Singer/songwriters are a passionate lot. Various muses can trigger their artistic impulses: family, loves, cities, social causes, eggs. One blustery Saturday last February found New Orleanian chanteuse Kristin Diable at Café Rose Nicaud on Frenchman Street waxing rhapsodic about all of the aforementioned inspirations. The fuel for her “roots” music? A soulful combination of blues, folk and gospel, among others. And yes, her inspiration includes eggs.
Born in Baton Rouge, Ms. Diable spent her formative years there, including a stint studying business at Louisiana State University, before journeying to New York for a semester. There, she soon found herself cutting her musical teeth to sold-out shows. She returned to New Orleans to write for “just a couple of months” and (as many visitors to the city do) found herself a full-time resident here. The move resulted in performances at this year’s Jazz and Heritage Festival, the Sundance Film Festival and a tour of the East Coast.
True to her description, Diable’s music is not just rooted in Americana music but tied spiritually to the places she settles. “No place is like New Orleans,” she says, “not in Louisiana, America, or even the rest of the world. There’re so many great things going on all the time here. It’s full of sounds and people, music and conversation and freaks. There’s dirt. Grist.” Grist that she has milled to great effect in her songwriting.
Drawing from musical touchstones that range from Nina Simone to Son House to Neil Young to Louis Armstrong, Diable’s music features a songwriting maturity that reveals her influences but belies her scant age. It is a maturity that perhaps bleeds through from her university years. “There’s a lot of discipline to make it work. If I wasn’t successful with the business side of things I wouldn’t be able to do what I want with the creative. There’s a balance. I make better music because I can actually enjoy myself and not drive myself crazy if I’m out on Frenchmen Street on a Friday night soaking it all up.”
Her “roots” philosophy informs the bluesy groove of “Poor Baby” as well as the lusty live vocals in “Be My Husband,” both from her 2009 album Extended Play. Also present are hints of Patsy Cline and Norah Jones. “Living as vibrantly as you can is the most productive thing I think you can do to be able to create anything,” she confers. This philosophy has also recently extended to her appearances at live shows.
“As an artist, everything you do is part of what you’re creating,” said Diable, who has recently become a spokesperson for the female fashion store Hemline (located in the French Quarter, Magazine Street and around the Southeast). “I really see [fashion] more as an art form now. At the core of what I do it’s about the songs, the truth of the songs and the music, but if you go to a show you want it to look good and feel good. I don’t want an entertainer to look just like every guy walking down the street. I want them to be special and different, fun and creative. It adds to the whole experience.”
It is an experience that will be on full display at this year’s Jazz Fest on April 30th. “I haven’t started putting together the band, but I really want to have a pretty super all-star band for Jazz Fest [with] a horn section and some back up singers. I want a production for Jazz Fest, and we’ll have the stage to do it on. God-willing, it should be quite a show, if all goes as I’m envisioning it. A full production. Really great sonically as well as aesthetically,” she says about the opportunity. “It’s still kind of surreal. I just moved back here little less than a year ago. I went to Jazz Fest as a kid. I’m honored to be able to play it so soon after coming back down here.” She also hopes that her performance there will offer some eclecticism to the already varied line-up.
“It’s amazing that you can go out any night of the week and see a really amazing brass band, the spirit in it, the joy in it is so special, it’s so inspiring. But it’s important for New Orleans to also have some versatility with programming, you don’t want to go see a brass band every night.” And she looks forward to being such an unlikely alternative on the “Lagniappe” stage. “I can’t wait,” she effused, “I hope I get passes for more than one day…I don’t think I have special privileges just yet. I feel kind of like I snuck in through the back door or something, just lucky to be there, so I won’t cause too much trouble,” before adding, “yet.”
One place Diable’s already caused a ruckus was this year’s Sundance Film Festival, though maybe not always in the way she intended, given the thin, high-altitude climate. “We did a benefit for Haiti at Harry O’s loft series and played at the Gibson Lounge, that was my favorite local spot. It was just before I lost my voice, I had just a little bit left and I played one song, because it was all I could squeak out,” she lamented. “I heard about [jazz pianist] Henry Butler, whenever he would play shows anywhere in high altitude, would require an oxygen tank to meet him at the airport, and I thought, ‘How diva-ish. That’s ridiculous.’ Of course I ended up eating my words. I was going to do a Universal Pictures showcase but I didn’t even leave the house that Monday, I couldn’t even talk, I had to whisper.”
And, though her voice is back, thanks in part to a return to swampy, humid air, Diable says she is looking forward to a return Park City engagement. “I hope to go back next year. They’re kind of Hollywood, but mountain Hollywood. People with resources and the machine in place to fuel art, but it’s not the big city. Everybody’s out of their element, their defenses are down a little bit, and you feel more like you can connect with people because you don’t know where you are or what you’re doing anyway.”
This last statement may not completely jive for a woman who is so in control of her own future that she actively works to change others’. “After something as tremendous as Katrina, New Orleans could have either turned into Disneyland or Detroit, and neither one of those options is acceptable. It would have killed me to see it go either way. It does my heart good to be here. If that’s just spending my money here, buying coffee on Frenchman Street, or making music here and keeping as much of a public eye on the city of New Orleans as possible.”
Unfortunately, New Orleans is not the only city that needs watching, a fact that has the musician spreading her wings once again. “A friend of mine’s family is in horse-racing and they have to fly a horse to the Dominican Republic in the next couple of weeks. Haiti is right there,” she begins, while finishing her hard-boiled breakfast (see: eggs). “So we’re talking about getting together supplies and we’re even talking about going because the big problem is that supplies aren’t getting distributed, they’re all sitting at the airport because of the bureaucracy with a lot of the charitable organizations. Which is an issue that strikes close to home because that was what was so messed up about [Katrina]. We’re capable of doing things, there’s an organization called CAN-DO.ORG we’re working with and they have everything on the ground level set up to assist the needs of people, to distribute everything. So if we can fly a plane there…it can go immediately to the people. It goes exactly where it needs to go.” Straight to our ears, Kristin, just like a song.
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