Jolie Jolie

A few years back I was selling art at the Winter Solstice Fair in Sebastopol (aka The Goddess Fair) when a young woman with auburn hair and glasses got up on stage with an old acoustic guitar and a little amp. Her presence at first was seemingly unremarkable…until she began to sing. Her voice cast a spell on me. Haunting, passionate, awkwardly graceful, startling. This timeless fragile poetry was just pouring out of her, smooth and slow, piercing the atmospheric buzz and bustle. Can you tell I was utterly captivated? When she meandered by after her set, I of course bought her CD “Catalpa” and subsequently fell in love with every track. That was my introduction to miss Jolie Holland. (www.jolieholland.com)

Her songs are at once a tonic, a shot, an antidote. A strange brew of Appalachian folk, country blues, jazz, experimental that she describes as “new time, old time, spooky American fairy tale”. Whatever it is, the sound of it woke sleeping parts, stitched together old fragments, disturbed the ground, infused the air. She breathes into old songs until they vibrate. She warbles out her own sweet stuff. I felt my own Southern roots tugged. Stirrings of my grandma’s childhood on an Arkansas farm attached to a thread of spirit and old story that began to weave through my veins. In other words, she really got into my blood.

I use the Jolie spell a lot to buoy me in the studio. Since I saw her those years ago she has produced two more CDs and I savor them. My latest addiction is her song “Mexican Blue” on “Springtime Can Kill You”. Endless high. Sigh.