Dayna Kurtz

My exposure to Dayna Kurtz was one of those delightful, miraculous, unscripted and unexpected results of chance. My wife had heard that Richie Havens was playing at a lovely little venue in Harrisonburg, Virginia where her (that is, my wife’s) family lives, so we scooped up tickets immediately and brought friends. This is because nobody should die without having seen Richie Havens live. We’d seen him a couple times before, and you always leave his show positive and inspired. It turned out that he had Dayna opening for him during that tour. I’ll be frank, Dayna blew me away that night. Her deep, smoky voice, her emotionally-charged lyrics, and her cathartic, passionate delivery combine to get inside your head, and once you hear it, especially if you see her performing live, you’ll wonder why you haven’t heard of her before. Dayna’s website is http://www.daynakurtz.com and she’s also on MySpace.

Otherwise Luscious Life was released in 1997, went out of print, and then was reissued in 2002. This is a live album which contains some of the same songs as Postcards, in sparse arrangements, just Dayna and her guitar and voice. I really like this version of Miss Liberty. Hell, I really like it all. Something about taking away the instrumentation and production brings her soul to the surface.

Postcards from Downtown is from 2002. Standouts include Miss Liberty (”Go plant your flags and make your promise to my promised land, and we’ll make love to the new frontier in the hot beach sand, you’ll hold me like a drowning man, you’ll come at me too human and then drag me down again…”), Postcards from Downtown (”Red light, green light, one two three, have you come to conquer me?”), Love Gets In The Way (”So come on and make a mess of me, I won’t walk away”), and Somebody Leave a Light On (with Richie Havens).

Beautiful Yesterday was released in 2004. I bought it because I saw her again at Iota in Arlington, Virginia. I thought, well, she blew me away the first time, I expect a great show, but how could it possibly match that first one? Boy was I wrong. She did the amazing cover of Prince’s somewhat obscure “Joy in Repetition” heard on this album. I was about fifteen feet from her, and I experienced an amplification of the original feeling. Prince is a god. This might be the sexiest song ever written, and boy, she does it justice! It probably helped that I had never heard the original. I went back later and listened to the original, and I have to confess, I like Dayna’s version better. There’s also a nice version of Leonard Cohen’s “Everybody Knows” here.

Another Black Feather is her most recent release, from 2006. The standout cuts here are Venezuela, a delicious romantic portrait of a love that could never be, and Nola, a love song about New Orleans. This release is lyrically mature, and leaves you longing for the next one. It’s obvious that Dayna has a lot of beautiful life experiences to draw on as she paints these rich, aural portraits for you. My personal recommendation is that you pick up ALL of these releases, and go see her live. She might even still be doing house concerts. If you’re the house concert kind, grab her up when she’s in your region, and tell all your music-lover friends. Nobody will leave disappointed.

Author: listener | Category: Folk, Indie, Music Reviews | July 2007