DeMent, Iris
Iris DeMent
Singer, songwriter
Church and Music Were Inseparable
In the notes to Infamous Angel, Iris DeMent’s debut album, folk songwriter John Prine recalled listening to “Mama’s Opry” while frying up a batch of pork chops. “Being the sentimental fellow I am, I got a lump in my throat and a tear fell from my eyes into the hot oil. Well, the oil popped out and burnt my arm as if the pork chops were trying to say, ‘Shut up, or I’ll really give you something to cry about.’”
DeMent has a knack for eliciting this sort of reaction. John Grooms of Creative Loafing admitted that Prine had good reason to cry: “It’s as moving as songwriting can get without becoming maudlin.” He pointed out that in the caustic age of the 1990s, the “spellbinding” DeMent puts critics in the precarious position of “sounding sappy.” Comparing her to some of the legends of country music, Guardian contributor Charlotte Greig explained, “She has the straightforward, pure delivery of a Loretta Lynn or a Hank Williams, a voice that doesn’t compromise with the coy mannerisms of pop,” while her “songs have a cheerful, bouncy edge, coupled with a lump-in-the-throat emotional directness that stops you in your tracks.”
Disregarding the lines between folk, country, bluegrass, and gospel, DeMent writes songs that recall previous generations of performers, especially country music’s Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers. In her “plaintive and imperfect dust bowl storyteller’s voice,” as Chris Barrett of Knoxville’s Metro Pulse characterized it, she sings simple, forthright songs of family, love, and loss in a unembellished style, and with a subtle wit, rephrasing age old stories in very contemporary context.
The resulting music sounds very fresh. “Her voice is extraordinary, there’s nobody like her,” country singer Emmylou Harris effused in the Chicago Tribune. “There’s such a homogeneous sound on radio today, it’s almost a shock to hear something so immediately identifiable and unique.”
DeMent was born in Paragould, Arkansas, on January 5, 1961, the youngest of Patric Shaw and Flora Mae DeMent’s 14 children. The family had been farmers for generations, but shortly before Iris was born the farm failed and the DeMents moved into town. Three years later, they relocated to California, as did many people from their area. The family settled in Buena Vista, a suburb of Los Angeles, and Patric took a job as gardener and janitor at the Movieland Wax Museum and Palace of Living Art. But the DeMents retained their Arkansas ties, attending a Pentecostal church with the same pastor and much of the same congregation from their church back home.
For the Record…
Born January 5, 1961, in Paragould, AR; daughter of Patric Shaw (a farmer, janitor, and gardener) and Flora Mae DeMent; married Elmer McCall (a firefighter and road manager), November 16, 1991.
Began writing songs in 1986; performed at “open mic” nights in Kansas City, MO; moved to Nashville to write and perform; signed with Rounder/Philo, c. 1990; released Infamous Angel, 1992; signed with Warner Bros. and reissued Infamous Angel, 1993; released My Life, 1994.
Addresses: Home —P.O. Box 28856, Gladstone, MO 64188. Record company —Warner Bros., 3300 Warner Blvd., Burbank, CA 91505. Management—Peter Asher Management, 644 North Doheny Dr., Los Angeles, CA 90069.
Church and Music Were Inseparable
Music had always played a key role in the DeMents’ lives. Patric was quite a fiddle player before Iris was born, and Flora Mae often dreamed of singing at the Grand Ole Opry—a dream that would later inspire Iris to write “Mama’s Opry.” The entire family sang at church and home; the children played piano, and Iris’s sisters performed gospel for a time as the DeMent Sisters. “My parents wanted the boys to be preachers and the girls to be singers—forget college and all that stuff,” DeMent told Greg Kot in the Chicago Tribune. “If you could be a preacher or singer, you were really on top.”
