Music has rules. From voice leading in Western harmony to the
entry requirements for American Idol, the authorities tell us
certain guidelines must be followed. Such is the way forward. Not so
for Baby Dee. In her storied life, this multi-instrumentalist and
songwriter has progressed erratically, backwards, sideways.
With her latest album, Safe Inside the Day, she returns to
square one—the Cleveland home where she grew up—while
landing in a better place. Dee’s sublime earlier work frequently felt
rarified and gentle. Now she boldly pulls a full face-plant into her
messy childhood. Blues, bawdy songs, medieval dances, and snippets of
Irish airs elbow each other across the parlor. In her expressive
contralto, the fiftysomething singer huffs and snarls like a cartoon
pirate on the “The Earlie King,” a twisted nod to her father’s
affection for the Franz Schubert lieder “Erlkönig.”
Initially, Dee resisted exorcising these songs. When Matt Sweeney
and Will Oldham solicited Dee for a record for Drag City, her impulse
was to rework older selections. But the new songs would not stay
silent. Admits Dee, “I didn’t want to bring this dark thing into the
world. But Will talked me into it.”
Oldham and Sweeney relieved their star of many essential
responsibilities, recruiting players from Chavez, Current 93, Antony
and the Johnsons, and even Andrew W.K. on bass. Most tough
calls—”including the ones made to prevent me from doing stupid
things that would’ve fucked it all up”—were left to her
producers. Not unusual for a prefab pop icon, but for an independent
artist who previously played and produced everything herself, a sharp
change of tack.
Dee didn’t always move in such circles. An adolescent in the heyday
of Hendrix and the Who, she preferred monks to the Monkees (although
she admits a fondness for Johnny Cash). “My life used to be a series of
obsessions, and Gregorian music was a big one.” In 1972, she relocated
to New York, where she remained for three decades. Dee served as
musical director for a large south Bronx congregation. Initially, it
seemed an ill fit—”it gave me the heebie-jeebies to picture
myself as this nerdy organist”—but when she learned the choir
loft loomed 40 feet over the pews, she was sold. “I adore being up
high!”
Teetering in the skies is a recurring motif in Baby Dee’s life; at
various points, she worked climbing and felling trees, and performed on
an oversized tricycle. She also drove a cab, moonlighted as a sideshow
attraction… and she was born male. All footnotes that she frets might
eclipse her musical accomplishments.
“Every once in a while, I get a review that just talks about Baby
Dee as this woman who writes these songs, and completely leaves out all
that baggage,” she sighs. “And it feels like the dogs have stopped
humping my legs, and I can walk normally now.”
Such respites come more frequently now, such as last December,
during a gig at Joe’s Pub. The backing band included not only Sweeney
and Andrew W.K., but also Dirty Three drummer Jim White. “Looking
around the stage, there were all these guys, regular guys, and they’re
there for me. No big deal. They’re my friends, and we’re playing music.
It was lovely. As a kid growing up, or even in the ’90s, when I was
riding around on that tricycle, I wouldn’t have imagined the world to
be that serendipitous.”