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2010 Calgary International Spoken Word Festival
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Wednesday, April 7 - Friday, April 30

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Calgary International Spoken Word Festival

More often than not, North American music criticism comes down to the simple act of making comparisons. At any given time, there’s but a mere handful of artists that all others are compared to, and fit into easy-to-digest “recommended-if-you-like” boxes. Baby Dee, on the other hand, refuses to co-operate. Despite some occasional references to the similarly difficult-to-classify Antony and the Johnsons, the unconventional singer-songwriter and harpist has thus far avoided the name-the-influences game.

“It’s like a game of Go Fish — a card game for the simple-minded,” she says while boarding a boat in Norway en route to the U.K. “If people don’t know how to get into it or they don’t have any background or context for it, they go there — ‘She doesn’t sing as nice as Antony,’ or ‘She doesn’t write songs as nice as Antony,’ and they can’t think of anything else to say. But it makes me happy that it’s so hard otherwise to do that.”

Consider it fitting context then, that Dee’s Calgary debut comes under the auspices of twin appearances at the Calgary Spoken Word Festival. “I always thought of myself as slightly illiterate,” she says. “It wasn’t until I started writing words that I was really able to write music — words are what give music its shape and its definition, its boundaries and its context. You take the words away and music becomes totally formless and beginningless and endless and unconnected to reality for me.”

Despite the ornate orchestrations of her music (Dee has worked alongside a who’s who of modern musicians that includes Current 93, her patron-of-sorts, Antony & The Johnsons, and even The Sex Pistols), the focus remains on what’s being sung above all else. “For somebody like me, whose work is so word-based, it’s great to perform at a spoken word event. The audience is so focused, and the focus ought to be on lyrics, unapologetically.”

Dee’s second album, A Book of Songs for Anne Marie, continues to defy easy classification. As a classically trained harpist, Dee’s place on the Drag City roster alongside Joanna Newsom makes sense. And given their joint history as transsexual artists emerging from the New York scene, it’s tempting to compare her directly with Antony Hegarty. But while their music sits contentedly side-by-side in mix-tape heaven, each of the three are such charismatic performers in their own realms that mere comparison serves little purpose. Approaching the majesty of timeless madrigals, the songs of Anne Marie mark Dee as an individual more than deserving of her own spotlight.

Originally recorded in 2002 as a songwriter’s demo (harbouring hopes of other artists covering her songs until Antony forwarded them on to David Tibet of Current 93, leading to a record deal with Chicago’s esteemed Drag City), the time was right for a reconsideration of the material from A Book of Songs for Anne Marie.

“In the end, nobody else wanted to sing these songs, so it ended up being me by default,” she says. “The whole album is about this impossible take on love and being the lover and the beloved and every other God damned thing in-between. It’s also very much about love as apart from any actual connection, or being together with anyone. But in the end, I got love. Love walked into my life, along with all of the fantasy. The last two songs are about, ‘Oh, oh — it’s actually happened.’”

If there’s a definitive album moment, it comes in “Morning Holds Star,” a quiet reflection over spiralling harp and strings, when Dee sings, “No more sad songs/ No more.”

Even with an artist as individualistic as Dee, it’s still tempting to ask the occasional easy, by-the-book interview question. While she wanders the boat in search of a place to rest, I ask her what it is she listens to, where the inspiration comes from.

“I love listening to birds,” she answers. “I love listening to children under the age of five, or even four sometimes, depending on how worldly they are. And I love listening to wind in the trees and water rapping against the side of a ferry.”