Antje Duvekot Knows How You Feel
…And then some
by Richard Cuccaro
The world can be a perverse place and many of the people in charge of things
are corrupt and dangerous. When we find out, most of us simply duck our heads
and lay low. This may begin in childhood when inept or angry parents are accurately
perceived as a threat. There are some among us who fight back and rise up, like
a flower pushing its way skyward,
reaching through the cracks in a concrete sidewalk … like a dandelion.
So it is, with the ongoing story of Antje Duvekot. The name is pronounced,
"AN-tyuh DOO-va-kot." Learn that pronunciation well. You'll need it. In her song
"Dandelion," she sings, in her feathery alto:
I am the Fourth of July. I'm throwing you a fire in the sky.
You could go blind in my light. But you were always looking for an orchid.
And I will always be …a dandelion … a dandelion.
She says it's about a boy who rejected her. However, I've noticed that reactions to romantic
loss sometimes have deeper origins. This woman who, in between songs, always seems to
be laughing at herself or at every odd occurrence in her life has known trials that would
break most people.
Life began well for Antje. As a child in Heidelberg, Germany, she lived with her brother,
her American-born mother and German father She was captivated by German folk songs
about romance, seafarers and the marketplace. On hiking trips with her father, they'd sing
songs about forest creatures or demons that were particular to the region and it all seemed
connected. At ten years old she was teaching herself how to play those folk songs on guitar.
The First Earthquake
When she was 14, it all fell apart. Her mother divorced her father and moved with Antje to
the United States. They settled in Delaware and her mother remarried. She did not see her
father again for almost 10 years.
She did not speak English at all. An outsider in high school, she describes this as a "dark period."
During high school,she was not allowed to have a social life. Within her lonely space, she began
writing songs to express herself, playing quietly and in secret. Her stepfather and mother
eventually took her guitar and tapes away.
Antje discovered the American singer/songwriter genre at this point. She came across a Philo
anthology and was introduced to the music of John Gorka, Susan Werner and Bill Miller.
Later she started listening to John Flynn, and Ellis Paul. Not knowing English, she spent
hours listening to tapes. Although she didn't understand the lyrics, the tone of the music gave
her solace during this long period of isolation.
After high school, she went to college at the University of Delaware. Her parents did not allow
her to bring her guitar or her tapes with her. With a borrowed guitar, she continued
to write songs. With some financial help from her friends she made her first "album," a tape of
her songs. When she went home for the holidays, she hid it in a tree in a park, so they wouldn't
find out about it.
Earthquake Number Two
Midway through her college years, Antje and her folksinging became the subject of a feature
article in the university newspaper. Her parents found out about the article and cut off financial
support for her. Antje was forced to drop out of school. She worked at a cafeteria, just getting by.
"I didn't know how to live on my own yet. I had no idea. I was clueless. I did that for a while so
it took a couple of years to graduate." Although she hadn't spoken to her father in years
(her mother and stepfather prohibited it), she got in touch with him and asked for his help.
She went back to Germany and spent a year-and-a-half there. Her relationship with her father
was rekindled and he helped her graduate. She went back to the University of Delaware and
got a degree in History and Literature.
She says, "All of these things… the adversity of it all made me a little more strong-headed about
music. The fact that I was pursuing music was more of a passion than if I had been able to just do
it as a hobby all along. The fact that I paid such a high price for it drove me to make something of it."
Reflecting on these events it seems that the lyrics to "Dandelion," could also be directed at her
mother and stepdad, who denied music to her and wanted her to be a dentist.
I am a worn out banjo
I'll never dance in Swan lake
I'll never play the cello
I am the Northern Lights…
You were looking for a tea light
I will always be a forest fire…
…a dandelion.
Slow Liftoff
"After I graduated, I was pretty sure I wanted to at least give the music thing a go &endash; give it a good shot.
Then, if it didn't work out, I was going to get a real job. I don't think I went about it the right way.
I didn't know where to start. I held a slew of jobs &endash; not career type jobs &endash; waitressing and tour guide
kind of jobs &endash; I was playing open mics and I was writing but I wasn't focussed at all. For a bunch of
years I was waiting for something to happen with my career, but didn't know what it would be, but
I still had the dream." She spent about two years in Delaware and then moved to Philadelphia and
spent another two years there. "Around Philadelphia I made some friends on the open mic scene and
started getting little coffee shop gigs. I wasn't really booking myself &endash; I was just kind of waiting for
things to come in. And all along, processing life, writing about everything in my life. I think that whole
period was necessary to get to where I am now. My songs, my writing and my thoughts needed a long
time to gestate."
Time to Fly
Around 2002, she toured with the Irish group Solas. They later covered two of her songs "Black Annis"
and "The Poisonjester's Mask" on their Edge of Silence CD. Critics called "Black Annis" the high point
of the album. She also moved to New York around this time and released her first CD, Little Peppermints.
In one of her bits of between-song-patter on the CD, she says it's a thrill to tour with Solas and
kiddingly says that the band might let her sleep on the bus instead of down with the
luggage. "It gets cold down there," she jokes.
