3rd Coast Music (Apr '05)
“Dao Strom: Send Me Home”
by John Conquest

Dao Strom’s ethnicity is undeniably interesting but isn’t really that relevant… Strom, born in 1973, was evacuated by her mother during the fall of Saigon in 1975 and wound up, via a refugee camp, with a Caucasian stepfather in Placerville, a small, white, rural community in the foothills of California’s Sierra Nevada. Though she describes a visit to Vietnam as “a very big emotional experience,” she didn’t, which she now regrets, learn to speak Vietnamese or learn about Vietnamese culture at home.

What is rather more interesting is that she’s primarily a writer. One can think of many musicians who’ve taken up fiction or poetry, Kinky Friedman, Dave Alvin and Steve Earle for instance, but the reverse, most obviously Leonard Cohen, is rather less common and usually less successful. With her first novel, Grass Roof, Tin Roof, already out, and another, The Gentle Order of Girls and Boys, due next year, Strom’s short stories have appeared in the Chicago Tribune and various literary magazines, with one, about a Vietnamese family coming to terms with rednecks, featured in Larry McMurtry’s Still Wild anthology, alongside other Western stories by Wallace Stegner, Jack Kerouac, Raymond Carver and Annie Proulx…

However, Strom has long had a parallel interest in music, specifically country music which she came to by choice rather than environment. “I grew up listening to what kids were listening to in the 80s, but in college I slowly got interested in country and started listening to it on the radio a lot. Of course, most of it was pretty bad but then I worked my way through that to the older and more traditional music, particularly Emmylou Harris and Loretta Lynn. I like the form of country, the storytelling that uses the settings and props of mundane life, the emotion, particularly in the voices, and more than anything the use of language…the phrasing and imagery, the way the words convey more than the content.”

After a visit, Strom moved to Austin in 1999 because of the music but didn’t see herself being a part of it. “I did some open mikes in San Francisco and played a bit in Iowa, but I never thought of being a songwriter, but also I never saw myself doing totally straight country, so I had to write my own songs.” After a playing in the living room period, Strom answered a ‘Musicians wanted’ ad and briefly fronted an all-women group that soon fell apart, after which she started going out under her own name, hooking up with Lew Card (mandolin, guitar, banjo) and Kevin Fox (upright bass).

Ask Strom about Gillian Welch and Freakwater and she will readily admit that they’re particular favorites (she’s also a big Anna Fermin fan, what’s not to like about her?). This is hardly a surprise as she very much belongs in the same box as Welch and Freakwater, with, despite her exotic origins, a similar early 20th century rural Appalachian old soul sound. One could discuss the extent to which she’s been influenced by these artists, and whether her CD belongs on the rack alongside Time (The Revelator) and Springtime, and for my money, the answer is definitely yes.

It’s a critical cliché to describe a songwriter as a storyteller, but, of course, in this case it’s both appropriate and valid; however, Strom brings more than a clutch of subtle songs, infused with melancholy, lightened by dashes of humor and an undercurrent of hope, to the table. As a singer, Strom has a very unusual and intriguing way with words. The lyrics of “Send Me Home,” for instance, a first person reworking of a Buddhist parable, don’t read like a song, but she makes it work by coming at the words from unexpected directions and what looks unsingable blossoms into a moving and distinctive version of the ‘when life hands you lemons, make lemonade’ adage.

Going one better than Welch, who recorded parts of Revival in mono, Strom cut her entire album live on Brian Beattie’s Tube-O-Sonic equipment, mainly a 50s 2-inch Ampex analog tape deck, and the effect, very adventurous for a first-timer, is quite remarkable, combining vintage sound with modern awareness. She also has a shrewd grasp of texture, quickening the pace at well timed intervals. All in all, a very accomplished debut.