As a child, DeMent heard mostly gospel music—“kind of old-time gospel, with a lot of harmony,” she noted in Acoustic Guitar —and the family’s favorites were Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family. Gospel however, wasn’t the only music the budding artist loved. She listened to the folk-inflected music of Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin’s R&B, and Johnny Cash and Tom T. Hall’s country sounds. DeMent began making up songs when she was very young but did not have the confidence to pursue songwriting seriously. She recalled in the Infamous Angel liner notes, “I was so intimidated by the idea of these people who could really write songs that I could never get one right for me.”
Instead of pursuing music, DeMent dropped out of school, left home at the age of 17, and bounced around the country working at a variety of jobs. She also moved away from the church, though its influence remains strong in her songs. By the time she was 25, DeMent was living in Topeka, Kansas, where a college creative writing course rekindled her desire to write music. “The writing and the music, the two things I loved the most, started coming together,” she recalled in the Los Angeles Times. She began writing songs in her head because she didn’t have a piano. Eventually she took up the more affordable guitar and taught herself to play with some help from her brother. The first full-fledged song she wrote was “Our Town,” inspired by a drive through a deserted Oklahoma town.
DeMent then moved to Kansas City, Missouri, where she worked on her guitar skills and continued to write. After a year she worked up the courage to perform her songs and started participating in “open mic” nights. “My songs seemed to give me the courage I needed, that I didn’t have before, to go out and sing in front of people,” she revealed to Steve Dollar in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. During this apprenticeship she saved her money and eventually moved to Nashville.
Took Off in Nashville
In Nashville, DeMent attracted the notice of a number of influential people in the recording industry. Record producer Jim Rooney, instrumental in advancing the career of country-folk musician Nanci Griffith, brought her to the attention of a Rounder/Philo executive, and she was quickly signed to a recording contract. Nashville performers took notice as well. Country singer Emmylou Harris invited DeMent to sing backup on her album Brand New Dance, and Griffith included heron the Grammy-winning 1993 album Other Voices, Other Rooms.
Rooney assisted DeMent on the production and recruitment of musicians for her first album, Infamous Angel. The instrumentation they chose was acoustic and spare—guitar, piano, fiddle, mandolin, dobro, and upright bass. Harris returned DeMent’s earlier favor and sang harmony on “Mama’s Opry,” while on the spiritual “Higher Ground,” DeMent gave the lead vocal to her favorite gospel singer—her mother. Infamous Angel was released in 1992 complete with John Prine’s endorsement in the notes: “So listen to this music, this Iris DeMent. It’s good for you.”
The music press agreed wholeheartedly. As Steven Rosen wrote in the Denver Post, Infamous Angel “astonished those who have heard it.” Los Angeles Times contributor Mike Boehm marveled at DeMent’s “sweet old-time voice,” and Mike Joyce, writing in the Washington Post, praised both her “unadorned, often churchinflected balladry” and “stellar” backing musicians.
Infamous Angel was immediately popular on noncommercial radio—public stations, adult album alternatives, and rural country—but mainstream stations showed little interest. Ironically, as a Rounder executive explained to Grooms in a Creative Loafing interview, country radio found her music “too country.” Fortunately, many in the industry loved DeMent’s music. Singer-songwriter Natalie Merchant took to performing DeMent’s songs in concert, and with alternative rocker David Byrne did a rendition of the album’s opening tune, “Let the Mystery Be,” on MTV’s Unplugged. Meanwhile, in early 1993, Warner’s London A&R chief Andy Wickham played Infamous Angel for Warner Bros. President Lenny Waronker, who, according to Billboard, knew by the end of “Let the Mystery Be” that he wanted to sign her.
DeMent agreed to move to Warner Bros. because they promised to let her do her music the way she wanted to do it—without forcing her to fit the glossy mainstream of country music. She told Paul Robicheau in an interview for the Boston Globe that savvy industry people thought she was naive to believe that Warner wouldn’t push her into a mold, but she had little to fear. “If it isn’t handled that way, I have a pretty loud screaming voice,” she reassured him. The label executives held true to their word; that spring, they reissued Infamous Angel without making any changes or recutting any material.
