Iris DeMent

Friday, June 9, 2023 at 8pm at Landmark on Main Street

With an inimitable voice as John Prine described, “like you’ve heard, but not really,” and unforgettable melodies rooted in hymns, gospel, and old country music, Iris DeMent is simply one of the finest singer-songwriters in America as well as one of our fiercest advocates for human rights. On her transcendent new record, Workin’ On A World, Iris DeMent faces the modern world — as it is right now — with its climate catastrophe, pandemic illness, and epidemic of violence and social injustice — and not only asks us how we can keep working towards a better world, but implores us to love each other, despite our very different ways of seeing. Her songs are her way of healing our broken inner and outer spaces.

Her debut record Infamous Angel, which just celebrated its 30th anniversary, was recently named one of the “greatest country albums of all time” by Rolling Stone, and the two albums that followed, My Life and The Way I Should, were both nominated for GRAMMYs. From there, DeMent released three records on her own label, Flariella Records, the most recent of which, The Trackless Woods (2015), was hailed as “a quietly powerful triumph” by The Guardian. DeMent’s songs have also been featured in film (True Grit) and television (The Leftovers) and recorded by numerous artists. Fittingly, she received the Americana Music Trailblazer Award in 2017.

Workin’ On A World, her seventh album, started with the worry that woke DeMent up after the 2016 elections: how can we survive this? “Every day some new trauma was being added to the old ones that kept repeating themselves, and like everybody else, I was just trying to bear up under it all,” she recalls. She returned to a truth she had known since childhood: music is medicine. “My mom always had a way of finding the song that would prove equal to whatever situation we were facing. Throughout my life, songs have been lending me a hand. Writing songs, singing songs, putting them on records, has been a way for me to extend that hand to others.”

With grace, courage, and soul, Iris shares 13 anthems — love songs, really — to and for our broken inner and outer worlds. DeMent sets the stage for the album with the title track in which she moves from a sense of despair towards a place of promise. “Now I’m workin’ on a world I may never see / Joinin’ forces with the warriors of love / Who came before and will follow you and me.”

With opening act Ana Egge.

Iris DeMent

Friday, June 28, 2019 at 8:00 PM at The Bull Run

Iris DeMent was inspired to write her first song "Our Town" while driving through a boarded-up Midwest town at the age of 25. That song, "Our Town," was played during the closing scene for the final episode of CBS's television series Northern Exposure. 

Her first album, "Infamous Angel," featured the song "Let the Mystery Be" which was used in the opening scenes of the film Little Buddha and in the fall of 2015 and became the musical theme for the opening credits of the HBO series The Leftovers.  

Her second album, "My Life," released in 1994, was nominated for a Grammy Award in the Best Contemporary Folk Album category.  

She sang four duets with John Prine on his 1999 album "In Spite of Ourselves," including the title track and reunited with Prine in 2016 for his second duets album "For Better, For Worse" and performed on two tracks. DeMent has also sung duets with Steve Earle and Emmylou Harris and has made frequent appearances on Garrison Keillor's radio show, A Prairie Home Companion. 

The press on her newest album says it all -  "It's heady, heart-stopping stuff." - Boston Globe
 
"As pure and piercing as they come." - No Depression

"Grounded in hymns, early country songs, gospel and folk, DeMent’s work is treasured by those who know it for its insight and unabashed beauty." - NPR


Opener: Pieta Brown - "Self-styled poetess, folk goddess and country waif, Pieta's music resonates with a seductive simplicity and lyrical grace." - BBC

"...moody, ethereal...I will listen...over and over again." - NPR's All Songs Considered