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The Week: Editor’s Letter: The upside to creative destruction
For music fans, there is an upside to creative destruction. On a Woodstock stage recently, I watched a friend stretch her lungs in some of the open space left by the industry’s retreat. By Francis Wilkinson
posted on April 22, 2010, at 2:41 PM
Digital music sales unexpectedly declined in the first quarter of 2010. This was bad news for an industry that saw $11 billion in annual revenue evaporate between 2000 and 2008, and that had begun to view digital music downloads as a kind of panic room, a refuge from the slasher trends making mincemeat of business models and bottom lines.
But for music fans, there is an upside to creative destruction. On a Woodstock stage recently, I watched a friend stretch her lungs in some of the open space left by the industry’s retreat. Laurelyn Dossett stopped singing after college, got married, went to grad school, and raised three daughters on a quiet, tree-lined street. In her late 30s, having settled in North Carolina, she began inviting friends to her house to make music drawn from Appalachia and the Piedmont. Laurelyn formed a band, Polecat Creek, and resumed singing in public, building a base of fans and earning critical acclaim. Her recording career—enabled by the same inexpensive digital production and distribution that’s brutalized record companies—began in her 40s. Her friend Diana Jones, a Nashville singer-songwriter, also hit her stride in her own time. She won a Folk Alliance nomination three years ago as Emerging Artist of the Year—at age 41. The music biz thrives on teen spirit, not late blooms; artists who spend their youth raising kids or who “emerge” on a generational downbeat are consigned to work off the grid. But the grid itself is crumbling, and in the cracks exposed, older, idiosyncratic musicians are finding sustenance. Like Laurelyn and Diana, they give “Top 40” a whole new meaning.
Summer 2008 Songs in the Key of Sea
by Mike Harris, UNCG Alumni Magazine
She’s out of her comfort zone. Those earlier plays had an Appalachian and gospel feel. She grew up with those sounds. Not this one. She’s had to research and explore, to “hunt and peck” as she says, soaking up Caribbean music and Celtic reels and sea chanties. “I need to get it in a pirate language.”
What had she known about Blackbeard? “I didn’t even know he was real. I thought it was like Paul Bunyan.”
She soon came to know more than most about the pirate who inspired terror from the Caribbean to the North Carolina coast. Ocracoke and Bath, where he knew the royal governor, were two of his old haunts.
Read the full article on www.uncg.edu
June, 2008 The Swashbuckling Adventures of Preston and Laurelyn
by Bill Cissna, Greensboro Monthly Magazine
Bloody Blackbeard is the largest production Preston Lane and Laurelyn Dossett have conceived to date. In addition to musicians, the show puts 20 actors on stage, set in the period of Blackbeard’s life, which was roughly 1680 to 1718.
When Lane studied the history of Blackbeard the pirate, he says he felt that the story of the man and the legend could make a good play — “but not without music.” Lane turned to Dossett to not only create the tunes, but to manage how the music would be played during the performances.
“It was a funny thing as a songwriter,” Dossett says. “Many North Carolina musicians have written Blackbeard songs, but I wanted to avoid a specific ballad about Blackbeard. The songs I have been creating needed to be appropriate for pirates, and the lyrics are more about telling the story than relating his history.”
Read the full story.
March 16, 2006 Playing Around with Music
by Grant Britt, special to Go Triad
There’s no hint of the mountains in Laurelyn Dossett’s speaking voice. And until you look down at her boot-shod feet, there’s no hill country vibe in her dress either.
She looks like your Hollywood ideal of the average suburban housewife - petite, blond and pleasant.
But people who live in the Triad know Dossett best for her musical talents. Dossett is a mountain-top troubadour, a vibrant soprano who sounds like a blend of Alison Krauss and Gillian Welch. She makes music from on high.
July 8, 2004, Harmonic Progression
by Ed Bumgardner, Relish staff writer
“I’m trying not to have a lot of expectations,” Laurelyn Dossett said, talking from her home in Greensboro [about Polecat Creek]. “Besides, all that stuff is secondary to me. I just like to sing, particularly with Kari. Something happens when we sing. When we sing, the two voices are indistinguishable. We certainly have things we want to accomplish as a band, but at the same time, we are pretty content where we are.”
Still …
Riley Baugus, the group’s fiddle and banjo player, performed on the soundtrack for the film Cold Mountain. He was also a high-profile performer on the recent Great High Mountain tour, headlined by Alison Krauss and Ralph Stanley.
And in April, Dossett’s song “Come By Here” won first place for best gospel song at the Chris Austin Songwriter’s Contest at MerleFest, the annual four-day roots-music festival held at Wilkes Community College.
Another of her songs placed fourth in the category for best country song.
More …