With her album in the stores, DeMent began touring, first in the United States with Griffith, Prine, and country-folk singer Mary-Chapin Carpenter, and then solo in Europe. She even put in an appearance at an inaugural gala for President Bill Clinton in January of 1993. Having made her mark in Nashville, DeMent had by this time moved back to Kansas City to be with her firefighter boyfriend, Elmer McCall. They were married on November 16, 1991; when touring began to take her away from home, Elmer retired and began fighting different fires as DeMent’s road manager.
My Life Simple Yet Stunning
DeMent’s next album, 1994’s My Life, proved she was right to trust Warner Bros. Once again, there was nothing slick about it. The themes of family, love, and loss were similar to her previous work, as was the spare instrumentation. The tone of My Life is darker, however; according to Newsweek’s Jeff Giles, the album is “a crushingly sad meditation on love and childhood.” Still, the somber lyrics and mood didn’t disappoint the majority of music critics, who consistently praised the album. Giles suggested that “in a rational universe … My Life would win a Grammy.” Billboard, which found no track “less than stunning,” agreed that the release offers “a more melancholy worldview,” but contended that “it’s the sweet kind, not the bitter, and it’s easy to swallow when the presentation is unadorned acoustic guitar and piano that could be labeled country, bluegrass, or folk.”
DeMent continued to receive an unusual amount of attention for such a noncommercial performer, including a feature article in Newsweek and an invitation to perform on The Tonight Show. Warner Bros. looked to this sort of exposure to expand DeMent’s following. According to Billboard’s Eric Boehlert, the label was anxious for as many people as possible to hear DeMent live, knowing not much of her music would be heard on commercial radio. To that end, she followed the release of My Life with an extensive tour of the United States and Europe. Label President Waronker expressed faith that her audience would grow. “I’ll bet on her,” he insisted in Billboard.
In “My Life,” DeMent sings “My life, it’s only a season/A passing September that no one will recall.” Entertainment Weekly contributor Alanna Nash firmly disagreed. “With writing such as this,” she concluded, “such a forecast is doubtful.” “It’s something to watch, how she walks the tightrope of honest emotion without falling over into gushiness,” Grooms observed. “Watching her lyrical/emotional highwire act—an act performed without a commercial safety net and one that in the end leaves you face to face with clear insights—can be exhilarating.”
Selected discography
Infamous Angel (includes “Let the Mystery Be,” “Our Town,” “Mama’s Opry,” and “Higher Ground”), Rounder/Philo, 1992, reissued, Warner Bros., 1993.
My Life, Warner Bros., 1994.
Sources
Acoustic Guitar, July 1994.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution, June 6,1992 (as reprinted from the Philadelphia Inquirer); March 13, 1993; April 23, 1994.
Billboard, March 12, 1994; April 23, 1994.
Boston Globe, June 4, 1993; April 21, 1994.
Chicago Tribune, July 11, 1993; April 21, 1994.
Christian Science Monitor, April 22, 1994.
Country Music, July 1994.
Creative Loafing (Atlanta), April 23, 1994.
Denver Post, October 2, 1992; April 28, 1994.
Detroit News, July 16, 1993.
Entertainment Weekly, September 4, 1992; April 15, 1994.
Guardian (London), May 12, 1993.
Knoxville News-Sentinel (Tennessee), April 24, 1994.
Los Angeles Times, March 6, 1993; April 17, 1994.
Metro Pulse (Knoxville, TN), April 22, 1994.
Metro Times (Detroit), April 27, 1994.
Musician, May 1994.
Nashville Scene, April 28, 1994.
New England Folk Almanac, June 1994.
Newsweek, April 18, 1994.
New York Times, October 31, 1992.
Pulse!, June 1994.
Rolling Stone, May 13, 1993; October 20, 1994.
San Francisco Chronicle, April 10, 1994.
Spin, June 1994.
Stereo Review, September 1992.
Washington Post, June 28, 1992.
Additional information for this profile was obtained from Peter Asher Management, Warner Bros. press materials, and the liner notes to Infamous Angel and My Life.
—Megan Rubiner Zinn
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DeMent, Iris