Dawn Xiana Moon: Melodic folk pop infused with passion and honesty. From Chicago.

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Sunday, December 25, 2005

Merry Christmas!

And my Christmas present to all of you wonderful people: two downloadable Christmas songs on Myspace, including "Noel," an original I wrote two years ago.

Have a fantastic holiday!

^ Top | 12:28 AM | | |

Friday, December 23, 2005

What is it about the musical Rent that resonates so deeply with our generation?

An excerpt from my latest editor column for Relevant Magazine, Beyond La Vie Boheme:

Humans have an innate longing for community, for substantive relationships, and in a postmodern society that community becomes ever more difficult to find. And it's not just the fault of suburban sprawl and the ease of travel in our country; its roots are more entrenched, more widespread. In Paris, you'll see the rupture in the lives of the international students; the French university system doesn't emphasize creating student community the way that the American model does, so it's not uncommon for international students to have only a handful of friends, to feel isolated. What Rent captures is this hunger. Life is far from easy for its characters: they are poor, several have AIDS and many are disconnected from family. But they have each other, and it is enough. There's only us / There's only this ("Life Support"). They are a patchwork family of exotic dancers, filmmakers, crack addicts, teachers, drag queens, lawyers, musicians and performance artists—it's a strange family, but one nonetheless; they find love and support in each other. They need each other. It is only when their family falls apart that life truly becomes unbearable.

^ Top | 5:57 PM | | |

Wednesday, December 21, 2005

Wish Lists

Patrick's parents asked him to make them a Christmas wish list, and watching him write one reminded me of my Amazon.com wish list. So if anyone's dying to buy me a Christmas present.... :-)

As a little gift from me to you, there are new downloadable tracks on the Listen page. Go and have fun.

^ Top | 10:58 PM | | |

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Radio Interview

I just got the recording of the interview that I did last Tuesday for WCSR in Hillsdale for Saturday's show at the Union Perk Coffeehouse. Go ahead and take a listen. Admittedly, it wasn't one of my most profound moments, but it's not bad.

^ Top | 4:16 PM | | |

Monday, December 19, 2005

Musical Chairs

On Thursday I played a short set at a coffeehouse run by a college group my brother heads, and hanging out with people there I discovered that one of the members is from Redford and was the bassoonist who, back in junior high, auditioned into the high school band but never went to Thurston because he ended up at Interlochen Fine Arts Academy instead. Fast forward a few years and Mike is now interning with the Detroit Symphony, playing 20 weeks of concerts a year.

On Sunday we went to hear the Detroit Symphony play Beethoven's Ninth, and the amusement started as a result of his lateness picking me up (and thus, a late arrival to the concert): the ushers don't seat people while the music is playing, and since there were no particularly good breaks to seat us in they offered us a couple of chairs in the back of the box level rather than our actual seats. Then they saw that two seats were open in a spot that we could reach without having to crawl through listening patrons, so we sat there. Until the people who bought tickets for those places appeared ten minutes later. So we were back to the chairs in the back. Then a woman whose affiliation with the DSO is unclear but important in some capacity recognized Mike and told us to sit at another set of two seats that were fairly unobtrusive. One usher started to bring us there and the usher who was apparently in charge stopped us, adamantly making her point that she was not allowed to seat people during the symphony. To which the woman Mike knew replied, "But I want them to sit there." A small struggle of power ensued, which resulted in us sitting in the disputed seats. And Mike and I found the whole situation quite amusing.

^ Top | 12:30 PM | | |

Sunday, December 18, 2005

Union Perk

Hillsdale, Mich. is a unique place. It's a tiny, conservative town with a college, a growing swing dancing scene, and--here's where things get interesting--a mayor who's still in high school. No, it's not a joke, and the residents apparently don't take it as one either; apparently the incumbent wasn't doing much for the town and the high schooler campaigned hard, using money he'd saved from a summer job, so he won. Can you imagine writing "Mayor of Hillsdale" on your college applications? What university wouldn't accept you after that (and all the associated press through CNN and other national media)?

