Dayna Kurtz

Dayna Kurtz - Another black feather (2006)



On her fourth album, ANOTHER BLACK FEATHER, New York City-based singer-songwriter Dayna Kurtz further refines her unique brand of artful folk-tinged pop. With her bold, husky voice and elliptically poetic lyrics, Kurtz creates a fascinating atmosphere, as best revealed on the moody, cabaret-like title track. Prior to this record's release, Kurtz opened for both Rufus Wainwright and Anthony & the Johnsons, artists who share her ability to blend poignancy and absurdity with a compelling dose of drama.No Depression (p.122) - "Dayna Kurtz seems to sing from another ages, when her full-throated richness and deep range were not anomalous."

In April of last year, New Jersey native Dayna Kurtz escaped to the desert to write the songs for her fourth album. "I completed most of the songs for Another Black Feather in a hermitage maintained by some lovely people for solitary religious introspection. I stayed in an adobe hut on 500 acres in the Sonoran desert in Arizona. There was no electricity, nobody around for miles, a cot, a table, chair and pitcher. 2 weeks. I brought no distractions – no novels, only books of writing exercises and poetry. It was so quiet at night I could hear the blood beat in my ears. It was sublime, and I wrote constantly. When I wasn't writing I'd take a walk, stop and watch a bug climbing around a desert flower for an hour. I learned a lot about my friends when I described this trip to them, and showed them pictures. My artist/writer/musician friends were mostly envious. But some people looked at the hut and said, 'Is that a dirt floor?'”

Making the album came just as easily. "We recorded the basics live to tape, 2 or 3 takes per song, and picked the best of 'em right then. I love analog. When you record digitally it just requires too much imagination to hear how good it might sound when you've overdubbed, mixed and mastered. When you record to tape, it sounds like a record right out of the gate. It helped us make decisions faster – we just knew when it was good or great or bad, not based on the perfection of performance, but based on overall vibe.”

“It was the best of both worlds; the warmth and immediacy of analog with the final flexibility of pro-tools. I'm never recording any other way again.”

Co-producing the album with Dayna was Randy Crafton, who has worked with Dayna on all 3 of her studio albums. Some of the musicians who helped Dayna bring her songs to life include her long-time back up band, bassist Dave Richards and keyboard/accordionist Peter Vitalone, the singer-songwriter Malcolm Holcombe, Matt Darriau and Frank London from the Klezmatics, Jorge Alfano (charango), Rob Curto (accordion), and Danny Bensi, Saunder Jurriaans and Gregory Rogove from the band Tarantula AD.

"Dave, Randy, Pete and I are turning into a really crack studio machine lately. Both Randy and Dave have started families in the last couple of years, so they really can't get on the road with me all that often anymore. It's made us really appreciate our time in the studio that much more. They're family now, and we play like it. They know my quirks as a player so well that we barely have to discuss what's going on, they're just right there. I played a lot of lap steel for the first time on this record. It's a completely different feel than regular old slide guitar - you have to keep it very simple, to the point, and it's unforgiving on intonation. I keep on wanting to invent studio projects for us so I don't have to wait till I've written an album full of songs to get back there with them. I want to find someone who wants us as a backing band, so I can just play lap steel guitar for hours with these guys. I wish we could be Booker T and the MG's, and find our Bill Withers to produce and back up."

Following in the footsteps of the diverse Beautiful Yesterday, Another Black Feather finds Dayna leaning more heavily on her roots and country influences than usual, in particular making generous use of her new lap steel guitar, and showcasing her prodigious slide work on other songs. "One of the things that I seem to encounter constantly is that I don't really quite fit anywhere," observes Dayna Kurtz. Asked by a European journalist what her music was 'made of', Dayna replied, "If you're at the flea market, you walk past all the fine old antiques and the cheap designer knockoff clothing from China, past the used German leather jackets, and over in the back is an old man with a battered tweed hat who has some blankets on the ground covered with old toasters and a pair of ladies knickers from the 50's, a snow globe from the 1992 Olympic games, and a box of old men's watches and broken reading glasses and teaspoons. I'll be picking through there." ~ from Dayna's web site


Track Listing:

1.From The Bottom Up
2.Nola
3.Venezuela
4.Another Black Feather
5.Banks Of The Edisto
6.It's The Day Of Atonement, 2001
7.Showdown
8.Right For Me
9.All Over Again
10.Hope She'll Be Happier
11.The Miracle

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