Idgy Vaughn

... I've played this track probably, you know, six or seven times now over recent months on this program but each time I play it I get huge numbers of requests to play it again... I think she's got a wonderful and tugging voice. Idgy Vaughn, and the song is called "Good Enough." - BBC Radio 2, Bob Harris Country Show

IDGY VAUGHN

ORIGIN STORY

A playful spark flickers through-out the debut by Austin singer/songwriter Idgy Vaughn, blurring the line between her dark and light sides and lending a sneaky edge to both. Take the opening “Redbone Hound,” a perky shuffle complete with howling dog “ahrooos” in the chorus. Fun, right? Not so fast. The song’s protagonist thinks her heart would be safer at home with a dog after “our April romance died on the first of May.” Vaughn puts such romantic anxiety over time and again with detail, spit and emotion, and it’s not standard victimized country fare. “Dragging the River” is a murder ballad with an unlikely killer at its center: “No one ever thinks that little hands are capable of much / But in the end these little hands were just capable enough.” And “Good Enough” has a genreless perfection that could make it a pop or country hit if the right pre-fab artist jumped on it. Vaughn’s voice is supple and has just the right touch of honkytonk warble; it fits the grit in her songs, be it poignant (“Truckstop Waitress”) or peppy (“Mr. Wrong”). The 11 songs on Origin Story are thoughtful and heartfelt, and they read as good as they play—establishing Vaughn, a 2004 Kerrville New Folk winner, as a fantastic new voice with something to say.
-- Andrew Dansby
- Andrew Dansby, Texas Music Magazine, winter 2006

Idgy Vaughn forteller sin egen historie!
Datum: 2006-03-23
Idgy Vaughn heter egentlig Audrey Vaughn, men har valgt å bruke lillesøsterens forvanskning av fornavnet som sitt eget artistnavn. Idgy flyttet til Austin, Tx fra en gård i midtvesten (Chillicote, Missouri)for å forfølge sin drøm om å bli musiker. Vel framme parkerte hun bilen sin på byens musikkgate, 6th street, og gikk inn i første og beste (?) bar, der hun en halv time senere var hyret som serveringsdame.

Samtidig traff hun gitaristen Allan Haynes (kjent for mange bluesfans i Norge). Etter noen rundturer i Texas-hovedstaden vant Idgy den prestisjefylte New Folk Competion for Emerging Songwriters under Kerrville Folk Festival i 2004 og har siden den gang vært under vingene til en av sjefene på Rounder etiketten.

Men Idgy har spilt inn debutalbumet, »Origin Story« for egen maskin, med hjelp av produsenten/ perkusjonisten Paul Percy. Det sier det meste om Idgys talent både som sangerinne og låtskriver at følgende Austin-musikere er med på platen hennes; Redd Volkaert, Lloyd Maines, Earl Poole Ball, Cindy Cashdollar, Guy Forsyth, Glenn Fukunaga og Eamon McLoughlin fra The Greencards.

Idgy blander folk og country og leverer med enn stemme som ikke er helt ulik en annen, innflyttet texaner, Kelly Willis.

Sangen »Good enough« spilles allerede av Bob Harris på BBC2 og Idgy sikter seg inn på å besøke England og Skandinavia så fort oppegående platedistribusjon er på plass.
Idgy får hjelp til sine fremstøt i våre trakter fra texaneren Jim Yanoway, kjent for mange skandinaviske musikkfolk fra da Austin hadde sin bluesboom på 80-tallet. Yanoway drev den egne etiketten Amazing Records, som oppererte under det fantastiske slagordet »If it´s a hit, It´s Amazing«!!

Mens du venter på utgivelse av »Origin Story«, kan du sniklytte på idgyvaughn.com.
Läs mer om Vaughn, Idgy
- www.rootsy.nu

FOUR STAR REVIEW

IDGY VAUGHN
Origin Story

This flame-haired single mum is out to set the cat among the country pigeons.

