fbpx
  • Subscribe & Support
  • Sign up for Free Newsletter
  • Print Edition
    • Get Home Delivery
    • Read ePaper Online
    • Newsstand Locations
  • HV1 Magazines
  • Contact
    • Advertise
    • Customer Support
    • Submit A News Tip
    • Where’s My Paper?
  • Manage HV1 Account
  • Free HV1 Trial
Hudson Valley One
  • News
    • Schools
    • Business
    • Sports
    • Crime
    • Politics & Government
  • What’s Happening
    • Calendar Of Events
    • Featured Events
      • Art
      • Books
      • Kids
      • Lifestyle & Wellness
      • Food & Drink
      • Music
      • Nature
      • Stage & Screen
  • Opinions
    • Letters
    • Columns
    • Editorials
  • Local
    • Special Sections
    • Local History
  • Marketplace
    • All Classified Ads
    • Help Wanted
    • Post a Classified Ad
  • Obituaries
  • Podcast
  • Log In
No Result
View All Result
  • News
    • Schools
    • Business
    • Sports
    • Crime
    • Politics & Government
  • What’s Happening
    • Calendar Of Events
    • Featured Events
      • Art
      • Books
      • Kids
      • Lifestyle & Wellness
      • Food & Drink
      • Music
      • Nature
      • Stage & Screen
  • Opinions
    • Letters
    • Columns
    • Editorials
  • Local
    • Special Sections
    • Local History
  • Marketplace
    • All Classified Ads
    • Help Wanted
    • Post a Classified Ad
  • Obituaries
  • Podcast
  • Log In
No Result
View All Result
Hudson Valley One
No Result
View All Result

Wildly resourceful singer-songwriter Dar Williams to perform in New Paltz

by John Burdick
April 18, 2019
in Art & Music
0
Wildly resourceful singer-songwriter Dar Williams to perform in New Paltz

Dar Williams has released ten albums, written four books and been called “one of America’s very best singer-songwriters” by The New Yorker. Unison booked her, but she'll be performing on the SUNY-New Paltz campus on Friday, April 12 at 8 p.m.

Dar Williams’ most recent studio record, 2015’s luminous folk/rocker Emerald, kicks off with a song that is straight-up life coach. In “Something to Get Through,” the singer addresses a friend who is in a low patch and can’t see their way out. The song amounts to a hyperarticulate, philosophically thoughtful, keep-your-chin-up locker-room pep talk for depressed and depleted adults like me. I generally wince at the didactic mode wherever I find it, and the mentor roleplay is one of my least favorite rhetorical strategies in songwriting; but, as usual, Dar Williams just wins with it.

The bright-tempo song spins its shapely melodies through a series of fresh and unpredictable Beatleesque and Tin Pan Alley chord changes. The vocal harmonies blossom as the gently delivered theme of “Get over it” opens, and eventually, even its message starts to reach me. I have been life-coached, and I actually feel a little better. The takeaway for me, I guess, is that henceforth only Dar Williams is allowed to write mentor songs, and the rest of you should just focus on the specific things you see on the ground at the bus depot.

It’s the all-in-for-now spirit of that song that tells you what you need to know about Dar Williams. She’s a serial monogamist of a songwriter, committed entirely to the mode and meaning of the current song, for the duration of the current song. Let’s say, for example, that Milgram’s electric-shock ethics test, from the point of a view of a paid participant (who will end up looking like a sheepish collaborator in evil, but who has bills to pay, you know), has caught her imagination. Out comes an acutely realized, impossibly subtle pop gem, “Buzzer,” a song infinitely more nuanced and meaningful than Peter Gabriel’s abstract treatment of the same subject, “We Do What We’re Told.” Maybe Dar herself is also skeptical of mentorship songs, who knows? What we do know is that when she takes one on, she is going to see it all the way through to its bottom and use every tool in her deep, deep drawer. She is going to clean her plate. And then move on.

