It's impossible to peg singer/songwriter Daisy DeBolt's music in conventional terms, since her raging art folk -- filtered through a jazz improv sensibility -- is utterly without reference. Accordion, flute, piano and mandolin flutter around DeBolt's frank pronouncements, creating a kind of rogue vibe one might find in a French cafe situated on the outskirts of Tel Aviv. That these angular songs are meant to capture the essence of mountains is indication enough of DeBolt's ambition. Not your average recording, in the best way possible. DeBolt unveils Just Mountain Songs Friday (December 1) at the Free Times Cafe.KH
KIM HUGHES - nowtoronto.com - NOW NOV 30 - DEC 6, 2000 ************************************** Recently I did a search for Daisy Debolt's trippily compelling collaboration with Allan Fraser and Ian Guenther. While cult classic Fraser & Debolt is still out of print, I'm delighted to report that Debolt's still kicking the stuffing out of anything resembling set musical categories. A musician's musician, Debolt studied with legendary guitar wizard Lenny Breau and has collaborated with or been backed by the cream of the progressive Folk/Jazz/Blues/Fusion musicians. Her eclectic recordings are unified by casually brilliant visions and a barrelhouse contralto that can dissolve into sultry smoke or blast out of the box, as often happens on her latest CD, Live Each Day With Soul. That's a good one to get if you want to feel like you're in a club, hearing Debolt tear into the Blues with a jazzy feel. But if you crave the over-the-edge-without-a-safety-net kick of Fraser & Debolt's "All this Paradise," I recommend another recent Debolt release, Just Mountain Songs. Try to imagine a kaleidoscopic quilt patching beautiful Folk and Classical strains with "out" Jazz. This sounds at times rather like Tom Waits if he abandoned his cool stance, or Kurt Weill & Bertolt Brecht's Three Penny Opera fast-forwarded a few decades. While Just Mountain Songs incorporates ethereal moments a la Vaughan Williams, this is no simple or well-worn evocation of the mountains, cowboys or the past. Debolt's eye for everyday miracles and horrors eschews politically correct fables for the hazier territory of ambiguous, varied human experiences. The slightly dissonant rapture of opener "Skeena, River of Mists" feels more like Fraser with Debolt than any solo Debolt I've heard. On other tracks, wild blackberries nestle cool in the mouth, "Fancy Nancy will do anything to get high... anything to silence the wolf... and the dogs," and Debolt, or some "fat woman," is insulted by/attracted to a Calvary barfly. Debolt isn't afraid to be passionate or ridiculous. Some of her lyrical and instrumental risks go deep into subconscious and shadow-self territory. There's exhilaration to be gleaned from her feckless inhalation of the natural world and her accounts of various characters, which are depicted in their frustrating and endearing reality, not touched-up for easy consumption. We've grown accustomed to Pop artists who pretty up what pass for portraits of people and experiences. Debolt disproves cliches and prejudices regarding musical genres, older people, large women, women and white people who sing the Blues. The fact that Just Mountain Songs was recorded live seems incredible until you see the list of players: Bob Derkach (who co-wrote some of these compositions) on piano/accordion/vocals, Phil Dwyer on saxes/flute, Larry Stanley on keyboards/vocals, George Koller on bass, and Rod Booth/violin. Debolt plays mandolin and sings, narrates, roars, cries and does the spoken-word bits. Debolt's offhand comments seem as heartfelt, poetic and funny as her lyrics. About Just Mountain Songs she said: "As Bobby mixed this we became so aware of the mountains speaking on the different instruments, the low rumbling - His feet in the earth, fireflies of light on the Skeena, arpeggios of moonrises and sunsets, playing the subplot, the notes between the thoughts." The only thing missing from this CD is a lyric sheet. I wish I could share more of Debolt's words with you, as I am rendered somewhat inarticulate by this uncommonly stimulating musical journey. If you like music that takes the risks necessary to create something beautiful, poetic and offbeat, I hope you'll take a chance on Daisy.
Mary Leary - www.nuwax.com - March 2002 ************************************** Daisy DeBolt-Just Mountain Songs-DeBolt Productions
Back in the early seventies, the Ontario based duo Fraser and DeBolt were making acoustic music that was among the most original and
creative of that time. These qualities still apply to DeBolt's work although her music is far more complex and eclectic than the
hallucinogenic country-folk sounds she was known for back then. On her new CD, she has fashioned her impressions of the Rocky
Mountain area and its people into a sort of song cycle that strongly evokes the character of this region-its beauty, isolation, violence,
sexuality and humour and her place in it as a "Prairie Girl". Some of Canada's finest musicians such as George Koller on bass and sax
giant Phil Dwyer create dazzling soundscapes behind her rich lyrics using elements of free jazz, tango, ragtime and other styles. But the
most awe-inspiring instrument here is DeBolt's powerful, nuanced voice which easily manages the wide range of expression needed to
make these songs work.
Ron Forbes - Monday Magazine, Victoria BC - October,2000 ************************************** Daisy DeBolt' s "Just Mountain Songs" is as Canadian a work of art as there ever has been. The lyrics could easily have been quoted in Margaret Atwood's seminal manifesto "Survival." Yet they owe as much to Allen Ginsberg and Dante's "Divine Comedy." Life and death struggles in a vast landscape sung by an artist who has lived every line. The veteran vocalist is virtually without peer as a confessional balladeer. A virtual autobiography of a modern Canadian woman played out against a breathtaking backdrop. Of particular note is "B.C. Mountain Suite" which is a radical departure. Like Kurt Ellling with better chops she reminisces about a thirty year period of her life always in terms of her visits to the Rocky Mountains. Harrowing bicycle rides, blackberries and oysters, up to her elbows in blood. "You become speechless, you become sane" she sings. We could say no less of the experience of listening to this CD. Wm. C. Weckesser ********************************** These words, sung as sweetly as any Mountain Bluebird might, open Daisy DeBolt's latest release: "Just Mountain Songs". Once again, DeBolt proves that she is more than a fine craftsman; she is a poet, actor and musician with a voice that stings like nettles, and then soothes like jewelweed as she guides us through the wild mountains of Western Canada. The tinkley mandolin and high-flying fiddle which accompany these first lyrics make it easy to imagine that we've just awakened at Heaven's pearly gates. This is a DeBolt theme which goes back decades -- that Nature is Paradise, if only we have the eyes to see it. "Skeena" segues smoothly into "Mandolin Gal," which yanks us abruptly back to earth with a recollection of a night of music-making in a smokey cowboy bar, and the sort of beer-induced, yeehaw sexuality that thrives in these dark little hideaways. Here, and throughout the album, you can feel the sweat on dancers' bodies, smell the blood of slaughtered sheep, taste the wild blackberries-- all under the spell of those "big fellows," those great mountains. Like all of Daisy's work, "Just Mountain Songs" is hard to categorize. It moves easily from folk, to cabaret, to jazz, beat poetry and-- dare I say it-- musical theatre, and yet the album feels all of a piece. It has the excitement of a live album, but the sound is clear and bracing as a swim in one of those freezing mountain lakes. I can't say enough about the other musicians in the two small ensembles whose performances were recorded for "Just Mountain Songs"; they're all absolutely first rate. Bob Derkach, longtime DeBolt collaborator, was the album's producer, arranger and mixing engineer (he also played piano and accordion), and deserves a lot of credit for the great sound here. DeBolt's poetry has the pure, raw beauty of mountain crystal, but Derkach provides the setting which lets her brilliance shine, and it's pure gold.
Daisy, YOU take my breath away!
Andrew Periale / Perry Alley Theatre, NH
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