Her sweet vocal belies a vengeful songwriting bent, vowing to give her heart to a Redbone Hound, playing the killer in the murder ballad Dragging The River and singing the praises of a Truckstop Waitress and Small Town Girls.

With a valiant spirit and a rebel heart this is a talent to watch.

- Nationwide British newspaper THE DAILY MIRROR, April 7, 2006

Idgy Vaughn “Origin Story” (Independent 2006)

“Impressive classic country debut”

Debut albums this good are few and far between, and in Idgy Vaughn we
may well have one of the household names of the future.

She has a
clear unadorned voice, with just a hint of a tremor in it, and sounds
rather like a poppier Iris Dement. It’s a classic sound and producer
and drummer Paul Pearcy has deployed an equally classic Austin
country sound behind it. High, light and semi-acoustic with grace
notes from steel and slide, it swings like a demon when it has to
(“Mister Wrong”) and backs off and fills in the gaps with delicacy
and grace when it doesn’t, as with the desperate “Good Enough”. A
tale of a daughter losing a mother’s love and recognising that she
will never regain it, “Good Enough” is almost too much to listen to,
but the power and strength in the narrator pull the listener through.
It’s followed by “Pearl of Georgia”, a near-hymn to Vaughn’s daughter
that avoids all the dreadful clichés that abound in such songs, and
is redemptive and uplifting. These two songs are the album standouts,
but “Origin Story” is one of those rare beasts that doesn’t have a
weak track.

Although Vaughn owns that the album is unashamedly autobiographical
pretty much throughout (bar murder ballad “Dragging The River”),
often extremely overtly as with “Midwestern Biography,” there’s no
sense of that dreadful “look at me me me!” that you get from lesser
performers. Instead, as the story of her life unfolds the listener
warms to her and her life, her struggle to succeed (and sometimes
just to survive), and is captured by her charm and honesty.

“Origin Story” is an album that could, and should, sell in
truckloads. It has a radio-friendly sound, great songs and great
music and is a joy throughout.
- Second most popular Americana site in the world, www.americana-uk.com

Joe Ely/Idgy Vaughn Concert Review
POOR DAVID’S PUB (DALLAS, TX)
MARCH 31, 2006
By Ron Dempesmeier

Idgy Vaughn You Don’t Know Me / Dragging the River / Pearl of Georgia / Mister Wrong / Saint Francis Fire / Good Enough / Time Bomb / Redbone Hound

The month of March was reserved for the celebration of Poor David’s 29th anniversary. The final act of the month to grace the stage was Joe Ely, who last played at Poor David’s nine years ago. David said that he wanted Joe to bring the celebration to an end since he was one of his favorite acts to ever perform there.

The crowd of nearly 200 patrons was given 3 hours of entertainment from a new, upcoming talent from the Kerrville Folk Festival by the name of Idgy Vaughn and the ever-exciting Mr. Ely himself with accordion-player extraordinaire Joel (pronounced Jo-el) Guzman.

Idgy Vaughn is a folk-country singer with more than a passing similarity to Suzanne Vega and Nanci Griffith. Like those two songstresses, her style of songs is full of feminist perspective (Vega) and a good bit of twang (Griffith).

She opened with a very lovely rendition of Texas songwriting legend Cindy Walker’s “You Don’t Know Me” that immediately impressed the
crowd.

Her voice is a bit soft and delicate, but definitely can break with the best of the female country singers.

Her songs were based on some very
trying personal events such as disappointing her parents by choosing a music career (“Good Enough”), bad experiences with boyfriends (“Dragging the River”, “Mister Wrong”) and the unplanned birth and childhood of her daughter (“Pearl of Georgia”). Georgia herself provided entertainment both offstage (heckling, running around, selling Mom’s CDs) and onstage (sitting like a begging dog and providing backing “Arooos” to “Redbone Hound”). The highlight of Vaughn’s performance was the very moving story of a fire at a Christmas pageant that killed 12 girls in 1899 in Vaughn’s hometown of Quincy, Illinois called “Saint Francis Fire.”

