Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Covered in Pianofolk: The Keyboardist as Folk Musician
(Allison Crowe, Vienna Teng, Emm Gryner, Regina Spektor and more!)




Canadian singer-songwriter Allison Crowe, who has made a career of covering, crafting and performing warm, lyrical songs with little more than an intensely rich, emotional voice, strong piano skills, and a heap of moxie, was recently refused entry into the UK for a music festival, a casualty of the United Kingdom’s increasingly stringent rules for touring artists, which in turn seem to be part and parcel of the insane and inappropriately panicked global response to the fear of terrorism.

We’ve covered Allison’s work here before, and her manager Adrian even offered us some temporary hosting when we got into a spot of trouble last November; as a fan and a friend, I admire her cheerful yet proactive response to this despicable predicament, and wish her the best of luck in her continued tour. If you’d like to help the cause, please join Allison and others in signing the Visiting Academics and Artists Petition.

That said: few describe Crowe or her keyboard-wielding contemporaries as folk performers; the rise of the piano as a solo instrument in the hands of folk-grounded musicians is a relatively new development. But switch out the piano for a guitar, and I think most would accept the categorization. Today, with the help of Crowe and a few fellow female singer-songwriters, we make the case for the piano-vocalist as folk.



What is it about instrumentation that flavors our categorization of music inside or outside of the folk canon? Much, I think, has to do with history, both of folk itself, and of our own personal experience with the sound and genre placement of particular instruments.

As recently as the Woodstock generation, vocalized folk music was driven by singer-songwriters and interpretive troubadours wielding instruments portable enough to move from back porch to coffeehouse to labor protest — guitars, banjos, the autoharp, the mountain dulcimer. The side of folk which evolved from the blues comes to us through an evolutionary path which eschewed barrelhouse for guitar-driven field-blues. And regional forms — from bluegrass to old-timey folk to zydeco — whose evolution has become entwined with folk music, are similarly driven by strings plucked, strummed, or bowed, along with the occasional accordion or hammered dulcimer.

Ethnomusicologists take note: we don’t often consider the technology of the instrument, and its effect on the evolution of folk’s various forms. But if form follows function, then changes in functionality open up new avenues for expression. Writ broadly, we might say that with portability and location such determinant elements of the folksinger’s choice of instrument, it took both an increased ubiquity of the piano in the spaces where folk happens, and the development of the synthesizer, to make the keyboard-playing folk musician a real possibility in the smaller, generally amateur venues which typify modern folk performance.

These factors do not arise from thin air, of course. They were driven by the genre blur between pop, rock, and folk which have brought folk-oriented singer-songwriters into larger performance spaces, many of which held pianos, the advent of folk as an increasingly “native” recorded medium in the seventies and eighties, and the full-production sound of contemporary folk, which brought keyboard players into the studio as part of the folk creation process.

Combine these, and you have a platform wide enough to contain a new generation of piano-playing singer-songwriters who stand with at least one foot in the folk process, even as they straddle genre lines in their marketing and self-identity as artists. From here, it takes but a little — the folksinger’s adoption of rock music’s synthesizers for solo performance, and the small folk venue’s inclusion of piano and drums as part of a platform of preparedness for a more diverse spectrum of music. Abracadabra: the conditions for change are met.


The effect of instrumentation on our experience of music is not trivial: our formative experience with the piano, both as listeners and musicians, is most often that of pop or classical music, and the context in which both listener and performer hear the piano informs the way we hear and make this sort of song performance. Though style and innovation matter greatly to the individualized performer, we cannot help but bring our biases along with our listening ears, and apply it to any vocalist with her hands on the keys.

The way we describe piano-based singer-songwriter music is indicative of this subjective history. Though rock influences are evident in the work of a diverse set of artists from Tori Amos to Regina Spektor to Emm Gryner, the pop vocalist label is forever bandied about; Spektor identifies with the anti-folk movement, and Gryner’s fan base is wholly indie and alt-rock, but you’ll find these performers filed under pop. Even piano-playing musicians who are embraced by the folk community first and foremost, such as Susan Werner and Vienna Teng, are described in reviews and biographies in the terminology of pop and classical music, treated as anomalies or curiosities by the very fans that claim them as their own. Meanwhile, Fiona Apple is celebrated for her vocals, but isn’t remembered for her piano work, though it got her demo tape noticed in the first place. And that all of these performers lean heavily on their vocal talents, drifting into pop vocalist mannerisms and fluidity of performance, doesn’t help our case.

But it’s worth remembering that I first saw new radiopop phenomenon Sara Bareilles in a folk club, just a girl and her electric keyboard in front of a few dozen appreciative folk fans, an opening act for a performer long forgotten. I saw Nellie McKay, who has gone on to make a name for herself in the indie world as a quirky, playful post-pop lounge deconstructionist, in the same venue, again as an opener, and on a battered baby grand, long before she made her name beyond her native New York City.

In both cases, no one blinked — and that says it all. Take away the production, suspend the disbelief that a hundred years of string instruments have wrought, betray your biases towards the black and white, and this is, in the end, a form of singer-songwriter folk, accepted by the community, and well within the range of folk festival feature performance. Here’s just a few favorites from what may well be one of folk music’s newest genre-stretching branches.



As always, Cover Lay Down encourages you to click on artist links above to learn more about tours, merchandise, and downloads direct from the source, the better to support the next generation of artists pushing the boundaries and biases of folk. After all, pianos may be made of wood, but this sort of craftsmanship doesn’t grow on trees.

