A Day with Karen Dalton

 My record has arrived! I follow NYC's Other Music weekly music updates and recently ordered Karen Dalton 1966, recorded in a cabin outside of the mountain mining town of Summerville, Colorado .  Being that Dalton was notoriously repellent to the live performance and recording formalities, this Karen feels like the real Karen. Dalton is a favorite of mine. Perhaps it's the Native American Oklahoma blood I share with her... this record arrived at the perfect time- when the fog is thick out front, my sniffles are beginning to dry up and I am able to sit down with my drawings. We should all be thankful that we can  still await the release of an actual record [though we usually don't], unwrap it and sit with the sleeve while we give her a good listen.

Karen with Fred Neil

Excerpt from essay inside sleeve written by Ben Edmonds:

"The effect is to make this music we are not simply listening to, but overhearing. It may be the perfect placement of an audience in relation to the music of Karen Dalton. It was not made for our benefit, but if willing to listen closely it can be

...what is inarguably authentic is Karen's connection to her music. It comes from a place beyond credentials, where all the usual man-made obstructions- self-consciousness, pretense, ideology, artifice- never come into play. There was no distance between the essence of the music and the voice that expressed it."