Kris Delmhorst Bio

On Friday, May 13, Kris Delmhorst will be appearing at the Narrows.

Here's a bio I grabbed from her website.


Growing up in Brooklyn, NY, with one ear permanently glued to the radio, a hopeless love of language, and a four-part-harmony-in-the-car family, Kris Delmhorst was a songwriter waiting to happen. While pursuing a multi-instrumental education, Kris authored notebooks full of poetry and fed her voracious curiosity for the inner workings of music from the Beatles to Tom Waits, Jimmy Reed to John Coltrane, Led Zeppelin to Dvorak to The Smiths.

Songwriting waited patiently as Kris traveled down various life paths: obtaining a studio art degree, living and working on a remote homestead farm in Maine, hitchhiking around Ireland while learning fiddle from old-timers, working on a seagoing schooner, and leading an outdoor education program for 5th graders on Cape Cod. The combination of these experiences led to the appearance of the first song in Kris' own voice in her early twenties. That beginning has since matured into a body of work reflecting the wide-ranging travels of an inquisitive artist, songs with pavement under their feet, dirt under their fingernails, and sometimes out of sight of land altogether.

Kris’s third CD "Songs For A Hurricane,” set to be released in August 2003 on Signature Sounds, is the latest stride in a career she's built in classic Do-It-Yourself fashion – touring the country incessantly and releasing her music independently. Clearly she’s hit the mark, having sold 25,000 copies of her first two releases, "Appetite" and "Five Stories," on the foundation of strong performances and word-of-mouth alone. She’s toured the States and Europe with Dar Williams, Chris Smither, Catie Curtis, and Mary Gauthier. Along the way she’s garnered six Boston Music Award nominations, snagged first prize in the 2001 Telluride Troubadour Songwriter Competition, and secured her place in a stack of DJs' top ten lists from coast to coast.

Between tours, Kris's well-worn suitcase gets unpacked in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she has planted musical roots in the vibrant Boston music community. This multi-faceted musician thrives on the range of opportunities to recombine and re-inspire – performing and recording as a supporting player on cello, fiddle, and voice, forming bands and side projects, and serving on the production team for two editions of “Respond” (award-winning compilations working to end domestic violence).

Now Kris readies "Songs For A Hurricane,” produced with Morphine’s Billy Conway at his Hi-n-Dry Studio in Cambridge. This time around, the team chose to trim back the range of instruments, allowing the songs to breathe without losing the rich sonic textures of "Five Stories." This was achieved in part by matching the personalities of different guitarists to particular songs. "Hurricane’s" musical crew includes Conway on drums, Andrew Mazzone on bass, Julie Wolf on keyboards, and on various tracks, Mark Erelli, Jabe Beyer, Kevin Barry, and Steve Mayone playing guitar.

Early on in the recording, Delmhorst developed a vision for the album’s momentum. As the title suggests, the record relates to a turbulent time. The sequence of songs traces a hurricane’s arc – the suspended motion that precedes it, the corporeal build of energy, the sudden calm of the eye, the tension and release as elements combine, the pensive conclusion as it settles, and the destruction and redemption left in its wake. Kris certainly knows a thing or two about this transformative journey; "Songs For A Hurricane” tells a universal tale of heading through the teeth of a storm and coming out the other side whole, wiser for wear, and forever changed.