Dialogue of Truth

*note: This article was originally published in the Program for the Five Town Massive Arts Festival in Bristol Vermont in January 2006. Anais has since put out a number of projects including the critically acclaimed album "The Brightness" on Righteous Babe Records. You can learn and listen at AnaisMitchell.com*

I first saw Anais Mitchell perform during a coffee shop night at Deerleap Books in Bristol, Vermont, during the spring of 1999. I remember a song that tied an examination of the cultural influences that make up the young American man with a story about people exploring each other beyond those influences. I have a distinct memory of listening to her voice as it explored what would become a signature style, giving each word the weight to stay with the audience long enough to influence conversations well beyond the night of the performance.

A year later she played at a Boston coffee shop that has since closed down. With her guitar, voice, and a suitcase amplifier, she brought people out of their conversations and into a group audience. This same effect would happen in the subway stations a few blocks away, and at the club in Cambridge where she would become a regular in the scene. In the years that followed she would play for many more audiences, no longer in subways, but on the bill at festivals, local bars and coffee shops, from her time in Austin, Texas, to the Kerrvile Folk Festival where she was awarded the prestigious New Folk Award in 2003, to touring with the "Circus Guy's Rock and Roll Revue" throughout the Middle East.

Anais' most recent album, "Hymns for the Exiled", recorded with Michael Chorney at the Gristmill in Bristol, Vermont, is graceful, buoyant, concentrated and honest. Her voice resides in the space it once explored, as though it is now building upon a solid foundation. Her subject matter is focused, delightfully poetic and straightforward.

I had the opportunity to see her play in 2005 at the Northeast Kingdom Music Festival. She stood on stage, with her guitar, in front of friends and strangers, and played with the confidence of one who holds her strength and challenges her weakness. Her energetic presence is a hundred times the size of her figure, and the rapt attention of her audience at the first ripple of her voice is a tribute to this. through the meandering notes, the smiles, direct eyes and soulful dance with her guitar, Anais Mitchell delivers an honest experience that asks us to find the same truth in ourselves.