Falconberry's musical and lyrical creations, it's best advised to just listen to oh skies of grey. And simply feel its effects on the heart, mind and soul, as such unfettered expressiveness and emotionality is how she creates music of such power and inescapable allure.
As you'll hear, oh skies of grey travels a spectrum of moods and modes between the gently buoyant romanticism of the opening track "Someday" to the airy closing grace note of "Clementine." The songs swing ("Love Will Leave You Alone"), lilt ("Do You") and enchant like mesmeric mantras ("Silver" and "Fluorescent") as well as revel in the natural world ("Pine Tree"), plumb the depths of solitude ("Satin Dress") and even ponder the moments following Falconberry's own passing ("Singing Lullabies"). There are moments of piquant delicacy like "Blue Umbrella", "Birthday Song" and "Baby Blue Sky" within a musical rainbow of stylistic splashes that range across folk, blues, jazz, Southern mountain music, ambient modernity and more.
Ultimately it all plays like no one else but Dana Falconberry. Produced by her manager Roy Taylor, who has recorded such Austin acts as Glass Eye, Stick People and Craig Ross, oh skies of grey is anchored by the deft rhythm section of drummer Michael Longoria (known for his work with Patty Griffin) and bassist Luis Guerra (who, with Longoria, is the core of their band Terremoto, and has played with Griffin, Alejandro Escovedo, Marc Ribot and R.E.M.'s Peter Buck) and sweetly iced with the alluring harmony vocals of Erika Maassen and Gina Dvorak.
Falconberry hails from Dearborn, Michigan and grew up with music around her at home (her father is a music lover who plays guitar and drums and did his time in rock bands in his youth; her grandfather played in big bands, and her uncle is noted Detroit scene blues hero "The Reverend" Marc Falconberry). But dance was her primary and very great artistic passion up into her college years, though one musical act did captivate her in her youth; The Beatles. "I was always into harmony," she explains. "When I was in high school all I listened to was The Beatles. I figured out all of John's parts because I thought if they ever had a reunion one day, then I could be John. I really thought that way. They'd get my phone number somehow and call me up: Hey, we need John. Come fill in."
Captivated by the mythic allure of the American South, Falconberry went to Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas, where she began playing guitar, singing and writing songs. By her junior year she was fronting her own band with one of her professors playing guitar behind her, and had fallen under the spell of such fellow female creators of soulful Southern sounds as Lucinda Williams and Gillian Welch.
"There was something about songwriting that was like nothing else for me," explains Falconberry, who crafted her own college major by combining classes in music and business and studied Delta blues and Ozark Mountains folk for her senior thesis. During a post college stint living in Little Rock, she cut an album, Ten Birds on One Wire, at the legendary Sun Studio in Memphis, to sell at her shows.
In 2005, Falconberry moved to Austin, drawn by the city's active music community. She quickly graduated from open mikes to shows of her own, and also joined the band Peter and the Wolf. Longtime Austin music scene stalwart Roy Taylor - whose many endeavors include working as a touring sound engineer for Patty Griffin, Kasey Chambers, Radney Foster and others - was tipped to Falconberry's talents, and duly impressed on seeing her perform, signed on as her manager and producer.
The first product of their collaboration, a six-song self-released EP titled Paper Sailboat, was hailed as "a triumph of composition, that aspires to Patty Griffin's throne" by the Austin Chronicle. It featured such noted players as Longoria and Guerra as well as Austin producer and bassist Brian Beattie, guitarist Doug Lancio (who has worked with Griffin, Nanci Griffith and others) and fiddler Eamon McLoughlin of The Greencards on viola, and firmly established Falconberry as a compelling new presence rising from the Austin scene.
Falconberry and Taylor had already completed oh skies of grey when 2miuntes59 Records happened to catch her at her South By Southwest 2008 showcase. Duly impressed, the label offered her a deal.
And like many who have come across or heard Dana Falconberry, they know that she's a genuine and special musical artist who is sure to have her impact within popular music. That's just plain obvious when you hear her music, and becomes even more evident as one comes to glimpse and even know her artistic soul, which creates in a way that is - as said at the outset here - utterly natural, as an extension of her very being, if you will.
So if you happen to inquire about her influences and inspirations, Falconberry won't be giving you a list of other musical artists, much as she loves music. Rather, what stokes her muse is something as basic as a forest of trees, a verdant hillside, a particular combination of words and notes or an idea or notion that comes to her.
"When I feel like I'm having writer's block, I just take a walk in the park or the woods. That inspires me," she explains. And when that strikes, she brings it into her writing nook back home, closes the curtain, and in a private pas de deux with her muse, creates songs that sound, to just about anyone who ever hears them, as if their very being is preordained.
"They're songs about characters that come from the landscape, and heavily harmonized." That's just about all Falconberry will say of her creations. She admits that she's wary of pinning down the evanescence of creativity, and also feels that she doesn't fall under the "singer-songwriter" rubric.
"For me it's not just about music," she explains. "It's more about how music is, I think, the best medium for me right now to express things. It's just my passion to create things, and it happens to be that music is the way that right now works best for me and feels the most complete." oh skies of grey attests to just how well it does work and how complete it also feels to the listener (and do note that it is just the very beginning of what is sure to come).
"I'm very serious about songwriting, and the integrity of the songwriting process is very important to me," she concludes. "I feel like it's an art to me. My reasons for doing this, I feel, are very clear.
"I do feel like a lot of this is just natural for me, and that's how I want it to be. This is what I would be doing anyway. If I were on a desert island or locked away in prison, this is still what I would be doing. It wouldn't come with all the packaging," she adds with a laugh, "but it is what I'd be doing."
-Rob Patterson
source: danafalconberry.com
DANA FALCONBERRY lyrics and albums