Over more than 20 years and nearly a dozen studio albums, Dar Williams has distinguished herself as a wildly resourceful, risk-taking though generally traditional writer who, in a way that is starkly contrary to the smart-person aesthetics of her era(s), is truly unafraid of meaning and making it. Her career has moved from a modern, literate and Eastern Seaboard folk thing toward a modern, literate, organic and adult smart-pop. Through both the microscope of song analysis and through the macroscope of career arc, this woman’s achievement warrants the term “major.”

Unison Arts of New Paltz keeps the hot streak going, presenting Dar Williams at SUNY-New Paltz’s Studley Theater on Friday, April 12. Ticket prices range from $20 to $30.

Friday, April 12, 8 p.m., $20-30, Julien J. Studley Theatre, Old Main Building, SUNY-New Paltz; (845) 255-1559, www.unisonarts.org.

Before you click away... grab a free month of HV1. Get unlimited access. Get the news you've been missing. Get connected to your community. Keep local journalism alive at $5/mo., or cancel anytime. And enjoy summer!
- Geddy Sveikauskas, Publisher
Previous Post

Record Store Day to be celebrated throughout the valley

Next Post

Woodstock library board set to approve architect’s contract

John Burdick

Related Posts

In its 14th season, Hudson Valley Jazz Festival sets the pace
Art & Music

In its 14th season, Hudson Valley Jazz Festival sets the pace

August 12, 2022
Andrea della Cava’s Uncover at Gardiner Library
Art & Music

Andrea della Cava’s Uncover at Gardiner Library

August 11, 2022
This weekend’s Saugerties Art Tour features 40 open studios
Art & Music

This weekend’s Saugerties Art Tour features 40 open studios

August 11, 2022
Clarence Bolton: A Gallery Talk August 13 in Woodstock
Art & Music

Clarence Bolton: A Gallery Talk August 13 in Woodstock

August 11, 2022
No Justice exhibit at West Strand Gallery
Art & Music

No Justice exhibit at West Strand Gallery

August 12, 2022
Will local music venues survive the pandemic?
Art & Music

Colony seeks a softer way to have outdoor music

August 9, 2022
Next Post
Architect Tilly’s plan is favored by the Woodstock Library board

Woodstock library board set to approve architect's contract

Trending News

  • Mayor encounters “biggest black bear I have ever seen” 1.6k views
  • Sawyer Ice Cream is your grandfather’s shake shack 884 views
  • Phony crosswalk covered over 846 views
  • Senior living facility shows unwillingness to pay recreation fees 642 views
  • Development vs. conservation: Glasco Turnpike plan aims to strike a balance 561 views







Latest HV1 Podcast

Weather

Kingston
◉
64°
Sunny
6:04 am7:56 pm EDT
Feels like: 64°F
Wind: 1mph E
Humidity: 79%
Pressure: 30.01"Hg
UV index: 2
TueWedThu
86/59°F
81/59°F
84/59°F
Weather forecast Kingston, New York ▸

Ulster County COVID-19 Active Cases

Subscribe

Independent. Local. Substantive. Subscribe now.

  • Subscribe & Support
  • Sign up for Free Newsletter
  • Print Edition
  • HV1 Magazines
  • Contact
  • Manage HV1 Account
  • Free HV1 Trial

© 2022 Ulster Publishing

No Result
View All Result
  • News
    • Schools
    • Business
    • Sports
    • Crime
    • Politics & Government
  • What’s Happening
    • Calendar Of Events
    • Featured Events
      • Art
      • Books
      • Kids
      • Lifestyle & Wellness
      • Food & Drink
      • Music
      • Nature
      • Stage & Screen
  • Opinions
    • Letters
    • Columns
    • Editorials
  • Local
    • Special Sections
    • Local History
  • Marketplace
    • All Classified Ads
    • Help Wanted
    • Post a Classified Ad
  • Obituaries
  • Podcast
  • Subscribe & Support
  • Contact Us
    • Customer Support
    • Advertise
    • Submit A News Tip
  • Print Edition
    • Read ePaper Online
    • Newsstand Locations
    • Where’s My Paper
  • HV1 Magazines
  • Manage HV1 Account
  • Log In
  • Free HV1 Trial

© 2022 Ulster Publishing