Loretta’s Rainbow
AMC April 1, 2004:
8:00 PM Coal Miner’s Daughter
10:30 PM Love with the Proper Stranger
From an interview
with Iris Dement
(b. 5 January, 1961, Paragould, Arkansas)
Your songs are filled with hints of a very complicated, difficult life.
ID: Well, I turned 36 this year, and I feel like I’ve been through some difficult things in my life. By far the most difficult thing was leaving the church. My whole life revolved around the church, all through growing up and even as an adult. I didn’t leave it out of rebelliousness, because I loved the feeling of being in the church, with the music and the preaching. But there was an awakening one day, a realization that I didn’t believe in a large part of this stuff, and I could either go on and pretend to be a part of the group or acknowledge that it was not me or something I could live with.
What’s your first musical memory?
ID: The first music that I consciously remember, no doubt about it, was a Loretta Lynn record. I was very young, maybe four, and it was the middle of the day when my mom and dad brought it home from the store. It was a Loretta Lynn gospel record and on the cover she was wearing a lacy yellow dress and she had pretty red hair. I immediately liked it before even hearing it, she was so pretty.
My parents’s first record player was one of those suitcase types with the lid that flipped up and I listened to it over and over again and probably had that whole album memorized in a week. We didn’t have a lot of records so I played the same ones over and over, and I think there’s something really neat about not having too much coming at you so you really absorb just one or two things. Because something really gets into your bones when you don’t have a lot of choices. You get to know things inside out.
So now with all the choices out there, are you listening to more stuff?
ID: No, I don’t really listen to a whole lot of music. I never did. I had a few things I really liked like the Loretta Lynn record that I listened to constantly. I’m kind of embarrassed to say this, but I still listen to those same records. When I’m out on the road, I take them with me. I put on my Merle, my Johnny, my Loretta.
Loretta Lynn, Hymns, 1965
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“And the rain’s comrade,
the bow of Iris,
wove her many colours
into a rounded track.”
— Dionysiaca 2.200