nancy k dillon
electronic press kit

On her newest album, Roses Guide to Time Travel, Nancy K. Dillon maps the road West; the dusty highways that conjure up images like Kerouac's road trips, traveling dustbowl carnivals, and free-spirited 70s hipsters. Inspired by Oklahoma & Texas troubadours Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark, and Kevin Welch, Dillon's songs are short stories about the various characters that populate rural American life, as well as her travels through the American West and beyond. As Dillon says "I think listeners want to go on little journeys and the best songs are like short films." Her songs are sprinkled with mandolin runs, funky banjo cuts, and the keening wail of a dobro, and incorporate elements of bluegrass, folk-rock, honky-tonk, and alt-country. Dillon's music is inspired by the past, but she's clear that her goal is to understand how her vision of Americana can exist in our digital world: "So many Americana acts try to re-create an archival version of the past or a past of the imagination. Nothing wrong with that…both are valid & important. But I'm interested in the future…where are we going ? How do we get there ? How does our past inform our journey towards the future ?" Though her music touches on our common American roots, Nancy K. Dillon's new album was built using social networks and the power of the internet to bring together a wide array of collaborators. She's not afraid to toss in a burning electric guitar lick next to a rollicking banjo line, just like she's not afraid to call out odes to "hipsters in thrift store clothes" and to talk about how "life was hard for a trainman." Nancy K. Dillon clearly has a talent for traveling back and forth through time with her own brand of "Avant-Garde Americana."

On Roses Guide To Time Travel, Dillon has brought together a host of masterful roots musicians to accompany her rustic and authentic lyrics of life on the rural backroads of America. Danny Barnes contributes his own brand of quirky banjo, Grammy-award winning dobro player Stacy Phillips guests as well, along with Gavin Sutherland (Sutherland Brothers), Steve Smith (Hard Road), Chris Parks (Any Trouble), and UK-based co-writer Ian Lang. The album was recorded by Grammy-winning engineer Garey Shelton and co-produced by Dillon and frequent collaborator, Texas singer/guitarist Michael Hill. And now that her new album has dropped, Dillon has been enjoying the fruits of her hard work. With special showcases during SXSW, a ranking in the Folk-DJ Top Albums of 2010, 3rd Coast Music's Top Songwriter Award, and reviews rolling in from across the web and beyond, 2011 is poised to be a successful new year for Nancy K. Dillon.

Descended from an Irish Mason employed by the Missouri Pacific Railroad and Scots/English Indian Territory evangelists and circuit-riding preachers, Nancy K. Dillon was born on the plains of Oklahoma during the second Dust Bowl. Immediately upon acquiring a formal education, she hit the road without so much a plan as a desire to accumulate as many miles, experiences and memories as possible. Those included a 1980 circumnavigation of the globe in 80 days, crisscrossing the western United States in a '66 yellow Rambler American singing along with Emmy Lou & Linda Ronstadt, and jobs as a computer operator of IBM behemoths, administrator of a University of Oklahoma Indian Housing research project, photographer's model and keypuncher for a Seattle race-car parts company. All the while she pursued her musical dreams performing in bands and on others' recordings until she began writing and performing her own original songs at the turn of the century, releasing her debut solo CD Just Let Me Dream on July 8, 2004 and it's follow-up Roses Guide To Time Travel on March 28, 2010.

Nancy K. Dillon wears her Oklahoma roots on her sleeve, and looks to the road for her inspiration. This is music for traveling down Route 66, one foot out the window, and fingers drumming on the steering wheel. This is music born from the American West, from the long distances between dusty towns, and from the rough-hewn folks living along the highway. This is true Americana.

NW Folklife Festival