Jenny Dalton Will Tickle the Ivory Key(s) to Your Heart

So I was to head back to where I made my first steps on this mortal coil and figured I would get in touch with some artists there. I knew that Jenny Dalton played out a good amount and that in fact a bunch of my friends from yester-yore were going to be in attendance at her next show (after dinner and perhaps some slight chicanery or not so slight, as yet to be seen.) So I was more than pleasantly surprised when I found that she has kept quite busy and working on music while we had been out of touch. I find it reassuring when artists don’t have to always fit the stylish uber-chic mold and I think she is one that does not. She makes her own. I have seen her play before and there is something about an artist and a lone keyboard that is cool. Maybe because it definately isn’t that common or perhaps because…..ya, it’s that reason, uncommon.

Jenny is playing at the Kitty Cat Klub in Minneapolis friday the 22nd.

It feels innate – like an instinct. It always has.

At Ease

What is it about music that drives you to do it?

I’m not sure what drives me to do this. My grandma told me I used to sing myself to sleep before I even learned to talk. Whether we make it or connect with it, music is part of who we are as human beings: making sense of the world’s rhythms and harmonies. And I think that’s why I love the piano so much – it’s both percussive and harmonic. There’s a lot of freedom and refuge in a keyboard, and there’s a lot of freedom and refuge in letting a voice out. Music isn’t something I choose to do, I almost feel like it’s something that has chosen me. I have to do it.

What are you trying to do with music? What is your purpose for creating?

There’s nothing else I can imagine doing. I’ve had a very short attention span for anything else which is unfortunate because it’d be more convenient to love something that can bring more stability and certainty. For a long time, I followed the path that people are “supposed” to follow: went to college, started grad school, was going to be a teacher, was going to settle down with somebody, buy a house, etc. All of that sounds lovely and nice, but I always felt chaotic and unbalanced pursuing it.

Now that I’ve given all of that up and have committed to music, it has turned me into a workaholic and takes up all my time and money (this is not a cheap endeavor). That sounds chaotic, but for the first time, I am completely at peace. It’s a strange dichotomy, but I feel perfectly at ease because this is what I’m supposed to do.

So, it’s not really a question of what I’m trying to do because I feel I’m just riding out some powerful inertia. I’m moving with a current. My only intentions are to remove roadblocks, keep the path clear, and to let the river take me whether it decides to move quickly, slowly, flood over, or fall. I’ll always be safe in it.

Why are you going out east to perform?

When I recorded Fleur de Lily, I only meant to breakthrough the local music scene in my hometown, Minneapolis. But because of MySpace, CD Baby, Pandora.com, and other websites, it went way beyond that. I started selling CDs and getting attention from all over the world. I feel like I need to seize that. If I had the means, I would drop everything and tour the US, Europe, Australia and Japan where I get regular requests. I don’t have the means, so I have to start small and pin-point a few cities. I pick them based on CD sales, website hits, MySpace fans, radio play, etc. Most are in the northeast and southwest, so I’m planning on booking shows there this winter/spring.

Tell me about some of what you have done to promote
yourself and how you gather this information to seek
venues as well as where to market?

In today’s music climate, it’s important to have a strong presence online. I have done a little bit of communications work and know the importance of making sure everything you present has visual continuity, so first I made sure I had a main website that was visually representative of my music. Then I made use of web-based communities and promotional tools like MySpace. In promoting to media, I put together a cost-effective but visually interesting press kit. I sent these out to print, radio, and blog outlets. I also contracted with a promo company to do a college radio campaign, so I know where my CD is getting spins.

I watch what’s happening on my websites: Google Analytics is a great web analysis tool and shows where hits are coming from geographically, how many hits are repeat visitors, and how they got to my site (directly, web search, or via link). I use all of the web hit, radio play, and fan mail information to find the concentrated cities to include on a small tour. I actually have a map with colored dots all over it to figure this out.

Are there some concepts you wish to employ that you haven’t used in your music?

Although there are definite concepts, I feel that they emerge on their own instead of starting out with any conceptual intentions. The way I write music is very meditative – it comes from a quiet, reflective place. I don’t concentrate on a song, but I let it come out. I can’t push it. Lyrics also come that way – I rarely sit down with a pen and write out what I want to sing. It just kind of happens. When I sit at the piano and write a song, it’s more of a journal entry than something I wonder how will be received by an audience.

So just as a small section of journal pages will be similar thematically (whatever the writer happens to be going through at that time and place), a group of my songs are similar thematically. For Fleur de Lily, most of those songs were about what it was like to be on this side of the ocean while my then boyfriend was at war in Iraq. It documented all of the stages from the phone-call to the return home. It was my journal for that year.

Then, the songs I have been writing over the last year have a strong water element to them. When I read Memoirs of a Geisha, the description of the main character as having “too much water” in her personality kind of struck a chord with me. Maybe it’s because it’s a year of change for me, and water is such a changing force. I can relate to the different faces of water: gentle or ferocious slow change as rain on a mountain or fast as an ocean engulfing a city. So the new project is tentatively titled Rusalka’s Umbrella. A rusalka is a female water spirit in Slovic folklore.

Some of your cd photos and feeling of lone piano and voice come across as a
retro 40’s feel, is there anything to this observation?

