Eugene weekly., August 05, 2004, Page 23, Image 23

BY VANESSA SALVIA
Laura Kemp, Janis Ian release new works.
E
ugene’s beloved folkie Laura
Kemp has recently released a new
CD, May, which she will reveal at a
CD release party at Sam Bond’s on Aug. 6.
The singer/songwriter and guitarist found
time to speak with me after a busy day of
teaching guitar camps to youth through the
OFAM summer music camps program.
Since Kemp produces her music independ-
ently, without financial backing from any
label, she doesn’t shy away from the stark
reality that paying studio executives and ses-
sion musicians for recording time can be
cost-prohibitive, which initiated a move
toward recording tracks in her home studio.
“I worked on May for a year and a half and
recorded most of the tracks at home, which was
kind of a new thing,” says Kemp. She got pro-
duction help from another Eugene musician,
her partner Tony Kaltenberg, who entered the
picture about halfway through the project.
“Tony had recently finished up recording a
project with his band, Jellymoon, and he just
kind of got sucked into it!” she says with a
laugh. “It was great to have someone to help
with recording the tracks but also just to bounce
ideas off of and listen to parts. It was great to
have another person who was into the project
instead of being completely alone with it.”
Saving money on studio time allowed
Kemp to splurge on guest musicians. Some fab-
ulous guests that Kemp brought in from parts
beyond are Steve Smith, a mandolinist, and
Sally VanMeter, “a dobro player from Colorado
who is just one of the best in the country.”
Local bassist and a friend from Babes
With Axes, T.R. Kelley, helped out on May,
as did drummer Brian West and fiddler/vio-
linist Roy Brewer.
May is Kemp’s fifth solo record and,
counting the two she recorded with Babes
With Axes, that’s seven records (plus one
debut cassette) in a 12-year recording career.
Kemp’s favorite song on May is the first
track, “Hannah Branch,” an autobiographical
song about a small Quaker community called
Celo where Kemp lived in North Carolina
before traveling west to settle in Eugene. “It’s
not a relationship or a love song; it’s about a
love for a place, so it’s one of those songs I can
play over and over again and conjure up that
emotion as opposed to a relationship song.
Sometimes you get over it and you don’t feel
like playing that song anymore!” she explains.
Another favorite is “Snow Returns,” a song
based on a poem sent to her by Peter Straton. “I
wrote the music to it and kind of twisted the
lyrics around a little. I wrote the chorus part of
it myself and then turned everything to rhyme
because it didn’t rhyme originally.”
The song speaks emotively of loss and the
turning wheel of the year: “When the snow
returns without you I won’t be waiting on the
front porch in the slowly fading twilight, I
won’t be watching the wide sweeping of the
headlights on the hill.”
There’s an ongoing conversation that
Kemp may be one of the best unsigned folk
singers around, thanks to her long career of
self-produced CDs with no label backing her
up. She says the idea of being signed to a label
does cross her mind, but only rarely. “It did
cross my mind with May, like should I shop it
around to labels? And I haven’t shopped it
around. I kind of go back and forth on it. I love
having complete ownership of what I do.”
Kemp occasionally re-asseses what moti-
vates her to continue making records, even
though each time it’s a big financial commit-
ment. She says, “It’s what I do. It’s my art.
There were times in my life when I thought,
‘I’ll do this or I’ll do that,’ and music will just
be a side thing, and I’m not capable of doing
that. It’s just too much a part of who I am. I’ve
come to that acceptance that I’m a musician
and no matter what, I’m going to continue to
create and put out albums and perform.”
The McDonald Theater is branching out
by initiating an outdoor concert series to take
place at Broadway Plaza, located at Broadway
and Willamette and sometimes called Kesey
Plaza for the recently installed bronze statue of
Ken Kesey. With a huge stage, food booths, a
beer garden, and lighting, sound and a video
monitor provided by the McDonald Theater,
the concert series promises to be great fun. The
concert will kick off with Pink Floyd cover
band The Floydian Slips on Aug. 7 and
will continue with The Neville Brothers
on Aug. 14. Adam Bernstein, owner and
operator of LUNA jazz club and Adam’s
Place bar and restaurant, located just steps
away from the Plaza, fully supports the con-
cert initiative and will not book any shows at
LUNA on concert nights. He says, “By leav-
ing LUNA dark during the [concerts], I
remove any live music competition, raising
the expectation that businesses can work
together to remind everyone that downtown
Eugene is still a destination point.”
Janis Ian , an enduring folk artist, will
appear at WOW Hall on Aug. 11 to support
her latest release, Billie’s Bones. For more
than three decades Ian has been revered as a
songwriter with poetic wordplay and a tender
voice. A musician from an early age, Ian
grew up on a farm in New Jersey playing
piano at age 2, guitar at 10 and writing her
first song at 12. Ian was 15 in 1966 when her
controversial tale of interracial love,
“Society’s Child” exploded onto the scene.
Ian continued making music in the ‘70s and
‘80s, earning nine Grammy nominations.
Billie’s Bones is Ian’s 18th studio album,
“a resplendent mix of unadulterated folk, jazz
and blues performed in Ian’s unpretentious
styling.” The title is an allusion to singer
Billie Holiday, and the CD also includes a
duet with Dollie Parton, one of Ian’s musical
ew
heroes, on “My Tennessee Hills.”
Laura Kemp
celebrates
the release
of her fifth
solo CD May
Friday at
Sam Bond's.
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AUGUST 5, 2004 23