—David Menconi, Down on Copperline
One way or another, it was probably inevitable that Chapel Hill singer/songwriter Dawn Landes was going to wind up in show business. Born in Indiana, she spent most of her formative years growing up in Louisville, Kentucky. But there was also a stretch of time when her family lived in Branson, Missouri – which is basically Las Vegas for the state-fair level of the entertainment industry, with scores of live-music theaters.
“My mom managed a theater for Yakov Smirnoff,” she says with a laugh. “You know, the ‘America, what a country’ guy. He even lived in our basement for a while. I also babysat Tony Orlando’s kids. Which was funny, you know, with my name being Dawn and all. Lots of jokes about that.”
Once she started singing and writing songs, Landes carved out a solidly respectable niche in contemporary-folk circles. She’s placed songs in a long list of television shows, “The Good Wife” and “Gossip Girl” among them, while releasing a wide-ranging catalog of a dozen albums and mini-albums. She’s also toured extensively with ensembles including the Brooklyn group Hem and Sufjan Stevens’ touring band before moving to Chapel Hill in 2020, drawn by her husband’s family once they reached the stage of having children.
In recent years, Landes’ music has taken a more conceptual turn, which includes her latest project – a revival of “The Liberated Woman’s Songbook,” based on the 1971 book of the same name by folksinger/author Jerry Silverman. The first iteration will be a live performance, April 14 at Raleigh’s Fletcher Opera Theater, in which Landes will play reimagined versions of songs from the songbook with an all-star cast featuring bluegrass hall-of-famer Alice Gerrard, Rissi Palmer, Watchhouse’s Emily Frantz, Charly Lowry, Kamara Thomas and Violet Bell’s Lizzy Ross. Landes is also working on recording an album of songs drawn from the songbook for release at some future date.
“I wanted to study this period and the history of women’s movements,” Landes says. “Educate myself on the history of change and what happens. I never took a woman’s history class in school, so I’ve tried to teach myself things I wish I’d known. Like it blew my mind to learn that married women could not have a credit card in their own name until 1974. 1974! You look back 50 years and it’s the same stuff as today – and now we’re going backwards. You know, if we had to go back to the dentistry or TV programming of 50 years ago, people would be livid. But somehow it’s okay to revert back on rights.”
Preceding “The Liberated Woman’s Songbook” was another multi-media project for Landes, “Row,” a 2020 musical about Victoria Murden McClure – the first woman to row solo across the Atlantic Ocean, which she did in a homemade boat. McClure has long been an inspirational figure for Landes, who did a 2015 TED Talk about her titled “A Song For My Hero, The Woman Who Rowed Into A Hurricane.”
Just as it took McClure multiple attempts to complete her Trans-Atlantic journey after she encountered a hurricane during her first try, Landes did not have a straight-line trajectory in getting “Row” in front of audiences. It was supposed to debut in the fall of 2020, which the pandemic made impossible. But Landes finally recorded it with the Williamstown Theatre Company at its annual festival a year later for the platform Audible.
“’Row’ and the process of making a musical really changed my chemistry somehow,” Landes says. “I think about performing differently now, and we’re trying to figure out next steps to develop it a little more. The life of a musical is very long. ‘Row’ is something I’ve been working on for eight years and it’s been a Ted Talk, an album, I’ve done it live. But it’s still not ‘done’ because it exists to be performed in theaters and it’s still changing. So that’s kind of crazy.”
Meantime, “The Liberated Woman’s Songbook” is keeping Landes busy. She’s hoping that this first live performance of it won’t be the end of the project.
“This is more like an old-timey revue than a musical, and I’m excited to have all these incredible performers join me,” Landes says. “I’m focused on the album version, too. My dream would be to someday take this performance to different cities with local performers in each place, showcase the talented female singers and songwriters I know in different towns. There are so many great people out there.”
PineCone Presents Dawn Landes and Friends Reimagine “The Liberated Woman’s Songbook”
7:30 p.m. Friday, April 14
Fletcher Opera Theater, 2 E. South St. in Raleigh
PineCone Box Office: 919-664-8333
