VANCOUVER FOLK MUSIC
FESTIVAL 47
Featured Act: Iris DeMent
- PLAYLISTS Workin’ on a World full album on Spotify and YouTube
ONE SONG VIDEO Workin’ on a World - VIDEO INTERVIEW DeMent in a wide ranging interview with The Show On the Road: (80 mins)
- ABOUT FESTIVAL 47
The Vancouver Folk Music Festival welcomes back acclaimed country/folk singer- songwriter Iris DeMent on Saturday, July 20 when she plays the Main Stage. Her last appearance at the Festival was in 2007.
THE PERSISTENCE OF IRIS DEMENT
“Her commitment to human equality is so out front its sincerity becomes a wonderment…”
If you like your guitar sliding and twangy next to lilting, southern-flecked vocals offering tell-it-like-it-is politics, well, feminist country-folkie Iris DeMent is probably in your Top 10 already.
Feisty, earnest about talking common sense, the veteran Arkansas-born singer-songwriter has been recording since 1992. She’s not a prolific artist. Her most recent album – 2023’s Workin’ on a World – is her seventh. But her fans and music critics alike stick with her despite long gaps – eight years this time – between recordings.
Workin’ on a World’s title track honours those before her and those to come:
Now, now we’re workin’ on a world
I may never see
I’m joining forces with the warriors of love
Who came before and will follow you and me
I get up in the morning
Knowing I’m privileged just to be
Workin’ on a world
I may never see
Music journalist Robert Christgau placed the album fourth on his annual Dean’ s List last year.
The 82 year-old self-described Dean of American Rock Critics said this:
“Too often on her first album since 2012 DeMent bonds with progressive rhetoric as uncritically as she memorized Bible verses when she was eight. In “Goin’ Down to Sing in Texas,” language like “the establishment,” “people of color,” “obscene amounts of wealth,” and swear to God “those brave women in the Squad” can seem banal, even corny.
“But as she keeps going her ex-fundamentalist commitment to human equality is so out front its sincerity becomes a wonderment, until it’s a lock cinch that the lead track’s “Workin’ on a world I may never see” bespeaks a courage, idealism, and self-sacrifice you’re damn right she’s preaching about.
“The one that begins “John Lewis stood on the Pettus Bridge” goes on to honor Rachel Corrie, crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza; DeMent’s husband Greg Brown crafts a just barely satirical rabble-rouser for a racist evangelist called “Let Me Be Your Jesus” that she whispers into music; Martin Luther King, Mahalia Jackson, and Anton Chekhov all get their own songs. A horn section you weren’t expecting helps punch her message home, and although her voice has deepened a tad as she passes 60, its clarity and directness remain. A-“
Other critics pile on with similar kudos:
AllMusic wrote: “DeMent’s acute sense of humanity remains her greatest asset, and it has rarely sounded so graceful as on this wonderful set of songs.”
From Pitchfork: “This sense of tragedy seeps through nearly every song. It’s what unites the vast material and makes Workin’ on a World feel pivotal in her catalog. These high points also help recontextualize DeMent’s continuing evolution as an observer of American life.”
A return performance
This is DeMent’s third appearance at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival. She first performed in 2005 and again in 2007. I saw her then but only in passing. She’ll be as much of a surprise to me as many of you.
29 June 2024
About Festival 47
WHEN
The 47th Annual Vancouver Folk Music Festival runs from July 19 to 21
TICKETS
Purchase weekend and single day tickets at The Festival
HEAR
Listen to the excellent 40-song Festival sampler curated by the discerning ear of Artistic Director Fiona Black. And while you’re there check out Inuit throat singers Piqsiq singing Arctic Hollows and veteran rising star Chris Pierce singing American Silence (Revisited)
VIEW
The full artist line-up and Main Stage 3-Night line-up
Iris DeMent’s 2023 album Workin’ on a World is her first since 2015 (Dasha Brown photo)
PLAYLISTS
On Spotify
On YouTube
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_ngkhALqrk6SKSHe1o9goQQaDMoUQ3eLy0