This was a very impressive show for such a young performer.
- Joe Ely/Idgy Vaughn Concert Review

Some debut albums set up careers with the promise of good things to come. Idgy Vaughn delivered Origin Story without warning, a recording so potent it can't be ignored. "Look into my eyes; now do I look like the dangerous type?" she beckons on "Dragging the River," while smacking a honky-tonk punch in the mouth to "Mister Wrong," co-written with Pauline Reese. Vaughn's own story is so marketable it reads like a tabloid headline: "Single Mom Waitresses, Lottery-Winning Customer Finances Record." That happened when she worked in Buda; the rest of her story unfolds on "Midwestern Biography." Musically, Origin Story falls on the country side of Americana, serving literate stabs at heartbreak and heartache ("Attic Window," "Redbone Hound") with wise and witty retorts ("Small Town Girls"). Occasionally, she veers maudlin ("Over You"), yet even her wry resilience doesn't prepare the listener for "Saint Francis Fire," the devastating account of 12 schoolgirls who died in a Christmas pageant fire. That storytelling sensibility sends her right to the head of the class, where she need not cheat off Eliza Gilkyson or Sara Hickman, because Idgy Vaughn's done her homework. Origin Story just might be the local debut album of the year.



- album review by Margaret Moser

Folk singer finds words in a life less ordinary
By EILEEN McCLELLAND

Idgy Vaughn swears that her improbable life story is all true.

In a hometown talent contest in Quincy, Ill., she was beaten out seven
years in a row by Christian karaoke singers.

"They would sing God Bless America or God Bless the U.S.A.," she
explained. Who could compete with that?

And, yes, she was thrown out of her high school orchestra and choir,
became a single mother at 21 and lived in the projects of Quincy with
her infant daughter.

No wonder she claims to be 102 on her MySpace Web page.

"It's all horrible, but true," said the 30-year-old Austin
singer-songwriter.

But it gets better, if progressively more unlikely. She was working as
a waitress in a truck stop when she befriended a customer who won Texas
Lottery money and funded her first album, Origin Story.

Through it all, Vaughn was writing her story in song, in a style
inspired to some degree by the only two records her family owned — by
the Everly Brothers and Patsy Cline.

Vaughn was born to a German-Catholic farm family in Missouri and
christened Audrey Ellen. Her sister, stumbling over Audrey, called her
Idgy instead. It stuck. "Thank God that character [named Idgy] in Fried
Green Tomatoes wasn't a total (jerk) or a kleptomaniac."

Her family lost their northeast Missouri farm in the early '80s,
leading to a move to Quincy, where she eventually settled into the
town's seediest area with baby Georgia.

"It's the socioeconomic equivalent of a Roach Motel," she said. "I made
it out after a year and a half when Georgia was still really little,
and I had this overwhelming feeling that if I didn't just change
everything and do music and move down here that I was going to regret
it for the rest of my life. Everybody in my hometown thought I had
completely lost my mind. I can count on my hands the number of people
that said, 'Yeah, you could go down to Texas and be a songwriter.' "

She'd never been to Texas. She loathed the traffic but delighted in the
balmy weather. "I thought Austin was going to be all cactus and
everything," she said. "All I knew was that it had a music scene."

Working at a Buda truck stop, she became friends with one of her
customers, an older man who fell ill. She took care of him, and they
became as close as family. Around the time she won the New Folk
Competition at the Kerrville Folk Festival in 2004, her friend won $1
million in lottery's Texas Two Step game. He loaned her money for the
record, which was produced independently in Austin.

Every song on Origin Story is instantly memorable, an unpredictable mix
of pathos and humor. It's delivered by a sweetly powerful voice with a
hint of a twang that sounds like Texas.

Her move to Austin began to make sense once the CD was finished.