I played at the Union Perk Coffeehouse in Hillsdale tonight, and apparently the mayor is a part of Dave the soundman's youth group. Union Perk itself is a fantastic venue--Paul, who runs the show, has been on the artist end of things himself and thus takes care of his performers really well. They hooked me up with fried chicken (one of my favorite foods) and I think I may actually have OD'ed on the stuff; I ate before the concert and afterward they gave me the rest of the bucket, which meant I munched on more chicken on my way home. The radio interview associated with the night is forthcoming....

^ Top | 1:24 AM | | |

Tuesday, December 13, 2005

More Christmas Lights

Snopes.com is awesome; they have the full story on the Christmas lights, which are the work of Carson Williams from Mason, Ohio. Williams spent $10,000 and two months to put up the 25,000 lights in the display, which unfortunately is no longer in operation; last week there was a car accident on his street and the police had difficulty reaching the scene due to congestion from all the cars driving in to see his light display, so he shut it off indefinitely. But check out the Snopes link--there's a link there to a great TV interview with Williams and family.

^ Top | 10:42 PM | | |

Monday, December 12, 2005

Christmas Lights

Link of the day: Just a little light show to get you in the Christmas mood. The woman who sent me the link said that programming the synchronized house lights took three hours per minute and the guy who created the show broadcasts the music on a radio station right by his house so that you can tune in. Apparently he gets over 300 cars a day on average to see the spectacle.

^ Top | 4:04 PM | | |

Thursday, December 08, 2005

Music in Chicago

I had such a fantastic week in Chicago. The update on the Over the Rhine story is that we didn't do the interview in person in the end--things were a little crazy for them with two shows in one day--but we should get the interview over the phone on Monday. And their concert on Saturday night was absolutely wonderful. Kim Taylor opened, and her voice was surprisingly similar to Karin's (the singer for OtR); this was clear even when she sang a couple of songs with the band. Mmmm. One of the best things about an OtR concert is feeling like you've just been wrapped in a warm blanket and hugged.

Sunday night I shared my show at Cafe Mud with Dan Vaillancourt, a fantastic guitarist I met over a year ago at one of his shows--apparently I laughed at all the musician jokes, which got us talking after the concert, and as they say, the rest is history. (We couldn't stop talking on Sunday either--he had a six-hour drive back to Michigan after the performance, so he tried to leave on multiple occasions but it took probably an hour for that to happen.) He was on the tail end of a tour playing something like 15 shows, and we had a ton of fun playing on a couple of each others' songs. You can read his take on Sunday here (under December 4th).

^ Top | 2:26 PM | | |

Friday, December 02, 2005

Wires Crossed

I'm doing an interview with Over the Rhine--specifically, Linford Detweiler--for Relevant Magazine, and we were supposed to do the interview over the phone today at 4:30pm. What we didn't all put together until it was too late was that we were both in different time zones and hadn't thought to specify Eastern or Central Time. Problem. However, this could end up being a good thing; we've rescheduled the interview for tomorrow, when Over the Rhine will be in Chicago (ironically, tonight they're playing in Ann Arbor), and there's a possibility that in this case we may do the interview in person. Read: I could interview my favorite band in person. How cool would that be? Here's hoping....

^ Top | 4:37 PM | | |

Thursday, December 01, 2005

The Randomness of How Music Brings People Together

I gave a mini-concert on the train. Kind of. I was on the way from Ann Arbor to Chicago and two passengers seated opposite me saw my guitar and asked if I would play for them. And since I was itching for an excuse to play anyway, I did. I played "Found" and when I was done, I was surprised to hear the entire car applaud. A high school girl came up to me and asked if she could sit by me--we started talking, and I discovered that she formed an acoustic band this summer. She had a CD with her, and the band's not bad--they definitely don't sound like they're in high school, and their singer has an unexpectedly mature voice. I wish them the best--it would have taken a lot for me to get my act together at that age.

^ Top | 10:56 PM | | |