BRATTLEBORO — As part of her first New England tour, soulful folk singer Diane Cluck will perform at Equilibrium, 14 Elm St., on Sunday, June 9, at 7 p.m.
Accompanied by the classically trained cellist Isabel Castellvi, Cluck will play songs she wrote for her soon-to-be-released EP “Boneset,” as well as songs from her other eight albums.
Cluck's show will be opened by Sam Moss, a Brattleboro-based composer, songwriter, and string player. His playing is heavily informed by pre-war American country, blues, and folk, the post-1950 pioneers of outer sound, and contemporary solo guitarists.
Cluck is an American singer-songwriter who describes her music as “intuitive folk.”
“People will label you, so I came up with that description,” says Cluck. “I don't play traditional folk, but my acoustic music is folk-inspired. My song structure is not standard, as in verse, chorus, bridge, but it rather flows organically. I write about what I see around me, and my poetic lyrics are a big part of my songs.”
David Garland of NPR Music describes her sound as “an unlikely mix of Aaron Neville, the Baka people [of Cameroon and Gabon], and Joni Mitchell."
Cluck's songs have been noted by Other Music for their “irregular, or even cellular, logic”; her singing compared to “the howling bark of an outraged owl or broken coo of a horny dove” by Voodoo-Eros; and her self-taught guitar style, influenced by years of playing classical piano, by The Village Voice as “brilliant” and “idiosyncratic.”
She has been touring for 12 years, and although she tours both the United States and Europe regularly, this is her first time performing in Vermont.
“Actually, it will be my very first time I have ever been in the state,” she says. “I am looking forward to it.”
Known for oblique vocal harmonies on recordings, Cluck's live show focuses on what she describes singing “as a visceral, textural experience, creating space in which listeners may wander, ponder or simply be.”
Diane was raised in Lancaster, Pa. “I grew up in suburbs ringed by woodlands,” she said. “My childhood was a mixture of the wild and the everyday, with Amish folks living nearby, all of which exuded a kind of feeling that finds its way into my music.”
“I always sang,” continues Cluck. “The voice is my main instrument. Really for everyone, I believe in singing for heath - spiritual, emotional, and exploratory.”
Cluck began taking piano lessons at the age of 7, and was classically trained on scholarship at the Pennsylvania Academy of Music. She explains on her website that “the first time I saw a piano I was at my friend's house playing hide-and-seek. I was 4. I gazed at it from behind the doorway where I hid, developing a crush.
“I began taking piano lessons a few years later from an older woman in the neighborhood. It wasn't inspiring, but the regularity was helpful in some ways. Scheduled practice helped my hands develop articulation for musical impulses.”
During high school, Cluck joined a rock band with a bunch of older boys.
“I was the girl back-up singer and keyboard player in fingerless gloves,” she says. “I wrote my first song, about a woman deciding whether or not to join the league of vampires, knowing that afterwards she can never return to human life.”
Cluck also sang in a chorus, was a local musical theater star and cantored for Catholic church.
After those years, Cluck says, “I took some years' break from music then, except as a listener.”
She moved to New York City where she lived for 10 years. Cluck had a career breakthrough in 2000, when she began visiting an open mic in the East Village.
“I can say this is when I became part of an artistic community going through a collective awakening,” she says. “I approached music again, but from the intuitive place I'd started from as a child, before lessons and structures and inhibitions. Most of my friends and peers at this time were self-taught guitarists and singers writing their own songs. Years of life-changing sharing and cross-inspirations followed.”
Shortly after Cluck began performing her songs publicly she self-released her first solo album, “Diane Cluck,” also in 2000.
By 2001, she was appearing regularly at the Sidewalk Cafe in New York's Lower East Side, a venue that has featured such artists as Jeffrey Lewis, Regina Spektor, and Kimya Dawson.
Massachusetts-based record label Important Records distributed her second and third albums: “Macy's Day Bird” in 2001, and “Black With Green Leaves” in 2002.
Although known as a solo performer primarily, Cluck often collaborates with others, such as Jeffrey Lewis, CocoRosie, Toby Goodshank, Herman Düne, and recently with drummer Anders Griffen and cellist Isabel Castellvi on tours in the United States, United Kingdom, and elsewhere in Europe.
Her albums have received international distribution and acclaim. Songs from her 2004 album “Oh Vanille Ova Nil” appeared in the film “Margot at The Wedding” and in the U.K. television series “Skins.”
Cluck has self-recorded many of her own albums, but recently has come up with a novel new way of producing an album.
In her new project, Song-of-the-Week, she writes, records, and digitally distributes a series of new songs, one at a time. Each subscription to Song-of-the-Week provides a series of 24 new songs written and recorded by Cluck and distributed fresh as they're made.
“People often ask me, Diane, what are you up to now? Now there will be no lag time between the creation of a song and my fans' chance to hear it,” she says.
Cluck came up with Song-of-the-Week as a way of being able to create new music for people who support her working as a musician.
“Someone said, It sounds like a CSA for a musician. Yes, that's the idea. Invest in my work and there will be fruits to share at harvest time. Song-of-the-Week is supported by everyone's subscriptions. I'll be open to suggestions for songs around particular ideas, events or topics, and to collaborating with other musicians,” she said.