After over 14 months of hard work, angst and a lot of creativity from a lot of people, the CD is done!! The album is mostly original, with some traditional and a few covers thrown in.

"Now It's Time" was produced by me and two incredible guys - John Abbey and Steve Dawson. I don't think the album would have sounded the way it does without them. I also had the artistic brilliance of John and Steve, as well as Mark Dvorak, Sue Demel (Sons of the Never Wrong), Jennifer Armstrong, Carlos Cornier (Funkadesi) and Cathy Kuna. These folks are some of the best in Chicago (and Maine). I am honored to have worked with these people and I hope you'll look them up in their own rights.

Right now "Now It's Time" is available on my website: http://amydixonkolar.com. It can also be downloaded from CDbaby and individual tracks are available here, through the vault and through ITunes. But if you want the whole kit and kaboodle, just head over to the website.

Thanks to everyone here who has given me suggestions and guidance. Your suggestions and critiques have helped influence the album's final results.

Hope you'll give it a listen. Thanks my friends!

I hope you'll take some time and go over and listen to an interview I did last March that has just been put up on Chicago Acoustic Underground - http://chicagoacoustic.net/podcasts/episode---146-amy-dixon-kolar.html

Michael Teach is very supportive of local musicians, to the point that he started CAU to give us all a chance to be heard. I appreciate that he invited me to come in. It was a lot of fun! He's also a member of ezFolk!

He was also kind enough to advertise my CD release party on August 31 at Bill's Blues in Evanston. If you live in the area, please join us for the night. Special guests for the evening include Mark Dvorak, John Abbey and Steve Dawson. It'll be at 7:00p at 1029 W. Davis in Evanston.

Let me know if you have a chance to listen to the show!
Peace - Amy

Hello Friends - 

It's been a while since I've been actively around ezFolk.  We've been working diligently on the new CD and it's getting there.  We're into the mixing phase now.  What a process that is!!

One of the delights of doing this CD has been the folks I've been privileged to work with.  I've had a version of Wild Mountain Thyme up on ezFolk for a number of years now, but I had a chance to re-do it for the CD with an incredible musician - Jennifer Armstrong.  I got to know her when she lived in Chicago.  She has a legacy of folk music passed down from her parents - George and Gerry Armstrong, and she passed it on to her daughters - Suzannah and Georgia Rose.  She is now based in Maine.

Jennifer is one of my favorite traditional folk artists and storytellers.  Her voice is mesmerizing and her stories grab you from the first sentence.  To have her with me on this album is the answer to a secret dream I've had to work with her musically.  On this song she sings harmony and plays a beautiful fiddle.  You can find out more about her at www.jenniferarmstrong.com.

I hope you enjoy this version.  I couldn't wait until the entire album was complete to share it with you.  And, it's the first song I've felt ready to put in the vault for sale.  :)

Drop me a line and let me know what you think of it!  

Thanks - 

Amy

October 28, 2007

A friend and I were out listening to the Don Stiernberg Trio. Jazz, Swing, Bluegrass, Folk, Reggae - they played it all. And more. We were sitting in the back, being absolutely blown away by their talent. These three guys on mandolin, upright bass and guitar. Whenever I hear good music like that, I have to move, have to do something physical with the energy of the music. Tap my foot, jig my legs, sway, drum out the beat. Then came a Django Reinhardt tune. My friend turned to me and said "Do you dance?" That was it. We were the only two up, over on the side by the water glasses, dancing to the tune. He said it best - "There are some tunes you just have to dance to." So, here was another person like me, who can't just sit still and must go where the music takes him.

A few days earlier, I had been giving a lecture on the impact of deafness to parents of deaf children (part of my day job). Evelyn Glennie, the deaf percussionist from Scotland, came up in the discussion. That night, on a whim, I Googled her name and found some videos of her work on YouTube. There she was, giving a lecture on "How to Listen to Music With Your Whole Body." Here's this phenomenal talent who has perfected the art of listening in the way that I have felt was right since I was small, but could never have articulated so beautifully. Music should be listened to with the body, the whole body, and not just the ears. Music is meant to felt!

Then, a couple of days ago, a professor of psychology and music, Daniel Levitin, wrote an Op Ed piece for the New York Times. "Dancing In The Seats" is about how our brains are wired to feel the music, and that sitting passively while listening to music is actually not the 'norm' for humans. In many cultures, music and movement are inextricably tied. We are meant to have a physical reaction to music - we're meant to move!

So here's this message repeated to me in three very different ways, all in the span of a week. The relationship of music and the physical.

I spent probably a third of my life involved with dance. Lessons, recitals, dance troupes, musical theatre. To look at me now you wouldn't know that, but it still influences my reaction to music. Dancers get it instinctively. Of course music is meant to be felt, to be listened to with the whole body, that we're meant to move. Of course. And they look at the rest of us wondering why this is such a difficult concept to grasp.

But now, I'm not a dancer. I'm a folk singer. I stand up in front of people, alone with my guitar, and sing my songs. And people sit quietly, listening politely, often enthusiastically, laughing, singing, sometimes a tear in their eyes. And then I'll see someone moving, swaying along, and I know I've spotted a kindred soul.

So my friend and I, Evelyn Glennie, dancers, and all the other folks I know who can't sit still, aren't odd, at least about this. We let ourselves get transported by the music. Carried away, literally, to a place of physicality, of movement, expressing outwardly all that the music evokes inwardly. And it's what humans are meant to do.

But to those of you who sit quietly in your seats - I see you. You may not get up and dance, you may not jig around until you're almost falling out of your chair, but I see you. Your eyes close. Your head moves slightly with the beat. A finger taps lightly on the table in front of you. You give your partner a squeeze. I see the music in you. You smile or frown with what you're hearing. It's affecting you. And that's the goal of the music. Of all music. To transport you to that place of feeling, instead of just listening.