CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
Kathleen Edwards
John Doe

Zankel Hall
Friday, November 7th, 2008 at 8:30 PM

Kathleen Edwards
John Doe

Program Notes:

Rick Moody on
KATHLEEN EDWARDS and JOHN DOE

A lot of ink has already been spilled on the subject of John Doe in the context of his band—a band that rose from the tragicomic milieu of the LA punk scene in the late ’70s to transcend it with righteous sublimity. So much ink has been spilled, because X was (and is) a spectacular band. To put it another way, Doe was imposing—intimidating—from another time. He had the High Lonesome, he knew the blues, likewise the unbridled sexuality of rockabilly, the sloppy ecstasy of garage rock, the pure pop of British punk.

In just this way, John Doe finds a logical heir in the balladry of Kathleen Edwards, with whom he performs in Zankel Hall. In her historical confines of her own idiom, Edwards would seem to be at some remove from the John Doe who sang “The Hungry Wolf” or “True Love.” She’s a balladeer, introspective, especially on the lonesome and heartbroken songs of her most recent album, Asking For Flowers, whose plangent moods overspill the perfect arrangements of the songs. A closer inspection of the deep, subjective melancholy of Edwards’s approach reveals that the unflinching honesty—and the avoidance of a sentimental confessionality—that animates her songs is the very same honesty that drives John Doe 30 years into his career as a performer. They come from opposite ends of the rock ‘n’ roll world and meet right in the middle, where the song is now about the devotion to the perfectly deployed line—the honest line—the craft of living to tell regardless of how loud or soft the accompaniment is.

This Zankel Hall gig will give evidence of how Doe still does stand for what he always did, especially evident when he appears in relief beside an especially gifted younger writer like Edwards. And if we’re lucky they’ll sing a few songs together, too.

To read an extended, unedited version of Mr. Moody's comments, visit theejohndoe.com.

Rick Moody is an award-winning American novelist who is best known or his 1994 novel The Ice Storm.

Copyright © 2008 by Rick Moody

Kathleen Edwards
Kathleen Edwards manages to write story songs that sound neither theatrical nor contrived. Whether or not her characters are autobiographical, they seem like someone you might know, or may once have been yourself, or more honestly may still be. They search for meaning and joy in a world that seems in no particular hurry to supply either one. They’re rich in experience, but they haven’t relinquished their innocence. To the sound of muscular, roots-drenched rock ‘n’ roll, their hopes remain intact, indistinguishable from plans for a better life dangling just beyond their grasp, yet seeming just within reach.

John Doe
It’s a tribute to John Doe that for many thousands of music fans the mention of his adopted name evokes not the blankness of anonymity, but an artist who in the course of three decades has amassed a richly textured, powerfully moving body of work. Indeed, he has provided dignity and identity to characters otherwise consigned to the margins. In rough-hewn, smartly literary songs brimming with insight and compassion, he documents lives lived on the narrow path between explosiveness and acceptance. Often that path then broadens to offer the possibility of redemption, a fate all the more gratifying for its having seemed so far past the point of desire.



Anthony DeCurtis is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, and the author of In Other Words: Artists Talk About Life and Work. He teaches at the University of Pennsylvania.

Copyright © 2008 by The Carnegie Hall Corporation