![]() ![]() Together they penned the family remembrance “I Won’t Ask You Why” via text. If I can’t write a song with John, then who can I write a song with? It just wasn’t my thing.” But she had better luck with her stepdaughter, Pieta Brown, a distinguished singer-songwriter in her own right. “John Prine and I tried to write a song together, and we have some great stories to tell but no songs. “I’ve never really written with people,” she said. I don’t always know if I’ll make another record, because I don’t know if I’ll find those 10 or 12 songs.”įor the new album, DeMent tried something that hadn’t clicked before: co-writing. “It takes me a long time to get 10 or 12 songs that I have faith in. “I don’t think it’s because I have a high standard, but I do have a certain standard,” she explained matter-of-factly, as though that wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. And she often wonders if she’ll never release another album, if no more songs will demand to be set them loose in the world. (That year, her 1992 track “ Let the Mystery Be” was used as the Season 2 theme for “The Leftovers.”)ĭuring that downtime she occasionally tours, and she’s always writing, always singing around the house and playing music with her husband, the folk musician Greg Brown. “Lifeline,” from 2004, was a collection of old Pentecostal hymns, and for “The Trackless Woods,” from 2015, she set to music poems by the writer Anna Akhmatova - a project inspired by her Russian-born adopted daughter. It makes for a small but weighty catalog: In this century she’s made four albums, only two of which included original songs. ![]() ![]() “I could succumb to making records that aren’t like who I am and what I was put here to do, or I could pull back and protect my calling.”ĭeMent learned to take her time, typically pausing for roughly eight years between releases. “I realized that it wasn’t working for me,” she said. ![]() After two follow-up albums - the melancholy “My Life” in 1994 and the scowling “The Way I Should” in 1996 - she very purposefully slowed her schedule down. Just as quickly she found herself overwhelmed by the demands of the music industry. Very quickly, she found herself celebrated by some of her heroes, including Merle Haggard, Emmylou Harris and John Prine (who even wrote liner notes for “Infamous Angel”). Her lyrics sounded like down-home poetry, plain-spoken in their wisdom, and her music drew from many different styles - country, bluegrass, old-time folk, older-time church music - without falling squarely into any one genre or market. Her philosophical 1992 debut, “Infamous Angel,” which opened with an inquiry into the afterlife and closed with her mother singing “Higher Ground,” showcased her high, keening voice, the kind you’d hear from a church pew rather than the radio. “It’s a blessing to be of use in that way.”ĭeMent, 62, has been making herself useful for 30 years now. “It dawned on me that a lot of what I’ve done with my songs is, I’ve tried to get what I think needs to be heard out to the grown-ups,” she said. King, of course, but also John Lewis, Mahalia Jackson and the Chicks. On new tracks that sound like old hymns, she sings about the people she considers her heroes: Dr. King on “How Long,” a gospel song from “Workin’ on a World” about the arc of the moral universe taking a long, long time to bend toward justice. “I remember looking around our living room and thinking, ‘I hope the grown-ups are listening to this man.’”ĭeMent name-checks Dr. King.”Įven as a child, she understood something important was happening. This was back when TVs were on the floor, so when I turned, I was suddenly eye to eye with Dr. “The TV was playing, and I heard this booming voice. “There were a gazillion people living in our house,” she said from her home in Iowa City, Iowa. Her very large family - she has 15 siblings - had just moved from Paragould, Ark., out to California. It was the late 1960s, not long before his assassination, and she was 5 or 6 years old. While writing songs for her seventh album, “Workin’ on a World,” Iris DeMent recalled a vivid memory from her childhood, when she was first struck by Dr. ![]()
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