Artist InformationBiography
VIDEO EPK: www.youtube.com/denitiaodigie
Denitia Odigie
(Duh-NEE-Sha Oh-DEE-Jee)
“…a warm acoustic palette and a soul pulse. Above the swaying grooves, though, her melodies never settle into an intuitive soul-style flow, instead spraying emotion outside such well-trod routes.” (Nashville Scene 2009)
"Though based in Nashville, Tennessee, earnest heart-on-her-sleeve singer-songwriter Denitia Odigie follows more closely in the footsteps of the guitar-strumming songstresses you're likely to read about in Paste Magazine than watch on the Grand Ole Opry...tasteful pop music: the product of a modern ear and a world-wise iTunes library...likely to resonate with heartsick 20-something indie-pop fans." (‘Nites blog 2009)
“The sweetness in her voice is a reminder of Corinne Bailey Rae (her look too), with Feist’s folk raw intensity. … a musical mix with a tinge of country, sprinkles of soul, scatters of acoustic and drizzles of caramel gospel. (AW Music 2009)
“…folk-soul siren…a woman whose voice can range from a whisper to a roar within the span of a single song…To call her voice and music ethereal is an oversimplification -- there's something so graceful and angelic…” (The Daily Times Knoxville 2009)
"...girlish cayenne-pepper voice skips from breathy to syncopated to belting...her alt-rock leanings now take a backseat to country-touched soul..." (Nashville Scene 2009)
IT’S THE RUTLEDGE, IN NASHVILLE, Tennessee, and Denitia Odigie is singing up a delicious mixture of Al Green and grunge. It sounds, in theory, like a bipolar combination. But a room full of hipsters, college students, and wannabe-edgy, multiculti yuppies is digging it. She sells out of her EP, along with a pile of T-shirts, talking late into a rainy spring night with fans in a venue far from where you’d expect to be hearing this combination of soul with 90s irony--Ani DiFranco and R. Kelley with Eartha Kitt mediating, maybe? Odigie’s reviewers have compared her to Cat Power and Corinne Bailey Rae, probably because she has an ethereal voice and stunningly beautiful face (really--check the photos). She’s got a cool edge, a surging presence on stage, and unbounded songwriting power.
Odigie writes it like she feels it. At their best, her songs are hooky, but complex; they have melodies that Germans charmingly call “ear-worms,” because they’re hard to get out of your head. Yet when you listen to them again, the stories turns out to be a little more twisted and real than you thought. “I should have known you were a green-grass-chaser,” Odigie sings, “when you came walking in my door…it’s not sexy anymore.” That’s a type all of us know too well and have been much too attracted to before.
Her production and arrangement, particularly in its latest incarnation guided by Paul Buono, has this same combination of familiarity and unsettlingness. You thought you were listening to the Cranberries, until you heard the saw whining, and then the gain on the vocals, and…what the hell made that sound, back there on the left side, for a half-beat? This is generative Soul, lyrically and sonically: telling it like it is, but signifying on it too.
Odigie was raised in Houston, so she could have done it there. She could have taken her passion to Austin, hybrid music capital, two-and-a-half hours up the road. But she went to Nashville, and she got three things: a Vanderbilt education, tighter songwriting than your usual R & B these days, and a posse of fabulous musicians in her orbit. An up-and-coming publishing company, Weston Boys, signed her to a deal in the same month they signed Jace Everett (who wrote and performed the True Blood theme song, “Bad Things”). She’s constantly on the pages of the Nashville Scene, and has gotten fantastic reviews from Canada to Knoxville--and even in Austin.
Indie mags and fans across the south and in the cool joints in Nashville are all wondering what’s going to happen next for Denitia. Her commitment to that hard-to-sustain tension between tradition and novelty, between her distinctive voice and a riveting sound, keeps broadening her appeal. Her new EP, Brick by Brick, is about to sell out. Come listen.
www.myspace.com/denitiaodigie
www.youtube.com/denitiaodigie
denitiaodigie@gmail.com
Instrumentation
Denitia Odigie (vocals, acoustic guitar)
Brick by Brick EP
Dan Cohen (electric guitar)
James Cook (bass)
Derek Mixon (drums/percussion)
Jenny Wood (bgvs)
LIVE:
Dan Cohen (electric guitar)
Ben Graham (bass)
Scott Shirock (drums)
Ezell (bgvs)
Jenny Wood (bgvs
Discography
Brick by Brick (Weston Boys Records 2009)
CONTRAST (Independent release 2008)
The Fireworks Session (Independent release 2007)
Good Causes (Independent release 2006)
Denitia Odigie (Independent release 2005)
Links
| http://www.myspace.com/denitiaodigie |
| DENITIA'S MYSPACE PAGE |