Idgy Vaughn is trouble. She's been trouble of one kind or other since the day she was born on a hog farm in rural Missouri and later raised in an Illinois town at least three sizes too small for her big dreams and entirely too slow for her tenacious, ADD-fueled free spirit. She began plotting her escape the day she taught herself to play guitar well enough to keep up with the melodies and lyrics spinning around her brain.
Idgy Vaughn is trouble in the sense that she excels at throwing people off their guard, and then knocking them flat. Misjudge her by the way she might traipse onto a stage in a cute little sun dress and cowboy boots, all playful red curls, big green eyes and bigger smile, and she'll blindside you with a song she wrote about raising her daughter as a single mother in the projects or an equally devastating character study of a co-worker she knew during her Truckstop Waitress days. Sometimes she surprises even herself. At the 2004 Kerrville Folk Festival, when her big violin solo during her howler of a song about needing to find herself a Redbone Hound went tragically awry, she broke down in a fit of laughter, then rallied for a finish that brought the audience to its feet, cheering as though they'd just seen her pull a flaming DC-10 out of a nose dive for a safe landing. She ended up being one of the six winners of that year's prestigious New Folk Competition for Emerging Songwriters.
Idgy Vaughn is trouble for those who like singer-songwriters to fit nice and quietly into single-serving genre molds like pop, folk, country or rock. She's trouble for those who don't like their sad songs leavened with humor, or their catchy, silly songs rubbing elbows with songs that punch you in the gut and wrench your heart out. Idgy's trouble for those folks because she does it all, without apology, prejudice or even knowing any better. Which, of course, also makes her all kinds of trouble for anyone who just considers themselves a sucker for a great song, whatever the flavor, and doubly so for suckers for a great voice. She can belt em out like Janis or Tammy, and rumor has it she also has a mean yodel.
Idgy Vaughn's debut album, Origin Story, was produced by Paul Pearcy with a veritable A-team of Austin's best and most in-demand players, none of whom quite managed to steal the spotlight from Idgy herself. Which could mean big trouble for anyone averse to the possibility that the brightest, freshest new voice on the Texas music scene just might be an unsocialized farm kid from the wide-open dull spaces of the Midwest.
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