Kris Delmhorst

 

 

We like to think that we have a good ear for music...but Liz Shepard, who together with her husband John and kids Rachel and Jake, is a Blue Moon Coffeehouse friend who really knows her music. She travels just about more than anyone I know to hear it...and she shares her finds. One of the real gems she shared is Kris Delmhorst---and I am so glad that she was emphatic when she told me that I had to bring Kris to Blue Moon!

When Kris Delmhorst started picking out chords on a guitar just six years ago, no one could have known she was stumbling onto a path that would lead her to the top of a generation of young songwriters. With the release of her second studio album, Five Stories (Big Bean), she leaves the category of up-and-comer behind and hits the highroad, asserting herself as a mature national artist. Featuring twelve songs ranging from junkyard rockers to two-kleenex ballads, back-porch hootenannies to midnight lullabies, this record allows Kris to flex her varied musical skills and enlist the talents of the Boston music community that she calls home.

That community was quick to make room for Kris when she first stepped on stage in 1995. Her first solo release, Appetite, fueled a grassroots explosion (to date she’s sold 8,000 copies from the stage) which now has her selling out the northeast’s largest acoustic venues and playing over 150 shows a year to clubs, coffeehouses, theaters, and festivals throughout the USA. Her creative efforts have earned her three nominations for Boston Music awards, first place in the 2001 Telluride Troubadour Competition, a spot in Performing Songwriter Magazine’s top 12 independent releases for 1999, a place in the top 25 bestsellers at Cambridge’s Tower Records, and inclusion in a stack of Top 10 lists by DJ’s from coast to coast.

Not bad for a Brooklyn, NY girl who didn’t even pick up a guitar until after college. Although she grew up with "harmony in the bloodstream" in a musical household, and studied cello through high school, Kris laid down all thoughts of a musical future when she realized the constraints of the classical world weren’t suited to her exploratory style. Years later, housebound with a sprained ankle in a Maine log cabin in midwinter, she turned back to music to keep her sanity. She found a fiddle and a guitar gathering dust in the attic, tuned them up, and hasn’t looked back since.

Kris is a musician’s musician who makes a point of contributing to colleagues’ careers as well as the world beyond the stage. When not on the road she finds time to sit in and record with the likes of Catie Curtis, Mary Gauthier, Jennifer Kimball, Jess Klein, Lori McKenna, and Peter Mulvey. She played fiddle in the local cult-favorite Vinal Avenue String Band and was an associate producer of the Respond compilation to support survivors of domestic abuse, which has earned over $100,000 for the cause and was named Album of the Year 1999 by Billboard Magazine.

Equipped with enormous creative reach, transcendent lyrics, and a great ability to connect with an audience, Kris Delmhorst has everything she needs for a long and illustrious musical journey. With the release of herbrilliant new album,
Five Stories, she is out the door and on her way. We are so pleased that the Blue Moon fit into her traveling plans!

To learn more about Kris Delmhorst, check out her web site at: www.krisdelmhorst.com