You First:: You Are the Everything

Redbird: You Are the Everything

[purchase]

I have been a fan of Kris Delmhorst since my friend Stephen/Mosh turned me on to her music in the fall of '98, and I had a chance to see her live at the February '99 Folk Alliance in Albuquerque, in a small hotel room with the mattresses pushed up again the walls, with about six other people - the following year she was one of the Top Twenty songwriter competition finalists for our South Florida Folk Festival and, but for a poorly-timed snowstorm which delayed her flight out of Boston, I would have presented her in a house concert a few days before her festival performance...

Kris has always been a favorite, and it was a delight to see her last week, a decade later, at Club Passim a few days before I headed to the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival - she was solo, but I was reminded of her collaboration with Peter Mulvey and husband Jeffrey Foucault as the trio Redbird. She spoke that night of culling through many past concert recordings to choose tracks for their upcoming live CD... and even recreated Rubber Ducky for our benefit - it seemed fitting, because now she and Jeffrey have a two-year-old daughter!

This love song is an R.E.M. cover, and they've done a gorgeous job with stunning harmonies and stripped-down instrumentation - I look at her and I see the beauty of the light of music (thanks, Kris!)...

photo credit: Stephen Moshkovitz, 7/20/10