Phillyist Reviews/Interviews... Dawn Landes

In order to determine the correct female to meet inside of TLA, Dawn informed me that she was wearing a green shirt. She did not lie. Indeed, she was clad in a green shirt and short, plaid shorts, with her hair pulled back in one of those ‘it appears to be a disheveled bun, but it’s really how I planned it’ styles, as it would be throughout the evening.

For whatever reason, the wall in the foyer of TLA is plastered with framed photographs of artists who have never performed (and likely will never perform) at the venue. (I guess if you don’t look closely enough to see where the photos were taken you can assume that artists like Dave Matthews Band and The Rolling Stones have graced the stage there.) On the wall is a picture of Roger Waters. He’s looking great in all of his grey, faux-mullety trippiness. Upon seeing the picture, she asked, “Is that Richard Gere?” “No,” I replied, reading the placard beneath the picture, “it’s Roger Waters from Pink Floyd.” “But don’t you think he looks like Richard Gere?” I couldn’t argue; he certainly resembles Richard Gere in the depiction on TLA’s wall.

As we talked, I asked her about her cover of Peter Bjorn & John’s “Young Folks” on which she teamed with the WST Bluegrass Band from Austin, Texas (a collection of ‘old folks’ in the bluegrass community). While she was in Austin readying her performance for Austinist’s music showcase, she heard the song and thought that she would love to cover it. That is precisely what she did. In addition to the serene nature of the song, I have to admit that I love the irony almost as much.

Our remaining time was spent talking about television (she doesn’t watch much – not even Showtime’s Californication, the show on which one of her songs was featured), movies (Superbad was hilarious), and music (to cut a good record, you should spend at least a year working on the album).

Later that night, Dawn took to the stage with bandmates Eric Stevenson (cello, flute) and Ray Rizzo (the jolly drummer). On stage in their mechanic’s jumpers, they powered through a set of songs which kept the crowd swaying and clapping for more.

At the beginning of the second song of her set (the unfortunate ‘I Don’t Need No Man’), my hopes and dreams of being the man in Dawn Landes’s life were extinguished when she sang “Papa’s gonna shoe my pretty little feet, Mama’s gonna glove my hands, sister’s gonna kiss my ruby red lips, I don’t need no man. No man!” So that was that, our tryst seems to have only consisted of a fifteen minute chat in the foyer of TLA. Alas.

By the fourth song of the evening, Dawn and her dynamic duo reached the aforementioned ‘Young Folks’ cover. Their cover of ‘Young Folks’ was (and the iTunes version is) directly analogous to Iron & Wine’s cover of Postal Service’s ‘Such Great Heights’ – only if ‘directly analogous’ means ‘better.’ As she readily admits, she cannot whistle and thusly the whistling portion of the tune was replaced by the beautiful flute of Eric Stevenson while Ray Rizzo tapped and scratched percussion on an instrument that resembled the sanding blocks that Daniel-san used in The Karate Kid. You all need to gather up the change from the cushions of your couch and drop the 99% of a bone (or clam) that the song costs and pick it up from iTunes. You’ve been told.

Finally, on ‘Bodyguard,’ the lead-off track from her album Fireproof (which hits stores in the U.S. in January of 2008), she ponders the locale of, I assume, the protector that, in her second song, she told us she didn’t require. In the song, she’s plagued by the singing voices of those who have removed a lot of random shit from random things within her abode, including, but not limited to, “moldings off the walls”; “the subjects from your paintings”; even a “smell” and a “stain.” A thorough thief, to be sure.

The performance, from beginning to end, was well done, save for a few minor sound miscues (which I am sure got slightly under her sound-engineered skin). Her voice carries well and projects over the various instruments present on stage. It’s a soft, soothing, and, at times, intimidating voice. Think Ani DiFranco plus Fiona Apple divided by Joan Osbourne.

So, Dawn Landes, the twenty-six-year-old performer from Brooklyn, playing shows before hundreds of young (and middle-aged) folks each night, is under the impression that she’s no different from me, a contributor to a Philadelphia blog. Nor does she think that what she’s doing is inherently any better or worse than plugging away at keys all day.

Then again, she thinks Roger Waters is Richard Gere.

And we know even that doesn’t matter - she don’t need no man.

Image Credit: http://www.myspace.com/dawnlandes