by erin thursby scopes1925@msn.com
WHAT: Patty Larkin
WHEN: May 6th
WHERE: Café Eleven, St. Augustine
In the ‘90s, it was the age of Lilith Fair. Chicks everywhere were taking up guitars and singing about feminine power. One of the inspirations for all those guitar-wielding chicks was Patty Larkin, a skilled guitarist/songwriter who cut her first album in ’91. More than ten years later, she was instrumental in spearheading the La Guitara project, both a CD and a tour that brought together some of the world’s best female guitarists, dispelling the myth that all the really skilled guitarist are male.
When I spoke to Larkin during an EU interview, she remarked that La Guitara were “really pretty extraordinary tours, just in terms of the levels these women are playing at and the kind of music we were able to play together.”
Larkin’s touring schedule and two daughters, whom she recently adopted from China with her partner, has kept her fairly busy. Her last project was La Guitara in ’05 and her last solo album was Red=Luck, two years prior to that. It’s a change from the rather dense series of album releases in the ‘90s, all of which made various artistic statements.
“I keep thinking that I’m really taking these huge leaps, left or right or whatever, and it always just ends up that it pretty much sounds like me, with a little bit of a different attitude…I thought after La Guitara that the pieces I would write would be sort of slamming, real guitar focused. But, you know, while I wrote many of them on my guitar, not all of them were…and there’s some very mellow pieces. They’re almost trance type pieces, which I’m very much into. They’re my dirty little secret.”
Adopting her two daughters has had a way of changing her perspective on life, but perhaps she adopted them because her perspective had changed.
“There are 3 or 4 other artists that I know that have done the same thing, international adoption in the last few years. I don’t know if it was 9/11 or just that time of life when you just look around and say ‘OK, well, we need to give back a little of what we have.’ And in fact, it has given me back so much that it’s hard to describe in a way. I’m very happy…Mainly, there were a couple of [songs I wrote] that were really to…[my girls, but] they didn’t make the record. It’s more of a sensibility, I think that I now bring to my songwriting, just the attitude because my heart is fuller, less caustic maybe.”
Life is quick, and Larkin knows it. In her last album there were “a couple of songs about death…I had an uncle that passed away last year…and I think that informed the writing as well.” Even Larkin’s vital and growing children serve as a reminder of this truth.
“You see how short …[life] is. There’s nothing like a little time marker, like a little kid because they change every day. I go away for three days and they’ve morphed…I think it kind of does teach you about how precious the day is.”
You can catch this incredible folk guitar virtuoso at Café Eleven on May 6th.
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