[dar-list] Dar-Antje

[Luca, Joseph (EHS)]

Howdy---



I've tried a few times over a couple of months to post this...maybe
today's the charm...



Ciao!



Joe





Howdy---



I don't think I've ever read a piece on Antje Duvekot---especially by
big Dar fan Scott Alarik---that didn't include a comparison to Dar.
(Truth be told, when I saw Antje, before I read the comparisons, I had
the same feeling---a certain indefinable stage presence and persona, not
to mention the ability to transmogrify past personal pain into
therapeutic art.)  Anyhow, a recent article in the Globe goes beyond
Scott's comparison, and cites Newport's Robert Jones's inclusion of Dar
and Antje into truly heady company.  And there's even something from
Antje herself, whereby she references Dar and Ani.



I'll paste in the article below.



Ciao,



Joe



Big fears, big dreams

Antje Duvekot overcame her demons to become a folk sensation By Scott
Alarik, Globe Correspondent  |  August 4, 2006



This year's Newport Folk Festival lineup was completely booked. At least
that's what producer Robert Jones thought, until he heard Somerville
songwriter Antje Duvekot . It was June, and Jones says he had one of his
rare ``rings true" moments. It was the same feeling he had the first
time he heard Bob Dylan, Doc Watson, Alison Krauss , Ellis Paul , and
Dar Williams.



``I find it very difficult to explain what it is -- you just hear it,"
Jones says of such revelatory musical moments. ``The music just swings
right. The voice, the style, the melodies, the content; it all comes
together. Duvekot writes songs that are very personal, but they're much
more than somebody's diary."



Jones immediately added the singer-songwriter to this weekend's Newport
bill.



Duvekot (pronounced DOO-va-kot) has gotten hotter faster than any local
songwriter in recent memory. In July, she won the New Folk Award at the
Kerrville Folk Festival in Texas, just as Nanci Griffith and Steve Earle
did. Her new CD, ``Big Dream Boulevard," has been No. 1 on the Boston
folk radio station WUMB-FM (91.9) for the past month. And just this
week, she was selected to showcase at the prestigious international Folk
Alliance conference in Memphis.



It's all a little overwhelming for the German-born songwriter, who moved
to this country when she was 14. In fact, her first reaction to all the
Antje-mania was a severe writer's block, which only lifted a couple of
weeks ago.



``It all feels kind of surreal, hard to trust," Duvekot says in her
soft, sonorous voice. ``I guess as an artist, I'm just perpetually
insecure. All the things I've worked for are coming true. And it's just
what I'd hoped, which is that my songs would connect with people. That's
wonderful, because it makes me feel purposeful."



Most rising stars would be wary about admitting to insecurities, but
Duvekot, 31, is hopelessly addicted to telling the truth about herself.
It is central to the allure of her closely observed songs. She believes
in the redemptive power of sharing secrets, especially the ones we try
the hardest to hide.



In the shattering ``Judas," she probes the ravages of abuse: ``Last
night, Judas's father threw his son against the wall/ That's how you
learn to be invisible."



Dave Marsh, rock critic and former editor of Rolling Stone, is another
Duvekot champion. He currently edits Rock and Rap Confidential and hosts
his own show on Sirius satellite radio.



``As far as I can tell, she's the whole package," Marsh says. ``I've had
this reaction once in the past 10 years, and that was the first time I
heard Patty Griffin. And the reasons are very, very similar: that
package of a terrific writer and singer, with the instincts to do things
right, over and over and over."



He likes every song on Duvekot's CD, but especially ``Judas" and
``Jerusalem," in which she laments the plight of the eternally war-torn
city: ``Your God's armies are marching on heaven . . . casting poisonous
seeds for your children to reap."



Duvekot comes by her deeply felt empathy in hard ways. She was a
painfully shy adolescent when she moved to this country, barely able to
speak English. Her mother and stepfather were strict and controlling, so
much so that she was forced to hide her growing need for music, the only
place she could express her feelings. For years, she had to hide in
closets to sing, in barely audible whispers, about her crushing
isolation and pain.



That remains in her music, transformed into a gripping style: stark
guitar parts, and hushed vocals trembling with believable emotion. Her
songs still feel like secrets: tender, wounded confidences she is warily
sharing with us.



``If you go through hard times, they say it makes you more able to not
be selfish, and to see how it is for other people," she says. ``I think
those years made me more thoughtful about suffering in general, and gave
me a desire to address it, not just pretend it's not there."



Her limited grasp of English back then forced her to think of words in
terms of their context, meter, weight, and color -- the tools of the
poet. The result is a stunningly original lyrical palette.



``Because of my inability to put down analytical, rational trains of
thought and follow grammatical rules," she says, ``my lyrics came from a
more emotional place. They aren't as influenced by the outside as the
inside."



In ``Rudderless," she describes a dangerous love: ``We're a paper fleet
in an arctic freeze/ On the skin of an endless open sea." In the
resilient ``Dandelion," she turns the lonely ache of the wallflower into
a source of strength and pride: ``You were looking for a tea light/ And
I will always be/ A forest fire."



Duvekot admits that she wrote ``Dandelion" in part because a song like
that would have helped her through her own wallflower days. She thinks
about those things when she writes because she believes that discovering
the honest, intimate folk songs of John Gorka, Ani DiFranco, Ellis Paul,
and Dar Williams saved her life. Now she yearns to offer that kind of
lifeline to all the dandelions and Judases out there, bullied and
belittled, crouched in the darkened corners of our careless,
self-involved culture.



In ``South," she sings, ``There are jagged shards of glass out there/
And the ones who wear the shoes don't seem to give a damn."



``Intimate songs by people like Dar Williams and Ani DiFranco ," she
says, ``gave me a certain liberty to think I could share my feelings,
and that maybe somebody else would care. Because I know I cared. Those
songs helped me a lot. So now, I'll think that this is pain I've felt,
so I'm going to write it down and get it off my chest. Because I'll bet
somebody else is feeling the exact same pain and will find some solace
in that."



(c) Copyright 2006 Globe Newspaper Company.









President Bush's followers describe him as a "man of God."  I don't know
about that, but I do know that he's a miracle worker.  And what makes
George W. Bush truly miraculous is that he has made me pine for the
integrity of Nixon, the compassion of Reagan, and the intelligence of
Quayle.