the hum / By Bob Doran

Looking Glass

Alice DiMicele, some jazz, The Skatalites and The Logger Project

(June 2, 2011)  Considering the name of her just released album, Lucky Dogs, it’s appropriate that when we called up Alice DiMicele in Oregon she said she was “hanging out in a friend’s backyard, with my dog.”

You might think of Alice as a folky who strums a guitar and sings about rivers and such. And she does play guitar and sing about rivers on the new record — but she also rocks out, seriously.

Alice DiMicele PHOTO BY TINA BOLLING

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Not that she wants to be a rock star; in fact, that’s the subject of “Rock Star,” one of the new songs. “The song is more along the line of not wanting to be the type of musician that’s all about the glory,” DiMicele said. “The whole point is to say that my point doing this music is to try and touch people, not to try and glorify myself. Even when I’m on stage, I really try to include everybody that’s in the room — all the musicians with me and everybody in the audience. The music, the event, is something we create together — it’s not all about me.

“I don’t have the attitude like I only want green M&Ms in my dressing room. It’s so funny, when you’re on the road as much as I am, you see every kind of rider possible with all sorts of demands. Mine is like, clean water, a place for my dog to hang out, a nice meal and a place to sleep with some privacy.”

She keeps it simple. “Simplicity is the way to peace,” as she sings in another new song. “That seems to be the way it is in my private life, which is really where my music comes from more and more, from my life experience.”

For this listener, the strength in her music is the directness, both in words and delivery. That, and the fact that she rocks, especially with her new band — including ace guitarist Jeff Pevar, who plays with the best: David Crosby and David Lindley, for example, and most recently Rickie Lee Jones’ band.

You have a couple of opportunities to hear the Alice DiMicele Band this weekend: Saturday night they’re at the Arcata Playhouse in a benefit for arts programs at Trinidad School; Sunday they head for Benbow for a 5 p.m. set at the Mateel’s Summer Arts and Music Festival.

Two Georgia-born songwriters, Caroline Aiken and Joanne Rand, sing songs of the southland, and everywhere else, trading places with Alice playing Sunday at the Arcata Playhouse and Saturday at SAMF.

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