During the time I wrote those songs, I felt a special kinship to past members of the “war club.” War is a terrible thing, and I grew up in a liberal, peace loving family. So I always thought it was ironic that I was in love with a soldier who was at war. I gained a new understanding of solders – I’d always thought of them as brainwashed brutes. But I was there when they said goodbye to their wives, mothers, and children when the buses took them away. I was there to see their sadness and fear – they didn’t know if they’d be coming back. No matter how old they were or how tough they’d been, they were innocent boys when they got on that bus. So in a way, I feel very fortunate to have been a part of it. I was able to experience something that was emotionally jolting, and that’s refreshing in a world of habit and routine. So by “war club” I mean that I feel like I am part of that historical tradition of separation and suspense. I wanted to somehow capture that sense of tradition in the CD artwork.

Sometimes I think everyone is sleepwalking, so I felt lucky to have been awoken by the experience.

What have you done to make yourself an
indie label? Is that more than just paying to press
your cds, did you actually start it by yourself or is
anyone else involved? Is yours different then other people’s somehow?

There are just a few papers to file and fees to pay to officially have your own record label. As with any business, it’s what you do after the logistics are taken care of that matters. Since I have created my independent label, Glossy Shoebox Productions, I have become a jack of all trades. I’m the only one running the show, so I have to be the administrator, webmaster, graphic designer, copy writer & editor, producer, publicist, booking agent, marketing strategist – everything. I work a regular day-job, so I funnel all of that money into this other full-time job. It’s a lot of work, and I’m operating in the red, but I love every minute of it. This is not to say that I wouldn’t mind being on a label with more resources, I just haven’t been “shopping myself out” that way.

How well are you received at shows?

The shows have been going very well, and it’s always interesting to see what mix of people will show up. I paid my dues in coffee shops and dive bars: I once played at a dive bar whose patrons were regulars who’d been drinking since their shift ended sometime in the afternoon and the others were clearly fans of heavy-metal, so I thought to myself “these people are going to throw beer at me. What am I doing here?” But to my surprise and relief, they really got into it. I’m finding that the audience is very diverse and appreciative. Sometimes it’s a personal experience too – it’s really nice to hear from people who are emotionally affected by the songs.

What is the reason you find behind performing? Is some of this
purpose found in just making the music when alone?

Some bands and musicians forget this in an urgent race to be above everyone else, but musicians are public servants. Tori Amos has described herself as a librarian, and I really get that. What we do is access information from a musical universe and hand it over.

I needed to get out of the living room and hand it over.

I never thought I’d play my music publicly. I’ve been writing songs since forever, but it was always by myself. I had one fan – my cat Midnight who I’d had since I was 9 years old. The story behind finally deciding to perform regularly started at my high school’s graduation party. They had a husband and wife team of palm readers there as part of the entertainment, and I got lost in a long conversation with them. They told me, “you HAVE to read a book called The Artist’s Way.” They wrote it down for me, and I tried to find it in the following weeks but never could. Six years later, I was perusing a used bookstore and was just walking out when I spotted the book on a high shelf. It jumped out at me. I went off to read the first chapter, and the following night, I performed at my first open-mic night. I’ve been performing regularly ever since. There are a couple of things to be said for this story: one, the book was a catalyst for attaining the bravery needed to pursue a life in music; two, I don’t think I would have been able to do this until the time was right. I needed to make sure the other paths didn’t work (a 9-5 career, the house with a white picket fence), and I needed to incubate. If I had found the book back then, it probably wouldn’t have had the same effect.

I enjoyed your video you have on your website, any more
of them in the works? Was that your idea or whose? Tell me about the making of it.

I didn’t really consider making a music video until I was approached by Jason Schumacher, the director. I let him choose the song, and then I told him a little about what the song means to me as far as the tone and mood are concerned. Then he came up with all of the ideas for lighting and shots. Lisa Jean Thorson did the clothing design and styling. We both happened to be in New York City at the same time this summer, so we went fabric shopping and went over some design ideas – that was pretty sweet. We shot the video in July over two days. The first day was the band getting filmed, and the second day was my filming. It was a lot of wardrobe changing, hair & make-up changing, set changing, location changing, and singing that song over and over again. It was fun to do, but also kind of a long day. Then all the magic happens in the editing room which I didn’t get to see, but I’m very happy with how it turned out. I do plan on doing on another video this spring or summer in preparation for the new release. The projected release for the new CD is fall 2007.

I’m also starting to do video blogging. I plan on documenting the production of the next project by making short vlogs of the recording sessions. I already have two vlogs up: one is documents a song I wrote for Rift Magazine’s 36-hour songwriting contest where they give you a song topic, and you write a new song to perform the next day, and the second is of a trip I took to Lake Superior to reflect on the new group of songs before I started the recording sessions.

Are their new themes or ideas you wish to consciously explore, or new
techniques/styles?

I am currently recording the next full-length CD, and am really excited about inserting some other styles. Lately, I have been getting into the Eastern-Block sound. I love how some bands like DeVotchka are picking up on those musical traditions and expanding on it. I have been working with members of a band called Murzik on a song or two – they have that traditional gypsy feel with accordion and strings. One song is in 3/4 time, and the other is what I interpret as a lonely sailor song called “Married to the Sea.” I am also working with Dan Greenwood and Matt Freed (Cloud Cult) again on drums and bass. Peter Aslanadis will be doing guitar work and hopefully a bit of programming. I plan on bringing in lot of other guest musicians, so we’ll see how it pans out.

While I work on the next full-length project to release this coming fall, I am also working on an EP, which I hope to release this spring. It will be a limited release EP with some electronica remixes of a few Fleur de Lily songs. Peter Aslanidis and a couple other people are currently working on these, and it’s sounding awesome so far. I’m really excited for both of these projects.

-euphoreador-

As always contact me at josh hinck at gmail.com
Come partake of my art music and poetry.