Into the Heart of Real Love

Every singer-songwriter hopes for the kind of debut album that Annie Guthrie has produced on her just-released and long awaited, Dragonfly (out now on Rising Son Records). This is the kind of album that is not born from ego or the quest for fame, but grows slowly, a product of time tempered by life-experience that makes this fine album a matter of personal growth as well as an engaging universal appeal to all of those who have felt the pain of a broken heart.

Beneath the surface of these songs are the streams of the quiet influence of her family and friends. Guthrie was raised in the finest of musical tradition with a bloodline that includes her father, Arlo and grandfather, Woody Guthrie.

But this album is rooted in the flesh and soul of the women in her family line including her mother, Jackie Hyde Guthrie-who passed away in 2012, and grandmother Marjorie Mazia Guthrie, once a dancer for the Martha Graham Dance Company. From this perspective this album is a love letter to all women who have the desire to break free into self-realization and to those, beyond gender, who live their lives stalled in the heartbreak and disillusionment of lost love. The album is an insightful, clear-eyed look into what it means to be a woman in and out of romance and to break-out into freedom from traditional roles and expectations. Finally, Dragonfly is an answer to all romantic implications coming from centuries of idealization and objectification of women from scores of romantic troubadours. For Annie Guthrie, on this beautifully conceived album, there is life outside of, apart from and even inside of (on her own terms) the romantic relationship.   Too often women have been defined in song in only the most limited male-centered terms. Dragonfly shatters that old myth creating a Pygmalion like effect as the artist breaks from the hold imposed on her, a fully realized human being.

Musically, Annie Guthrie has drawn from a strong country-rock feel inherited from Arlo Guthrie’s inspired Reprise years and his close friend, Hoyt Axton, as a stylist of country-folk songs.  Most notably“Who Am I”, “Packing Light” and “White Sundresses,” bear the favorable mark of Axton’s easy musical, vocal and lyrical style. The production by Bobby Sweet is unadorned, laced with subtle instrumentation; an authentic and stripped down feel that make these songs shine. The musicians include brother, Abe Guthrie, Arlo’s Shenandoah drummer, Terry A LA Berry, Dan Teichert, Pete Adams and Sarah Lee Guthrie. 

But, it’s not only her influences and pedigree that brings Dragonfly up from any ordinary songwriter’s debut. It’s the core certainty of lyrical soul that spins out from the soulful center of these songs. They could only be born from her life-experience over the last ten years. Long ago her life turned away from following her grandmother, Marjorie Mazia Guthrie, into a life of dance, when due to a knee injury, she had to seek artistic expression elsewhere. It was her mother, Jackie, who put the guitar in her hands when her dancing hopes were dashed. It was Arlo who taught her chords and picks between tours, starting her out on the Elizabeth Cotton classic, “Freight Train.”   It was from this point that her vision as a writer grew into her adult life.

The songs on Dragonfly run from deeply personal tales of heartbreak and grief to reflections on the deeper truth found inside the losses. With a beautifully sparse and lean production that allows her voice, words and music to blend together in a way that is mesmerizing and engaging, each song draws us into its own world of meaning and discovery.

Opening with the gentlest of love songs, “Laid in Bed,” reminds of the bliss of love realized and declared, straightforward and pure. The music is centered on a beautifully realized acoustic guitar lead. “Odyssey,” as the title implies, is a song journey that takes us deep into the artist’s soul where a struggle for internal peace is being worked out. At the center of the song is the refrain, “will you find me here?”  She calls out to a love lost which she hopes to be found within herself. The prayer for the larger self to emerge and heal is the song’s calling. The music is juxtaposed between an electric slide guitar and a haunting mandolin that leads us along the lyrical path.

