New York Blog

Speak for yourself not the masses

Lori and I saw Duffy four times at South By Southwest (SXSW) in the last two days and she was in excellent voice and her band was top notch. We saw her at: 1. 3/14/08 Friday afternoon, Private Party put on by her U.S. label Mercury Records at the Parish on 6th Street. Lori and I got chills as we listened to what we have only watched on videos on youtube. She did a spine-tingling set of 6 songs: Rockferry, Warwick Avenue, Serious, Syrup and Honey, Stepping Stone, Mercy. Her sound knocked all the record executives and music writers right off their feet. Nobody in the audience had the U.K. cd except me and Lori, since we ordered it off amazon.uk, so we would have it in time to get it autographed by her after the show, and we did! Duffy was very kind to us and we had a few laughs talking music with her. 2. 3/14/08 The Fader Party at the Fort on 4th Street. Again, a great set of 5 songs, same setlist as before, but this time omitting Syrup and Honey. 3. 3/15/08 Saturday, The DMX Party at Brush Park under the North Tent. She played after a band called British Sea Power. Duffy rocked the place with a four song set. She probably had to cut it short since they were behind schedule and had to get their equipment down to Stubb’s for her “Official SXSW Showcase”. 4. 3/15/08 Saturday, Stubb’s on 8th Street, in the outside band shell. This was the performance of a lifetime. Duffy pulled out all the stops, and without any introduction by radio guys or record execs, just walked out and blew everybody away with her songs! In between songs she was as nice and mild mannered as ever, but during the performances we knew we were seeing and hearing something special. She did a set of 9 songs, and every number had an intensity of true soul. By the way, she wore a black dress and was dressed to kill, and she did, vocally, visually and in every way. I must end my report now, since we are very tired from 4 days of intense music listening. I started off Wednesday with Van Morrison in a little club called La Zona Rosa playing his new album from start to finish. Then on Thursday I went to Roky Erickson’s Psychedelic Ice Cream Social for a very powerful show where Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top came on stage with Roky and the Explosives and played 4 or 5 songs. Then on Friday we were part of an amazing Direct TV Live Broadcast of the great Daniel Lanois with drummer Brian Blade from the Austin Convention Center. But the highlight of the festival? Seeing Duffy take America by storm in 4 fantastic shows! Her cd will not be released here until May. I am sure it will be a huge success.

Wikipedia: A singer is a musician who uses their voice to produce music. Often the singer is accompanied by musicians and instruments. While many people sing for pleasure, vocal skill is usually a combination of innate talent and professional training.

The above does not mention that a singer needs to leap around like a whirling dervish, dance, perform mime, display pathos...all it says is a that a singer uses their voice.
Please correct me if I'm missing something here, but isn't Duffy a singer ? End of chat.

To see Duffy live on stage at this point in her career (Oct. 24 at the Metropolis in Montreal) is to marvel at the beauty and wonder of crocuses and daffodils poking through the last vestiges of snow in the early spring. The seemingly fragile flowers are so obviously tenacious and not to be denied.

Duffy’s dignity and power are unbridled. She has the decidedly rare ability to evoke a sense of ecstacy. “The pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it.” (St. Teresa: Chapter XXIX; Part 17, The Autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila)

It is time to move past questions about whom Duffy sounds like, to an acceptance that her heart is true and her sound is her own. Musicologists acknowledge that anyone singing or writing in blues, soul, rock, jazz, pop, rap, dixieland, swing, scat, and even country and folk is, at least tangentially derivative of, and owes a debt of gratitude to, Louis Armstrong. Furthermore, the great Satchmo himself happily acknowledged incorporating influences from such disparate sources as Guy Lombardo, Latin music, American folk songs, classical symphonies and opera. The bountiful tree of Western music is just that —fruitful and generational.

What is wrong with Duffy’s music or voice reminding listeners—for a myriad of reasons—of Roy Orbison, Diana Ross, Billie Holiday, Norah Jones, Janice Joplin, Darlene Love, Amy Winehouse, Ronnie Spector, Dusty Springfield, Brenda Lee, Connie Francis, or any other performers? No one has a monopoly on singing about unrequited, dangerous, painful love.

Duffy’s stage performance provides incites into her talent and character. When listening to her recorded work one is left with the question: Can she really sing that powerfully and mournfully, or is her voice somehow enhanced or doctored in the recording process? Such doubts are forever laid to rest throughout her live performance. Nuance, power, depth and “harrowing rawness” (Walters, Barry: SPIN Magazine, May 13, 2008) are stunningly confirmed.

The brilliant musicians who form her band are more than capable of producing the breadth of sound necessary to enhance Duffy’s range of mood and volume, which are, at various times, subtle, haunting, throbbing, and pounding. As a measure of her force as a singer, at a few points when the band was fully rocking out—the percussion at a level that changed the pulse of your heart, the keyboard and guitars taking your breath away—almost as an auditory illusion, there was Duffy’s soaring voice, somehow dominant and above the tumult.

It is not just her voice that one is struck by. The quirky hand gestures that are oddly endearing in the videos, seem, on stage, to be indicative of communication between Duffy and her band mates, similar to the orchestral directives employed by Van Morrison in concert. She may not be a “control freak” but, as she says, she has “nothing else in [her] life that [she cares] about right now.” (Duffy in, Petusich, Amanda: Duffy: Girl From the North Country. SPIN Magazine, Aug., 1, 2008, p. 61)

Duffy definitely cares. My girl friend and I were standing four to five feet back from the very center of the stage at the Metropolis in Montreal on Oct. 24th, and from that vantage point one could see the sweat, the passion in her eyes, the knowing glances between the band mates, and the pride on the faces of everyone on stage—knowing they are part of something very special. One does not make music the way Duffy and her band mates do unless one cares.