Category: Subgenre Coverfolk 12 comments »

12 Responses to “Covered in Pianofolk: The Keyboardist as Folk Musician
(Allison Crowe, Vienna Teng, Emm Gryner, Regina Spektor and more!)”

  1. Kenny
    July 15th, 2009 at 1:06 am

    Nice post! Today a 3 song digital ep came out on iTunes & one of the songs is Fiona Apple doing a cover of Cy Coleman’s “Why Try To Change Me Now”…it’s amazing!!!
    cheers
  2. boyhowdy
    July 15th, 2009 at 5:53 am

    Thanks for reminding me, Kenny — Fiona’s cover is stunning, and Patty Griffin does good work on the EP, too! Too early to give it away, but I hope my readers head over to buy the whole thing.
  3. Haven
    July 15th, 2009 at 8:22 am

    Fiona’s cover ‘why try to change me now’ can be heard at http://zeonmusic.blogspot.com/2009/06/covered-fiona-applebetty-lavette.html – nice!
  4. Adrian
    July 16th, 2009 at 1:32 am

    Thanks, as ever, boyhowdy, for your kind and thoughtful mention of Allison Crowe and fellow musicians outside the mainstream.

    You could call Allison simply “rock” – if rock today was the many-splendoured thing it was in the ’60s.

    Back when the fine folks at Festival Distribution did that sort of thing, it was Allison’s distributor in Canada. Her CDs were categorized as “pop” in Festival’s catalogue. The oeuvre of Ani DiFranco, one of the distributor’s biggest sellers, and one of Allison’s biggest inspirations, was also listed under pop – so, it seemed to us she was in good company.

    From my perspective, you’re quite right to consider the music a branch of “folk” (with roots in jazz and classical – with forays into those, and more, genres).

    The social awareness and conscience that is a hallmark of folk music is a big part of Allison’s identity. Whether the sounds created be as different as that of Woody Guthrie, Bob Marley, or Ani + – there is integrity to each individual’s approach to art and life.

    I’ve no doubt, the recent experience that has made Allison and all of us who work with her aware of today’s governmental/societal lunacy when it comes to borders etc. will further inform her world view and actions.

    Thanks again. A happy, healthy Summer to you and all here ( :
  5. il pensionante
    July 16th, 2009 at 1:57 am

    Another great post…thank you!!!

    :-)

  6. Pic
    July 16th, 2009 at 5:03 am

    Hey, a third pic reminded me Patricia Barber who is not very far from Nellie btw…good post!
  7. Nellie McKay Covers The Beatles “If I Needed Someone”…Plus Covers of Joni Mitchell, John Lennon, The Clash, and More. « Rock God Cred
    July 16th, 2009 at 7:05 am

    [...] Click here to go to CLD to check Nellie McKay’s cover of The Beatles’ “If I Needed Someone”, Regina Spektor’s cover of John Lennon’s “Real Love”, Allison Crowe covers Joni Mitchell’s ” A Case of You”, and Leonard Cohen’s “Joan of Arc”, Emm Gryner covers Blur’s “Song#2″, and The Clash “Straight to Hell”…and more. [...]
  8. muruch
    July 27th, 2009 at 3:29 pm

    I’m so happy to see others supporting Allison! She’s kinda the musical mascott of Muruch, since it seemed like I was the only one writing about her for so many years. Plus, as you know, her manager is a great supporter of music blogs. :)

    I definitely agree that Allison qualifies as a folk musician, given the quality of her music and her choice in covers. The same with Vienna Teng. But I often wonder why all female artists who play piano are usually lumped into together. I don’t mean by you in particularly since you have a point in doing so here. But in general it seems any female who sings and plays piano is compared to or listed with Tori Amos (or Kate Bush), even if they play in completely different genres. You rarely see such generalizing of guitar players. Anyway, I obviously digress. I’m catching up on my blog reading, and as always am enjoying your posts. :)

  9. New Artists, Old Songs: Mailbox Overflow (Covers of Britney, Kanye, Supertramp, Johnny Cash & more!) — Cover Lay Down
    July 29th, 2009 at 7:58 am

    [...] more!)Single Song Sunday: Summertime (John Fahey, Colin Meloy, Pura Fe, The Zombies and five more!)Covered in Pianofolk: The Keyboardist as Folk Musician (Allison Crowe, Vienna Teng, Emm Gryner, Regi…Who Knows Where The Time Goes? (On growing up, growing old, and trying to remember it all)Covering [...]
  10. Twitter Trackbacks for Covered in Pianofolk: The Keyboardist as Folk Musician (Allison Crowe, Vienna Teng, Emm Gryner, Regina [coverlaydown.com] on Topsy.com
    September 7th, 2009 at 1:22 am

    [...] Covered in Pianofolk: The Keyboardist as Folk Musician (Allison Crowe, Vienna Teng, Emm Gryner, Regi… coverlaydown.com/2009/07/covered-in-pianofolk-the-keyboardist-as-folk-musician-allison-crowe-vienna-teng-emm-gryner-regina-spektor-and-more – view page – cached Folk covers of familiar songs. Reimagined versions of folk songs. Because in the folk tradition, music belongs to the community. — From the page [...]
  11. Bill Bartmann
    September 19th, 2009 at 3:18 pm

    I’m so glad I found this site…Keep up the good work I read a lot of blogs on a daily basis and for the most part, people lack substance but, I just wanted to make a quick comment to say GREAT blog. Thanks,

    A definite great read.. :)

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