The Long Journey to "Division Street"

Dirk Lind’s ode to his new home (Spokane, Washington) is a collection of lush, original folk songs full of catchy melodies, poetic lyrics, and impressive multi-instrumentalism. While his lyrics reference everything from the Weeper’s Tower in Amsterdam, “the pubs on Shankhill Road” in Dublin, and Spokane’s Division Street, Dirk’s songs all have a down-home, intimate feel; it’s music you would feel comfortable hearing on a front porch somewhere, a jar of moonshine in your hand.

When you hear this album, you will be surprised to learn the eclectic, twisting musical path that brought Dirk to this collection of intimate, mostly acoustic songs. Not many folk musicians have traversed such a broad musical spectrum.

Dirk was born in India to an orchestra conductor and a music teacher, and began learning the classical violin at the ripe age of five. “Being the son of the conductor, my early musical experience was pretty eclectic within the orchestral world. Whatever instruments were lacking in the orchestra, that was what I had to play.” In third grade he switched to the cello, and then in sixth grade to the double-bass. Growing up in India in the Seventies with classical musicians for parents, Dirk had very little exposure to popular music.

In 1980, when Dirk was eleven, his parents relocated to Charlottesville, Virginia, and he got his first taste of rock music. The transformation was almost instant. Within a couple years, he started playing the electric bass, playing classic rock with friends from school. But it was also in ninth grade that Dirk discovered punk rock, when he went to a Ramones concert. “I started to listen to hardcore music after that - Black Flag, the Dead Kennedys, Minor Threat - and it was a musical revelation! It was the first time in my life I considered actually writing music. The whole punk scene was such a do-it-yourself movement. When my friends and I decided to start a hardcore band, I think I wrote six or seven songs that first night!”

Through bands like the Clash, Dirk soon discovered reggae music. By the end of his high school years, Dirk had mostly replaced his collection of punk music with records by Bob Marley, Toots and the Maytals, and Culture. His band King Crab was a Clash-like amalgam of punk and reggae, and developed a loyal local following. Then in 1989, he discovered something that would mark yet another sea change in his musical trajectory: Paul Simon’s Graceland, which had come out four years earlier. “That album hit me like a ton of bricks! It changed everything for me, right away. I started listening to African music at that point, to the exclusion of pretty much everything else. It spoke to me in a way I can’t even describe. I’m sure it seems a bit odd for a white guy in Virginia, but African music felt comfortable to me in a very deep way.”

At a concert by Zimbabwe’s Bhundhu Boys, Dirk and his fellow African music afficianodo Kevin Lynch came up with a plan. “I was watching these guys - these were men who had fought in and struggled through the revolution in Zimbabwe - and yet the music was so positive and infectious. They had huge smiles the whole show, such a refreshing experience in a country where popular music seemed to be epitomized by angst and complaint. Kevin and I turned to each other and I know we were both thinking the same thing : how can we capture this spirit in our own music?” And Baaba Seth was born. Named after his infant son, the band was a fusion of African and American music.

It was an interesting time for music in Charlottesville. “At one of our earliest gigs, a listener approached me and said ‘hey, there’s this musician, a bartender down at Miller’s, who’s from South Africa, you guys should hook up!’ Of course, that was Dave Matthews!” They didn’t end up joining up with Matthews, but the two bands were mainstays of the Charlottesville music scene for much of the nineties. Boyd Tinsley, DMB’s violinist, was present for some of the very first jam sessions that led to the formation of Baaba Seth, and it was Leroi Moore sitting in on the sax that made Dirk determined to add horns to the band’s lineup.

Baaba Seth was definitely a band ahead of its time - years before bands like Vampire Weekend hit the charts, before Fela Kuti’s music was immortalized on Broadway, they were carrying the flag of worldbeat fusion up and down the East Coast. They released two albums, earned raves from both the Village Voice and the Washington Post. Their music was featured on both "The Real World" and "Road Rules" on MTV, and they shared the stage with world music luminaries like Thomas Mapfumo, Eek a Mouse, and Ziggy Marley.

In 2000, after almost ten years of touring, Dirk and his family (by now he had three children) decided to move out West. Looking for adventure, Dirk’s wife Tracy, a Nurse Practitioner, took a job with the Indian Health Service, and they landed in Window Rock, Arizona, the capital of the Navajo Nation. In 2002, they left Arizona for Neah Bay, Washington, the home of the Makah people, where they lived until the summer of 2010. Dirk continued to fly back to Virginia occasionally for Baaba Seth gigs, but began to focus on building a home studio and composing solo material.

His first solo album was The Theory of Evolution, a musical bridge from the worldbeat of Baaba Seth to his current acoustic songs. The songs ranged from full-blown worldbeat songs like “Home,” to the reggae of “Hallelujah,” to acoustic ballads like “Save Me” and “Fated.” This solo effort was also the first time Dirk demonstrated his multi-instrumentalist talents. “Living out in the middle of nowhere, I had to play most of the instruments myself. It was the first time I truly appreciated my musical upbringing - playing all those different instruments really served me well.” That said, Dirk had some eclectic guest musicians sit in. Hope Clayburn, the sax player for Baaba Seth, contributed horns and flute to “Home.” Malcolm Strachan, the Scottish trumpeter who has recorded with Corrine Bailey Rae, Mark Ronson, and Jamiroquai, lent his stylings to “Hallelujah” and “Save Me.” And Dirk’s sister Anjali, a professional violist, played strings for “Save Me.”

For Division Street, Dirk went even more acoustic. Most of the songs were written on the acoustic guitar, which is a mainstay on the album. To capture the sounds he wanted, Dirk decided to learn some more instruments. So he taught himself to play the banjo, mandolin, and ukulele. “I really wanted a more front-porch, organic instrumentation for these songs. Since I didn’t know many musicians in Spokane yet, I figured I’d just do it myself.” The exception this time around, Dirk is excited to point out, is that his son Seth, now 20, plays the piano on two tracks - "Alibi" and "The Winter Line."

Yet even in the folk songs of this album, there’s plenty of nods to Dirk’s musical journey. In “The Winter Line” he references that peculiar atmospheric occurence visible from his childhood home in Inida. At the end of “Lovers Left Behind,” he plays a guitar line reminiscent of Congolese Soukous music. But if you’re wondering what binds this incredibly eclectic background together, that’s easier: “it’s the songs. I’ve always been concerned with the art and craft of songwriting. The style is always secondary to me. I never thought about writing music with a genre first and foremost. I’ve always just written songs. It’s incidental to me that they might be worldbeat songs, or reggae songs, or punk songs, or folk songs. Hell, I put a rap song on my first solo CD!”

Dirk Lind
(360) 640-1817
music@dirklind.com
www.reverbnation.com/dirklind (the album can be streamed free here)