Cry Cry Cry - Biography
Artist: Cry Cry Cry
Date: August 24, 2010
Cry Cry Cry is the name of the critically lauded folk-music supergroup comprised of coffeehouse veterans Dar Williams, Lucy Kaplansky and Richard Shindell, but the appellation “folk” is one they prefer to avoid. It’s a reasonably fair quibble on their part; after all, what is folk music? A century ago, the tag was applied to indigenous music steeped in longstanding traditions, passed along from artist to artist and generation to generation, the backwoods vulgar as opposed to the ritualized language of privilege and prestige. A half-century ago, that dynamic was upended, as folk became a powerful vehicle of protest and a non-violent weapon that prompted social upheavals and irrevocable spasms of desperately needed change. However, the members of Cry Cry Cry are the first to admit that most of their respective music looks inward, not outward, and it’s almost impossible to consider it indigenous to any particular culture or geographic region (the quads and dorms of Vassar, Bryn Mawr and Smith notwithstanding). Instead, what Williams, Kaplansky and Shindell usually put forth are personal scrutinizes of their own inner turmoil; their hopes and desires, loves and losses. However, within its conceptual conceit, their eponymous debut, Cry Cry Cry (Razor and Tie, 1998), both broke with and restored convention. In joining forces to celebrate the songs of (mostly) lesser-known artists, the trio returned folk — for a brief and highly engaging moment, at least — to its origins as a culture potlatch. While Cry Cry Cry is the ensemble’s sole release to date, it’s a wonderful and essential inventory of outstanding songs by some truly gifted songwriters.
The creative victory of Cry Cry Cry should come as no surprise, given the histories of its three members. Dar Williams is, arguably, the most famous of the three. She got her start in the late 1980s, eschewing her undergraduate studies at the Wellesley University to pursue a career as a folkie and embark upon the late-night, tip-jar, espresso-scented travails of the coffeehouse circuit. She soon started appearing at festivals, where she snared the attention of luminaries like Joan Baez, who gave Williams her big break by recording a number of her songs. As the 1990s progressed, Williams delicate introspection and earnest, irony-free musings garnered her a significant cult following, first on public radio, then on the Internet, and she soon became one of the best selling independent artists in America. Lucy Kaplansky and Richard Shindell charted similarly unorthodox courses to fringe success. Kaplansky’s path to music circumnavigated her studies for a PhD, and was aided considerably by an ongoing working relationship with Suzanne Vega. Shindell also got a boost from the ubiquitous Baez, who recorded a number of his songs as well. Of the three, Shindell is the most inclusive and gregarious songwriter; he excels at wry, first-person narratives that invoke rich characterization to illuminate the lives of a rogue’s gallery of unique personalities.
It’s no surprise, then, that _Cry Cry Cry_ is full of depth and breadth. Williams, Kaplansky and Shindell may not be the authors, but their recitations are full of explicit passion and soaring harmonies. The trio also defies expectations with the album’s first track, a daring cover by a not-so-obscure act. They acquit themselves admirably on REM’s classic, “Fall On Me,” skillfully rearranging its melancholy and opaque paranoia with gentle aplomb (and you can actually discern discreet words within the vocals). Lesser known artists fill out the remainder of the album, as the trio plunges into an array of brilliant songcraft. The highlights include: Greg Brown’s “Lord I Have Made a Place for You In My Heart”; the country-tinged “Shades of Grey” by Robert Earle Keen; Ron Sexsmith’s “Speaking with the Angel”; and the best track on the album, James Keelaghan’s epic and haunting “Cold Missouri Waters.” The album closes with a preternaturally eerie and gorgeously invocative a cappella version of “Northern Cross” by Leslie Smith. Within its impeccably gilded harmonies and shuddering emotional power, Williams, Kaplansky and Shindell demonstrate with nuance and grace how to pay back a debt to folk artists past while lighting the way for the genre’s path to the future.
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