Patti Witten
Offical Patti Witten Website
Sycamore Tryst(IT-032)Sycamore Tryst is Patti's 2nd full-length CD and her first on I-Town Records. 13 sophisticated singer-songwriter gems that are two parts poetic folk pop and one part country rock, like the love child of Aimee Mann and Chris Isaac. Ten songs from Patti's DIY debut, Land Of Souvenirs, earned more than a dozen song and album awards including grand prize in the Great American song contest. Two more CDs and a few short years later that number has grown to more than thirty top honors from an impressive list of international and regional competitions that includes the Billboard, Woody Guthrie, Mid-Atlantic, Indie Acoustic Project, and SIBL song contests. Performances by Rich DePaolo, Doug Robinson, Bill King and guest artists Robby Aceto (Tom Tom Club), Uniit Carruyo (Sim Redmond Band) and Bob Carlucci. Produced by Rich DePaolo and recorded at Electric Wilburland Studio in Newfield, NY. Liner notes by Rosanne Cash. "Black Butterfly" (Track 3) appears on I-Town Records Compilation Vol. 3.   ORDER BY MAIL |
Sample MP3'sWhat I Don't Tell YouSunny Day in Terre Haute |
Review:
DIY Spotlight #4, Performing Songwriter magazine, March/April 2004
by Clay Steakley
In the most adept, accomplished songwriting, there is a fine balance struck between poetry and common language— a craft of fitting a phrase with just the right image that flutters up from conversational language, catches the light on its wings and then settles back into an emotionally accessible line of thought. Something you can identify with, but that can lift your soul. A through-line from Guthrie to Dylan to Joni Mitchell and on to writers like Greg Brown has set a standard of common people telling common stories in uncommon ways.
Patti Witten speaks this language. The songs on her third CD Sycamore Tryst, while poetic, are graced with a confidential voice, like that of a friend leaned in close in a crowded bar or a lover bent over a letter.
"I don't think that I write with a lot of filters between me and the listener," she says. "There isn't a lot of distance between us. Most of my songs come from a feeling, an emotional tone. It's an emotion that sometimes phrases are connected to. Often, I have an idea where this feeling-tone is going to start, what it's going to say in the middle and where it will go. Sometimes it actually goes somewhere else. It's a surprise or it's trying to go somewhere and I'm trying to force it back to my preconceived notion." She laughs and adds, "There's a lot of not playing."
This has given Witten perspective on maintaining her craft under the stresses of time and self-doubt. "We shouldn't lose faith, even when we worry, 'Maybe I've written the best stuff already' or, 'I'll never write again' or, 'I'll hate everything I'm going to write in the future.' I don't think we should worry too much because there are those songs that just descend and come complete. But also, I've found that if I work at it, it rewards me. If I work without expectations, something will come."
Years of classical training and a long sabbatical from music in the 1990s— during which she worked as a graphic designer— combined to give her the perspective she needed to write these bold, intelligent songs. "I made an amazing discovery when I came back to writing in the late 90s after this long period of not making any music at all, " she explains. "I was shocked because when I reached for chords and sounds in my head, they would be there, and they had not been there before. It turned out that whatever capacity I had for my own internal music education seemed to be going on even when I wasn't playing. I think it may have been nurtured by other pursuits."
With the breadth of topic and narrative voice on Sycamore Tryst ranging from butterflies to the execution of Timothy McVeigh to the weather (and all of them covered with grace and economy), Witten proves she has the sensitivity and the reach to make a cohesive record from the most important element of poetry—life.