Independent weekly arts & cultural news for E. Washington & NW Idaho.
April 02, 2019
The power of folk: With her voice and a guitar, Karin Blaine crafts a soulful exchange
By TYLER HORNER
@ Inland 360
Folk musician Karin Blaine believes live performance is the most creative thing an artist can do.
“It’s kind of like a jazz solo between me and the audience, an exchange — immediate, real, maybe even risky, never ever to happen again in the same way,” said Blaine, who will perform Sunday at The Attic in Moscow.
Blaine picked up a guitar as a preteen and began writing music in 1981. Early in her career, she was nominated for Best New Folk Artist by the Northwest Area Musicians Association and chosen as a songwriter finalist in the nationally acclaimed Kerrville New Folk Festival songwriting contest in Kerrville, Texas.
Inland 360 asked her more about her work before her stop in Moscow.
What is your newest work?
One of my new songs is called ‘Walk On The Beach,”‘ and was inspired by Ebey’s Landing on Whidbey Island, Wash., an absolutely divine natural location with a vista across Puget Sound to Port Townsend on the Olympic Peninsula. The song incorporates a poem by Ernest Dowson, which I recite over the music as the song begins and then launch into singing the lyrics. I am incorporating more poetry and adventurous forms in my newer pieces.
Songwriting is always a great adventure for me that requires a lot of inventiveness, plain old fooling around and an open mind. I kind of know what I want — but the end result is always something a bit different.
Will you be performing solo in Moscow?
I will be performing solo — just my voice, my dear old Gibson J-45 acoustic guitar and my original songs. I picked up the guitar when I was 12 years old. I fell in love with the folk singer format; that is, one voice and one guitar.
I listened to and sang so many songs growing up — I mean hundreds and hundreds of songs — all of which led me to realize that the entire human experience can be expressed powerfully with the human voice and a single instrument. As a teenager and in college, I saw famous folk singers such as Elizabeth Cotton, Mississippi John Hurt and Buffy St. Marie perform live — incredibly moving performers.
Who inspires you?
I like music that is compelling, highly original and well executed. And it doesn’t really matter what the genre is. Andrew Bird is a really interesting artist, as is Ani Di Franco, who had Bird on her own record label Righteous Babe Records. Di Franco was such a trailblazer for women in the music industry — she had an edge and toughness. I listened to a lot of her music in the ’90s. She also had the great folkie Utah Phillips on her label even though he was an older cat. She just broke the mold, you know?
Another of my folk heroes, Buffy St. Marie is getting inducted in the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame in April. Her early work was so moving and original. She is 78 and an absolute pistol and was a huge influence and inspiration when I was young. And speaking of Canadians, there is always the great singer-songwriter, Bruce Cockburn, who I adore.
Is this your first time performing in Idaho?
Years ago I had a five-piece pop/folk band with my twin sister called the Blaine Sisters Band. We were out on the road at various times, and I remember that we had a three-week engagement at a hotel bar in Pocatello over Christmas. That experience went down as the most miserable gig and Christmas of my life.
CD review: Karin Blaine – Modern Day Living
Posted On August 1, 2013
Consider yourself fortunate if you catch Karin Blaine live. Well, actually, that will be an automatic response. This woman is not only a good song writer and player; she is a very good entertainer. She plays, sings, and will make you laugh between songs, songs she writes that concern her and the world she finds herself living in. A modern day woman writing and singing about Modern Day Living, which is the title of her new CD.
As a nominee of Best New Folk Artist in 1990 by the Northwest Area Musician Association, Karin writes and sings with clarity and a sense of the poetic. She knows how to craft her music well, and delivers it clearly. A reminder of the folk queens: Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez, Judy Collins, and yet a little Grace Slick, Tracy Chapman, and Don McLean, with a jazz edge thrown in. She isn’t imitating anyone, nor has she lost her edge since her nomination. Oh contraire.
This new CD is a snapshot of her life over the last eight years, and in these songs there is plenty of variation. Straight Line has a wonderful tension/release aspect to it, so appropriate for a song about relationship. A bit of a bluesy funk rhythm is the foundation of Wha Da Ya Got?, the blues remains in Greed, and a song about Julian Assange, makes at least three songs with a cultural message. Folkies old and new will love that! Then she can turn around and evoke the sadness and tears of a breakup with Wild Red Roses, What Was I Thinking? and, Box of Letters. A jazzy feel accompanies a delightful To the Moon, the song foil of Wild Red Roses. That same jazz tinge, with a little bit of the Beatles construction, is what comes out in Deepest End. And in the end, she can have fun, as she demonstrates in her comically poignant title track, Modern Day Living.
This CD is her third, following her 2003 release of Dirty Money, a CD of covers except for the title track, which she wrote, and that CD was preceded by her 1989 self titled cassette, where she wrote 9 of the 11 songs.
You will find that there is a seamless integrity between what she records and what she plays live, and that is what makes Karin Blaine worth seeing, and her CDs worth owning. Her personality is genuine, as a live performance will demonstrate. Karin Blaine is relevant in Modern Day Living. – Lecky Harrison
MODERN DAY LIVING cd
©℗ 2012 Karin Blaine/dudessdahlia records
All words & music © Karin Blaine (BMI)
Review by JW McClure, singer/songwriter @ jwmcclure.com
With this solo recorded collection of songs, Karin Blaine brings the stage presence of a full band. Her performances are laced with impeccable rhythm, an infectious and heavy bass line. She exudes confidence that she has exactly what you need to hear. Her songs are delivered with punching lyrics, unmistakable clarity, clever pronunciations and an occasional accent mark. She makes me think she’s got a Broadway musical in the brief case, stage ready. These stories would be musical play couched in 3 D reality.