"To hold it in my hands was very surreal," she said. "Then, I heard it
on the radio the other day for the first time. I was completely alone
in my truck and . . . pulled over to the side of the road and listened
to it. You want to be all cool and nonchalant, but I'll never be that
cool. I'm still a big yahoo when it comes to stuff like that."

She admits it seems odd that people she knows can identify characters
in her autobiographical songs, such as Mister Wrong:

Mister Wrong, Mister Wrong, Mister Wrong You told me you were sterile,
now I'm seven months along.

"My friends would remember that guy," she said. "I remember him, too.
I'm really fighting the urge to write another predictable song about
getting dumped. I need to stop getting dumped. That's my problem."

Her favorite songs from the album are not autobiographical. She's most
proud of St. Francis Fire, about 12 little girls who lost their lives
in a fire at St. Francis of Solanus School in 1899 in Quincy, and
Dragging the River, about a jilted woman who kills her ex-lover by
pushing him off a bridge with her "little hands."

"The piano part in St. Francis Fire was written when we moved into a
house that was next to the cemetery where they were buried," she said.
"I was 10 or 11 years old. So the oldest part of the album is 20 years
old, and the newest part, Good Enough, got written almost as an
afterthought when the recording was almost completely finished."

But unlike some singer-songwriters working on their second albums,
Vaughn doesn't really need to sweat the writing. She has a stockpile.

"I'm not one of these superprolific people, but I probably have 60 or
70 songs that I would consider to be as strong as the ones that are on
this record. Getting 10 or 11 that work together is really the hard
part."

She said it's like trying to put jigsaw puzzles together with too many
pieces.

"Breathing Ain't Living is probably one of the best songs I've ever
written, but it's a waltz, and I already had too many waltzes, so I had
to save it for the second album."

Vaughn's Aug. 3 show will be a song swap with Hayes Carll, whom she has
not yet met.

"You never know with a song swap what the chemistry's going to be
like," she said. "Sometimes you're up there and it's like you're being
slowly suffocated with a dry-cleaning bag. But sometimes it's very cool
and very exciting."

Next steps include a visit to Nashville, Tenn., and a tour of the East
Coast and England. She's not living in the projects, but life's not
easy yet, either. "Now it's sink or swim," she said.

But you never know what'll happen next in the Idgy Vaughn story. As she
writes in the liner notes of Origin Story, the very best moments of her
life have happened as suddenly as strikes of lightning.

eileen.mcclelland@chron.com

- by Eileen McClelland

Song of the Day
By David Brown

A Country Song Springs to Life
'Good Enough' by Idgy Vaughn
Idgy Vaughn seems to exist out of time, like a classic country singer from the '50s.


NPR.org, August 11, 2006 • As she steps to the microphone in her sundress, holding her jumbo-sized guitar, Idgy Vaughn looks out of time somehow, like a classic country singer from the '50s. Even her story resembles an old country song come to life: A single mom moves from Illinois to Austin, Texas, and works as a truck-stop waitress until one day, one of her coffee-sipping regulars wins the lottery and loans her the money she needs to chase her dream as a singer-songwriter.
That’s actually how Vaughn's debut CD, Origin Story, came about. A winner of the prestigious Kerrville New Folk Competition in 2004, Vaughn has already established her gifts as a songwriter. Now, with a delicate voice reminiscent of Nanci Griffith's and a support crew featuring an impressive assortment of Austin-based musical talent, Vaughn straddles the line between contemporary folk-pop and traditional country, offering 10 subtly hued yet largely autobiographical stories.
One of the most affecting is "Good Enough," a song about a daughter losing her mother's love -- and that, sadly, was inspired by a nightmarish child-custody battle with her own disapproving parents. Vaughn's debut may or may not make a big splash, but it resonates with a rare authenticity.
David Brown - NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO'S SONG OF THE DAY (Aug 11, 2006) - www.npr.org