“Who Am I,” speaks to a would-be lover about the mysterious persona that attracts him/her to the object of desire; the song’s narrator. She asks “who do you see in my eyes that you say is a mystery?” Then she answers, “It’s everyone I’ve ever loved, its everything I’ve seen, it’s everyone I’ve ever lost who live in memories.” The song brilliantly allows the real person to speak from behind the imposed mask of the projected lover, breaking the illusions as she sings, “I was born to love a guitar player. Life isn’t always as planned. Some dreams you gotta hold onto. This is where I make my stand. I was meant to go down highways just to watch the world go by. And I need someone beside me who can understand why.”  The song is buoyed by a strong country-rock arrangement with subtly crafted lead guitar counterpoint and a beautifully conceived organ by Abe Guthrie that weaves like a spirit guide through the song.

 “Pack Light” dares to ask questions and find answers seldom concluded inside the realm of a traditional love song. “I know it’s hard to show the one you love that your just as lonley with him as you are without him,” is the kind of lyric that pulls the blinders off the illusions of romantic love to reveal the truth as she sings in the chorus, “wouldn’t it be nice to pack light this time, leaving all the shit behind. Take it to the sky, get up there so high, nothing’s gonna stop me now.”  The exchange between the acoustic and electric guitars with underlying piano give the song a beautifully realized elegance. All the while there is the peaceful resolve of letting go of all the baggage in favor of ‘one suit case and my guitar.’ 

“Cambridge” a blues-rock romp, falls on the brighter side of falling in love with a musician with the backdrop of the night life of Cambridge to set the scene. Bobby Sweet’s electric guitar fires up a beautifully realized blues lead break as Abe Guthrie’s ever present organ peers beneath the surface with its own soul that ties the sound together.

“Turn Around,” is a song about the immediacy of love in the moment, which may or may not be the kind that last, but even so, the song expresses the hope of a love that matters. It’s wrapped up in a beautifully pop friendly hook turn-around…literally. The ‘turn around’ of the song refers to the suddent discovry of love that is much closer than you think. 

“Mother’s Cry” is the most emotionally raw song on the collection as Guthrie expresses the pain and anger she feels from her son’s abandonment by his father. There is a sense of anger alongside the anguished sorrow unique to a mother as she sings, “Please don’t hurt my baby, please don’t leave him waiting,” and “you call yourself daddy, you have no right to abuse that name.”  The song is a stunning look at the impact that lost love and betrayal has on a child and his mother from inside her deepest heart. This kind of pain takes no prisoner, including children. 

The song, “Bittersweet” allows Guthrie to use her “Freight Train,” picking mastery to her best advantage. With a simple minor key and a Piedmont pick, she sings of the freedom from romantic love with the refrain, ‘sure can be bittersweet.’   The song seems like a lost dream inside the spirit of Woody and Lead belly.

 “White Sundresses” is the most accessible and subtle song on the album which stands in contrast to the opening song, “Laid in Bed” and its optimism. The song comes from the perspective of a lover who knows heartbreak and resolves to stay away from places where ‘love’s stories all go wrong.”  Dressed in a upbeat country melody, it does what classic songs are able to do best, when they get under your skin, with a bright tone and dark lyrics. In this song, the lover has been healed and is ready to live a whole life with or without a great romance. She is content in this song to conclude, “I may never wear white sun dresses or dance around in flowering fields. I wouldn’t say that makes me unhappy. I just like the way Johnny Cash is.”

As the album concludes, there is a reminder that title songs are given the name of the record for a very good reason. After moving from bliss to the embittered to the bittersweet, the final song reveals the soul beneath the songs.  “Dragonfly” is a meditation on the paradoxes that give nuance to the internal life of the artist as she dares to dig beneath the surface. Happiness is contrasted sorrow, freedom with constraint and happiness with emotionlessness as she sings, “You always find the beauty in sad things, I open my heart and spread my wings…dragonfly.”   Ultimately, the songs and this album provide us, not always with comfort, but, rather ask questions and find answers that penetrate beneath the surface of life’s cliché’s about love and intimacy in favor of the truth found in real love. It is love that transcends that she captures on this album. Not love that binds us up in broken heart, but one that frees us to grow.  Annie Guthrie has created an album that chronicles her own jounrey of healing and that points the way for others to find the hope of healing from the deepest of heartbreak through an honest look within and the courage to say what is true and find freedom along the way.