Karin has the vocal chops and range to deliver the kind of dynamic moments, loud and soft, to pull an audience to the edge of their seats. The lows are powerful and the highs are sweet and effortless. Her mastery of the old Gibson, allows her to run vocal circles, on and around the beat, for the shot that hits the mark. This is impact poetry. In ‘The Strangest Things’ she sings:
“I’m laughing at the strangest things, rude and out of place
The neediness of a beggar man, the sadness of a face…”
‘Box of Letters’ is an immediate favorite. This is an articulate moment of pain, regret, while at the same time, a quickly held party for moving on:
“I can see your face as plain as day with that little scar above your left eye
From the time I tried to punch you out for hurting my pride.”
‘I Love Julian’ is an unabashed tribute to efforts of Julian Assange to expose corruption:
“The titans are trembling, the tyrants are scared of Delilah cutting off their hair.
Well-coiffed secrets are falling to the floor,
And I love Julian.”
The guitar work is percussive, inventive and perfect. The message is uncomfortable and , “…it’s gonna get ugly…”
Throughout, Karin Blaine has been bold at looking within, and also at holding the mirror up for the rest of us. In a subtle twist on moon songs, ‘To The Moon’ doesn’t focus on how the old ball looks from a dark field—Karin goes to the moon, and back. ‘Greed’ is a masterpiece of both writing and delivery. These melodies are unusual, memorable to the point of haunting. Great songs start slow but then echo at length in your head. This stuff is sticking with me.
‘What Was I Thinking?’ is the plain truth of misgivings about seeing an old lover. This song too pulls at my emotions with the realization this is a bedtime story.
‘Deepest End’ has incredible drama,
“I found a piece of grass behind a broken wall and I laid down on my back and I stared up at the clouds.
And the clouds became a dove and the dove became your face
And you flew down to my side and you kissed my cheek.”
I could get lost trying to make this a linear plot—but the emotion is clear, “…I’ve lost my nerve, I’ve lost my edge, I can’t find my spark…”
This is a unified collection, dramatic, bluesy, vocals with flair, and driving guitar work. And finally, in ‘Modern Day Living’ we get that difficult report card on how we are doing so far,
“This modern day living it brings out the worst in me. What I got, I don’t want.
What I don’t got I really, really need. I surround myself with similar minds we’re pretty and pouting most of the time.
Oblivious to spiritual crimes,
We think living is the same as getting.”
This is great stuff. [J.W. McClure] This review has been lightly edited for length.
February 1990
Review of KARIN BLAINE, Karin Blaine (cassette album)
dudessdahlia records 1989
by Gillian G. Gaar, Associate Editor of The Rocket, The World’s Greatest Magazine
KARIN BLAINE, AS A SOLO ARTIST and as one half of the Blaine Sisters duo, has been a constant, if not exactly high profile, performer of the Northwest music scene. Her self-titled cassette is her debut release (aside from appearances on local compilations) recorded live at the Still Life in Fremont Coffeehouse, accompanied on vocals and guitar by Craig John.
In addition to providing a solid showcase for Blaine, the tape also reveals how she differs from others in the acoust guitar singer/songwriter pack. With a focal style thghat is bluesy and jazz-tinged and lyrics that are more grounded in reality than in poetic flights of fancy, Blaine views the battlefield of life with an eye remarkably free of sentiment.
Standouts in this collection include “Night Stars of Hell,” a look at substance abuse devoid of cliches, and “Doo Ba Ba Ray,” quite possibly the ultimate musical statement on life, the universe, and everything. There’s a political side to Blaine, too, the pro-choice “The Decision Is Mine,” the anti-nuke “Red Light On”, as well as some atypical covers , “Over the Rainbow” and Willie Dixon’s “Built for Comfort”.
With Blaine set to give up her other career (waitressing) to pursue music full-time, she’s certain to find a warm welcome for herself on the folk/acoustic circuit. – Gillian C. Gaar
May 12, 1988
Dropping in on… from the Victory Music Review
KARIN BLAINE at The Pink Door Restaurant, Pike Place Market, Seattle
The only real problem with Karin Blaine’s act is that one doesn’t get a chance to see it often enough around here. As a singer she is posses o a most expressive and powerful set of pipes – a combination of guts, silk, silver, smoke, heat. Add to that: a songwriter who’s thrown plenty of ringers – “I Wasn’t Lookin’,” “Santa Rosa, ” “The Fire and the Flame”. Add to that a guitarist who’s doen her homework, moving through straight and open-tunings, from jazzy to bluesy to whatever-it-takes progressions in her original compositions. The Pink Door was jumping pretty good this Thursday night, but if one hung around for the second set, when the crowd thinned out and things quieted down some, good things came to he/she who waited. So wait, Watch for her next gig – the Folklife Festival, May 30th, Arena Stage. Noon. Go listen. See what I mean. (TR Ritchie, singer-songwriter-poet)