"Black Annis" was inspired by a book Encyclopedia of Creatures That Never Were. It gives us a look
into the blackness of her "dark period." She introduces it on Little Peppermints: "There's a picture of
her [Black Annis] with blue skin and she's sitting on a pile of human bones. She lives in the moors of
Scotland and eats people. So…this is a song about my
stepdad …wherever he may be…" Discarding the boundaries of gender she sings, to an
elegantly fingerpicked celtic air:
"When Annis built this cage, I saw the blueprints on the table
but I was too young to run / She lured me from my play
to her clandestine domain / to tend her illicit domain…
Her fervid anger don't spare anything / in a frenzy I dug my trenches
She confiscated my defenses / with all the forces of the night
Black, black soul and Annis takes her toll / Child of sin, Black Annis wins again…
Moving on to her next step, Antje ascended a little higher and a little farther. She describes the move
to New York this way: "After Philly, I moved to New York to pursue musical
opportunities. There were a whole bunch of leads that came my way, like some guy I thought could
get me a record deal. So I moved there for those kinds of New York 'carrots' that various people
were holding out for me. They all fell through, everything, pretty much. I had a bunch of brushes
with labels and producers without success. I think it was a combination of me not being quite ready
and maybe my music not being all that marketable in the sort of mainstream world that I was trying
to get into. At least that's what people were trying to pull me toward &endash; away from the folk and more
toward a major label kind of world. I never
really did think that I'd fit that and I always wanted to be in folk. Certain people were trying to make
me into something I wasn't." She played places like the Bitter End and the Sidewalk Café. "My first
record came out around 2002. I was still working side jobs, babysitting-type things. I didn't have a
whole lot of money, but I put out my first live record -- Little Peppermints&emdash;it was mostly live, and
cheap, but I consider it my first record, my first real album, I guess." I mentioned to her that she's
very good with an audience and she responded: "It kind of reflected around that. It was kind of
discombobulated," she states. However, it really is splendid, and listening to it against Boys, Flowers, Miles,
which came out in 2005, it provides a record of her progress.
The Human Spirit
I first heard "Judas" performed live, and again, on Boys, Flowers, Miles and it blew me away each time.
Here she draws upon her intimate knowledge of the outsider, the loneliness and the darkness. Here,
Judas becomes a tragic Columbine-like figure:
Judas Iscariot is kicking up seashells and he's cursing
He's being tortured by the roaring in his mind
That won't surrender the scene
And even here alone in the dark
a thousand eyes are burning holes into his heart
Jesus, he was the schoolyard martyr
Was every mother's son
Not like Judas in the back of the schoolbus
Invisible to everyone
I asked her where she sees herself relative to religion. She states: "My mother and stepdad were extreme
atheists, very intolerant, angry atheists and they hated religious people. I think I'm much more spiritual,
but I was never able to buy into organized religion. My parents drove it out of me. But also, it just never
felt right. It felt kind of human-made. I still grapple with spirituality all the time. I don't have the answers.
Sometimes I feel that my lyrics are sacrilegious, that they would offend religious people."
In "Pearls" she sings:
I hooked up a hit down in the churchyard
I took a walk down Big Dream Boulevard
With all the sand that gets inside this world
We should all be motherfucking pearls
When you gonna come for me lord?
When you gonna come for me?
Cause I've been expecting you forever
Waiting here for you
Will you send a little grace?
It's the least that you could do
It's the least that you could do
If there is a religion for Antje, it would have to be humanism, or something like it. Her feel for the human
struggle is clear and penetrating. We see it full-bore in "Jerusalem." On her newest album Big Dream Boulevard.
It begins:
So a city wakes up in the morning
And all the infidels get into their cars
As a feather is floating, bread it is broken
And driven deep into your heart
It ends:
Your god's armies are marching on heaven
In the name of what is holy and sacred
They're casting poisonous seeds for your children to reap
Out of the rubbles of hatred
Jerusalem, Jerusalem
Oh you lie bleeding
In the door ways of Eden
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Jerusalem.
Big Dream Boulevard
Whereas Little Peppermints and Boys, Flowers, Miles are essentially live albums with some
studio augmentation, full of interspersed jokes and stories, the brand-new Big Dream Boulevard is a full-blown studio production. No patter whatsoever. It has a number of the older songs including "Judas" and "Dandelion" with atmospheric radio-friendly backup. Slide guitar, synthesizer, violins &endash; the works. Ellis Paul sings harmony on "Pearls and "Hold On"." Acoustic Live recommends all three albums for the total "Antje experience."
This year has seen Antje taken under the wing of Ellis Paul and Ralph Jaccodine (his manager and now Antje's). Antje has opened many shows for Ellis this past year.
As this article is being written in late May, Antje is in Kerrville, Texas, joining the ranks of top-flight singer/songwriters at the Kerrville Folk Festival, somewhere she truly belongs. The campfires she shares will burn a little brighter with her there.
She'll return in early June to perform in the Northeast. Here are some gigs:
Thu, Jun 8 8pm Makor, New York, NY Fri opening for Ellis Paul
$20 Adv / $22 Door
Fri, Jun 9 Skytop Steakhouse, Kingston, NY
Sat, Jun 10 Chocolate Church Arts Center, Bath, ME
Sun, Jun 11 Kiva House Concert, Billerica, Ma. Sat,
Sat, Jun 17 8pm Hillside Cafe Nutley, NJ
Thu, Jun 22 Johnny D's, Somerville, MA ,
Sat, Jun 24 Montague Bookmill, Montague, MA
Fri, Aug 4 Bull Run Restaurant, Shirley, MA
Web site: www.antjeduvekot.com