Celebrating 30 Years of Iris DeMent’s ‘My Life’
On her second album, My Life—now celebrating its thirtieth anniversary—Iris DeMent’s vocals, set against spare arrangements, evoke the emotional contours of memory and the ways it shapes our lives. The album, nominated for a Grammy in the Best Contemporary Folk Album category, has long been out of print. It is now available in a newly remastered version on CD and a limited edition LP on maroon color vinyl.
On its release in 1994, My Life garnered high praise, with the Chicago Tribune calling the songs “jewels of universal longing” and critic Robert Christgau giving it an “A+,” observing that DeMent’s “writing defines the directness sophisticates prize in traditional folk songs.”
Recorded at “Cowboy” Jack Clements’ studio, The Cowboy Arms Hotel & Recording Spa in Nashville, and produced by Jim Rooney, My Life features a stellar cast of musicians including Mark Howard (acoustic guitar); Stuart Duncan (fiddle, mandolin); Pete Wasner (piano); Charles Cochran (piano); Al Perkins (Dobro); Al Bennet (acoustic guitar); Phil Parlapiano (accordion); Roy Husky, Jr. (upright bass), Kenny Malone (percussion); Pat McInerney (drums), and John Catchings (cello). Clement plays acoustic guitar on “Sweet Is the Melody” and “Childhood Memories,” while Robin and Linda Williams lend their harmony vocals on “The Shores of Jordan” and Robin Williams and Joy White sing harmony on “Childhood Memories.”
The album opens with the exquisite waltz “Sweet is the Melody,” a flawless blend of layered instrumentation and DeMent’s soaring vocals. The song begins sparely with finger-picked acoustic guitar and DeMent’s lilting vocals, and the melodic strain becomes more complex with each verse or repetition of the refrain: piano chords flow under twinkling mandolin strums and a somber fiddle plays call and response with the piano on the instrumental bridge. Sweet is the melody, indeed, as DeMent sings about the dance of songwriting: “Oh, sweet is the melody, so hard to come by/It’s so hard to make every note bend just right/You lay down the hours and leave not one trace/But a tune for the dancing is there in its place.”
DeMent dedicated My Life to the memory of her father, Patrick Shaw DeMent, who died in 1992. Her father played the fiddle but laid it aside when he was saved, and he stored the instrument in its case on a closet shelf. The young DeMent one day discovered the case, and she asked her father if he would play it for her. He pondered her question for a while and then unclasped the case, tuned the instrument, and played it for a short time, putting it away because his fingers no longer had the dexterity for playing. DeMent’s mother, Flora, was a singer whose voice inspired DeMent. As the centerpiece of My Life, “No Time to Cry,” a spiraling ballad of coming-of-age and the hardness of heart that comes with it, starts with her father’s death. DeMent’s vocals swell over gently piano chords
as the singer reflects on how quickly we wrap a shell around ourselves to keep the tragedy outside from hurting us and to keep ourselves safely ensconced. “I’ve got no time to look back and I’ve got no time to see/The pieces of my heart that have been ripped away from me/And if the feeling starts to coming, I’ve learned to stop ’em fast…/I guess I’m older now and I’ve got no time to cry.”
Perkins’ Dobro and Wasner’s piano create the foundation for DeMent’s spare arrangement of Maybelle Carter’s gospel song “Troublesome Waters,” on which DeMent conveys the mourning that runs deep in the verses and the joy and promise that reaches high in the chorus. Cascading guitar picking flows beneath “The Shores of Jordan,” creating swirling eddies of sound that propel the joyous dance rhythms of the song: “I’m gonna let me feet go dancing to my very favorite songs.”
The album closes with the gorgeous title track. A spare arrangement featuring DeMent on vocals and piano and Catchings on cello, the cinematic meditation on the nature of life ponders the lingering sadness of disappointment and loss. At the same time, though, such sadness is transient for the singer can “give comfort to my friends when they’re hurting/And I can make it seem better for awhile.”
John Prine once referred to Iris DeMent’s voice as one “like you’ve heard, but not really.” Indeed, there’s a clear-as-a-mountain spring quality in DeMent’s vocals, but her voice also rings with a plain-spoken yearning, creating miniatures of daily struggles, loss, and hope into which she draws us.
It’s a pleasure to have this remastered reissue of My Life now available to a wider audience to showcase Iris DeMent’s transcendent songwriting, her enduring vocals, and her ability to capture the vagaries of human emotion in the just right blend of music and lyrics.
More about My Life HERE
