dao was born in saigon, vietnam and grew up in the sierra nevada foothills of northern california. she has lived in nyc, sf, iowa city, austin tx, juneau ak, & now calls portland, oregon home.
she is a writer of both books & songs.
her books include a novel, grass roof, tin roof (2003) and a collection of novella-length stories, the gentle order of girls and boys (2006). she is a graduate of the iowa writers workshop and has been the recipient of a national endowment for the arts literature fellowship, a james michener fellowship, and the nelson algren award.
as a singer-songwriter, dao writes and sings songs of folk derivative influence. she has released two solo albums, send me home (2004) and everything that blooms wrecks me (2008). The Sea and The Mother is her new musical project.
dao first began her discovery of american roots music only after leaving california at the age of 20. the voice of emmylou harris, the songwriting of gillian welch, the harmonies of the stanley brothers, alice and hazel dickens, these are the sounds that led her to wish to sing herself. she bought her first guitar in new york city and stepped onto her first stage in austin, texas. she recorded her debut album, send me home, in 2004 with brian beattie (okkervil river, daniel johnston) live to a 2-track analog tape machine. grant alden of NO DEPRESSION magazine picked this album out of a slush pile and decided to run a short profile on dao in march 2005. she has performed at venues such as sxsw, the woody guthrie folk festival, the sf vietnamese poetry festival, among others.
her latest project is a hybrid work. a folk song-cycle, exploring voices and stories having to do with vietnam, myth, migrations, war, and mother(land)s, will stand as a companion piece to a long work of prose (working title, we were meant to be a gentle people) - the same terrain and stories 'voiced' in two different mediums.
a segment of this project will be released in 2012 as a mixed-media ep/chapbook, Origin Tale, for which she received a 2012 Oregon Arts Commission grant. you can read/hear samples here. (less)
see dao's complete resume here
esoterica:
my given name is tiêu-dao....
i was born in Viet Nam, in the wake of a war.
i am the daughter of writers,
i am also the daughter of a political prisoner. but i followed my mother -
we crossed oceans & slept under tents & wore clothing given us
by strangers.
i grew up in a land i was led to believe had rescued us.
yrs later i begin to ask
what it was we were rescued from.
i am one of the children divided
between mother & father / mountains & sea / between
geographies.
i am part of the middle world; a hybrid; a troubadour.
these are my notes from the southern world.
my element is water, my year is the ox. altho i identify strongly with my moon sign (pisces) i also understand that my present life's lesson is something to do with independence (aries). *i believe* my soul's mission is reconciliation ((return)) & articulating the middle world. i have heard stories of some grandmothers who told their children: "you were born vietnamese for a reason." there is a reason for all of this - war, geography, self-locations...
tiêu-dao = is a term borrowed from the old chinese into the vietnamese language in the early centuries A.D. it denotes a state of being that is like the flow of a river or like "walking" or "traveling happily." one who embodies tiêu-dao may be like a wanderer in the world, but a carefree one.
i am still trying to find my way back.
~tiêu-dao, 5/12/2010