Musical families

I often underestimate Colorado Springs. On Sunday night I saw a fantastic concert in an art gallery. It opened with a quality Colorado Springs indie band (!?!) named Edith Makes a Paper Chain, which was a lot of fun. You would never guess that they were based in a city with no music scene. The lead singer/guitarist's young daughter played clarinet and did background vocals, and the whole band seemed like one family (in the good way). Oh, and her even younger daughter (on the far right of the picture) sung some of her original songs, one of which she said started up as a christmas song but ended up as a Halloween song (Decemberween, anyone?) that begins sounding like an invocation of the Virgin Mary but is actually about a girl named Mary who is haunted by another girl that she pushed down a well.

The next act was Akida Dawson, who apparently started writing songs and playing guitar at the same time as his sister but doesn't like to perform or record his music. He was wonderful: his songs were funny yet touching, and his guitar playing was impressive (his singing and guitar playing are stylistically similar to Kimya's faster paced songs). He had lines like "no one has time for names, we only exchange fluids." Kimya said that this was only his fourth or fifth concert (I'm pretty sure this is a major exaggeration), and you could tell that he seldom gives concerts because he kept making self-deprecating jokes and getting really self-conscious when he made mistakes, but really that just made it all the more endearing and special since it was obviously a rare occurrence. Thanks to their family in Castle Rock, Colorado for getting them to visit the area, and thanks to Kimya for getting to get her brother to play.

Kimya Dawson herself was a joy. I especially enjoyed the songs I hadn't heard before, some of which were very powerful, especially her recovery song (she's about to celebrate ten years of sobriety). Clearly she puts herself into her songs; she seemed near tears at many points during the show (she was especially emotional when talking about a family in Portland, OR that is being torn apart by the bureaucracy of the state of Virgina. I'm sure she'd want me to pass along the info on how to help.). All in all, a night of music well worth the half hour in six degree weather I spent waiting for the doors to open.