Alela Diane Always Drawn To Folk Music

11/13/09 6:18pm

by Siobhan Ozege (CHARTattack)

Alela Diane is only 26 years old, but that doesn't come across at all when she speaks about her music.

Diane considers herself a "late bloomer," having not learned the guitar until she was 19, and the California native is confident that regardless of how she got into music, she deserves to be there.

Folk music has made a big resurgence lately: between Iron & Wine, Joanna Newsom and countless other artists, a love for quiet, acoustic, traditional, rural songs have been blanketing the North American indie music scene for the past few years. Alela Diane may be the newest artist to add to the roster of fresh folkies — but she never intended to be.

"Coming from where I came from, it's the type of music that is very natural for me to make," Diane says. "It wasn't a decision of, 'Oh, I want to be a folk artist.'

"Playing the acoustic guitar was a very obvious choice for me, and it was what I was drawn to... I imagine if I had grown up in New York my music would be very different."

Diane says she never imagined it would get her this far. After her parents divorced when she graduated high school, she began writing songs and picked up an acoustic guitar as she watched everything she had ever known fall away. Diane set out to travel, where she wrote the majority of the songs for her first album while waiting tables and visiting rural France.

Like a lot of folk artists, Diane's music focuses on very grounding themes: family, living in secluded areas and traveling.

Despite her parents' divorce, Diane believes her upbringing is what influenced her the most as an artist. Her father has recorded her last two albums. Her latest, To Be Still, is out now on Rough Trade.

"Music was always a part of my house when I was growing up," says Diane. "Both of my parents were always playing music... to work with [my father] just felt like a really natural thing to do... it definitely has made the records sound how they sound in so many ways.

"In a lot of ways, he is the producer and a lot of the ideas and the things that are on the record are his idea... I think it would be quite different if he wasn't involved."

Diane's music is a force to be reckoned with: she recently received a gold record in France and has been touring non-stop.

You can see Diane with Marissa Nadler here:

Nov. 13 New York, NY @ Le Poisson Rouge
Nov. 14 Brooklyn, NY @ Union Hall
Nov. 15 Montreal, QC @ La Sala Rossa
Nov. 16 Toronto, ON @ Horseshoe Tavern
Nov. 17 Chicago, IL @ Schubas Tavern
Nov. 18 Minneapolis, MN @ 7th Street Entry
Nov. 20 Denver, CO @ Hi-Dive
Nov. 21 Salt Lake City, UT @ Kilby Court