Want a response? Please email:
dearnora at gmail dot com
Thank you.
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STATS:
Height: 6'0"
Year of birth: 1977
Astrological sign: Libra
Favorite food: mellow chimi
Favorite country: Australia
Favorite environmental cause: conserving water
General overall feeling: humans must rise above destructive tendencies of passive acquiescence, laziness, and egocentrism
Current pet peeve: televisions in restaurants
Favorite LA radio station: tie between Movin' 93.9 and Hot 92.3
Favorite band as 10-year-old: Boston
Favorite band now: Fleetwood Mac
Other favorite bands: The Roches, Kate & Anna McGarrigle, Joan Baez, Alice Coltrane, Gene Clark, Ed Askew, The Grateful Dead, Townes Van Zandt, Billy Bragg, Little Wings, Dirty Projectors
Crushes: Laurel Frank, Lindsey Buckingham, all the members of the Slits (current line-up), Carl Sagan, Edward Abbey (when he's not being an asshole), Andrew Peterson, this guy Alex in my philosophy class
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NEWS:
Upcoming:
1) New Katy Davidson album
2) New Lloyd & Michael album
3) Lots of other weird things
4) Just as God Made Us: coming out on Australia's Valve Records in May 2008
5) Lloyd & Michael on tour in Australia in late 2008
6) New Web site
Dear Nora's final album There is No Home is out now. You may purchase it from Magic Marker Records in the U.S. and Valve Records in Australia.
Lloyd & Michael's album Just as God Made Us is available now in the U.S. (and soon in Australia). You may purchase it from States Rights Records .
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BIO:
Dear Nora was a band of twisted force, a weird entity of surprisingly recalcitrant intent. Katy Davidson (songwriting/guitar/vocals) was the only constant member since the band’s beginning. Throughout the years, Dear Nora featured a cast of rotating members, all quite integral to the band’s ever-mutating sound.
The story goes:
In Summer 1999, Davidson started Dear Nora in Portland, Oregon, with her friends Marianna Ritchey (drums/vocals) and Ryan Wise (bass). They named the band after a Lewis & Clark College music professor who had provided them much inspiration and friendship. After establishing themselves on the scene in Portland, and releasing two 7â€s and a handful of self-released cassettes, the band recorded We’ll Have a Time in San Francisco with Amy Linton (Aislers Set), and released it on Magic Marker Records in early 2001. This debut was doubly calm and boisterous, marked mainly by mellifluous melodies and uncomplicated lyrics.
Driven by a desire for a change, Davidson relocated to San Francisco just after We’ll Have a Time was released. There Davidson began playing unaccompanied shows, still using the name Dear Nora. She wrote and recorded The New Year, which resembled much more the attitude and spirit of Dear Nora’s pre-We’ll Have a Time recordings. The New Year was homemade, recorded by Davidson on an 8-track cassette recorder, and echoed lo-fi influences of the GBV-kind, with nature/fantasy-based lyricism and short songs that ran together as if they were not separate units but threads in a woven narrative. Dear Nora released The New Year in time to tour Japan with Mirah and the Fairways in Spring 2002. For this tour, Dear Nora featured its original line-up, plus Jake Longstreth, another long-time Portland friend, on guitar. Davidson also toured unaccompanied as Dear Nora during the latter half of 2002, supporting both Mates of State and Family Outing on their U.S. tours.
Davidson continued the touring machine through 2003. She formed a new version of the band, which featured San Francisco-based friends Gretchen Hildebran (bass/vocals) and Antonio Roman-Alcalá (drums). This incarnation of Dear Nora toured the U.S. and Sweden in 2003. In December of that year, Davidson retreated to the arid wilds of Arizona (her home state) to record Mountain Rock, a stripped-down, simple, and mostly acoustic record involving a metaphorical odyssey through a mountain wilderness. With this record, Davidson revealed a weirdness that had not been fully disclosed on previous releases.
Davidson released Mountain Rock in the spring of 2004, and soon after formed the final incarnation of the band, including Davidson (vocals/guitar), Longstreth (guitar), Roman-Alcalá (drums), Jaime Knight (bass), and Nora Roman (vocals/percussion). This version of Dear Nora was the tightest and perhaps most psychedelic to date. Based on local San Francisco performances, the band drew comparisons to anything from Fugazi to the Grateful Dead. This band became a mainstay on the San Francisco live music scene throughout 2004-07, though was unable to take to the road due to discordant schedules, save for a short-yet-very-comprehensive California Central Valley tour. During those same years, Davidson completed unaccompanied tours through the U.S. with the likes of Cynthia Nelson (Retsin), The Blow, YACHT, and Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, made two solo treks to Australia.
Davidson began work on what would be the final Dear Nora album, There is No Home, during Winter 2005. The record, somewhat sonically akin to Mountain Rock, reveals a dark side to which Davidson had only furtively hinted on previous releases. There is No Home is about a landscape beautiful and damaged. In all the ways that Mountain Rock is about hope and magic in nature, There is No Home is about dashed hope, and nature in ruin.
Davidson’s style has always been heady and ethereal, awkward and beautiful, sarcastic and kind. These stylistic traits survived Dear Nora’s different shapes and forms, wending their way through time, creating a constant aesthetic through a series of surface changes.
In spite of this, Davidson decided There is No Home would be Dear Nora’s final release because her songwriting and orchestration style had veered far from its original benchmark, far enough to be established as a something new. Davidson will continue to make music, both on her own and with friends.
Among other outlets, she has started a Los Angeles-based project with long-time friend Marianna Ritchey, called Lloyd & Michael.
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DISCOGRAPHY:
2000
Make You Smile (7")
Magic Marker Records
2000
Dreaming Out Loud (7")
Magic Marker Records
2001
We'll Have a Time (CD & LP)
Magic Marker Records
& Wah! Records (Japan)
2002
The New Year (CD)
Magic Marker Records
2003
The New Year (LP)
Red Square Records
2003
split w/ Mates of State (7")
Polyvinyl Records
2004
Mountain Rock (CD)
Magic Marker Records
2005
split w/ What the Kids Want (7")
Shake Got the Beets Records
2006
There is No Home (CD)
Magic Marker Records
& Valve Records (Australia)
2007
Just as God Made Us (CD)
(by Lloyd & Michael)
States Rights Records
