nancy k dillon
press kit

Avant-garde folk/Americana artist Nancy K. Dillon grew up in a musical family on the dusty plains of Oklahoma just 6 blocks from Route 66 and that ribbon of highway and possibility shaped her vision and musical sensibility. Nancy's 2004 debut CD "Just Let Me Dream" was well-received and widely acclaimed by radio and press alike. Respected UK music journalist, Alan Cackett (Maverick-UK) hailed Dillon as an "original new talent" mining a musical vein akin to Lucinda Williams or Kasey Chambers. Dillon is a soulful singer and an award-winning songwriter. She masterfully weaves the textures and rhythms of American folk and country music into mythic road stories of small town claustrophobia, surreal euphoria and latter-day vagabonds traveling America's byways threading through the sprawling American West.

In March 2010 Rose Rock Records announced the release of Dillon's long anticipated follow-up to Just Let Me Dream. Roses Guide To Time Travel showcases Nancy's okie-roots authenticity and soulfully intelligent take on Americana music with 11 original songs in her subtle and concise lyrical style. "The fancy term for Dillon's kind of writing is mythopoeia," says one reviewer. Songs about trains, depot stations and a slightly crumbling industrial landscape share the spotlight with songs of gently aging rockstars and fading beauty. Add a murder ballad ghost story, a paean to Portland OR, lovers dancing among crimson stones in the desert and some old-fashioned tornado-chasing and you begin get a sense of the way Roses Guide To Time Travel connects past, present and future.

Musical contributors on both sides of the Pond include Danny Barnes (Bad Livers), Grammy award-winner Stacy Phillips on Dobro, Gavin Sutherland (Sutherland Brothers & Quiver), Steve Smith (Hard Road), Chris Parks (Any Trouble), Ian Lang & MJ Bishop. Roses Guide To Time Travel was recorded by Grammy-winning engineer Garey Shelton (The Believers/Danny O'Keefe) in Seattle along with tracks "flown in" from Scotland, England, New Mexico & Austin TX.

Descended from an Irish Mason employed by the Missouri Pacific Railroad and Scots/English Indian Territory evangelists and circuit-riding preachers, 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 records 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.

Since its release, Just Let Me Dream has received many accolades and generated a continuing buzz, international radio airplay, song contest honors and landing on several compilations and "Best of…" lists. Hailed as "accomplished, mature and soulful", the CD has a sparkling windswept sound captured by Grammy-winning engineer Garey Shelton (The Believers/Danny O'Keefe). Nancy co-produced the album with Austin, TX-based songwriter/guitarist Michael Hill (Slobberbone/12 Lb Test). The album features virtuoso performances by Hill as well as John Reischman (Tony Rice/Jaybirds), Paul Elliott (Michelle Shocked/Alison Brown) and Grammy-winner Stacy Phillips (Dobro). Brit-folk rocker, Clive Gregson (Any Trouble/Gregson & Collister) makes a cameo appearance on backup vocals and a sparkling solo at the end of the title track. John Conquest (Third Coast Music) observes, "Hints of honky tonk, Tex-Mex and cowboy music, intertwined with bluegrass, country, gospel and traditional folk, make this a true Americana album that could easily have come out of Austin."

Nancy sings about escaping her native red dirt Oklahoma on the opening track of Just Let Me Dream. She may have left town but she is still the girl who grew up in Oklahoma City six blocks from Route 66. "You can leave Oklahoma" she says, "but Oklahoma never leaves you. I go there as often as I can. The land and the people deeply inspire me. My hope is to infuse my songs and sound with a feeling of that red dirt, spaciousness and the simplicity and drama of the elements." A subtle sweetness inhabits Nancy's voice that makes it instantly appealing. You can hear the wind in her voice. Sometimes you can taste the dust, too, and feel the hot summer sun. "I grew up in an extraordinary musical environment," Dillon says. "My dad was a composer of modern classical music who played big band jazz on weekends. In between all of that he was a Professor of Music at the University of Central Oklahoma and directed the church choir. My mom sang her favorite hymns around the house and taught vocal music in Arkansas before I was born. I moved to Norman OK to go to college where I was exposed to The Band-inflected sounds of home-town favorites, Red Dirt and the harmony-drenched good-time blues-folk-rock of The Medicine Park All-Boy Derelict Band. Last but not least, country-folk-rockers Blue Rose Cafe (led by Pat Long & Kevin Welch) completed my Oklahoma honky-tonk education. I was truly blessed to stand at the feet of some unbelievably good songwriters and become steeped in a song-writing lineage best known as 'red dirt music'....earthy & authentic".

NW Folklife Festival - 2006

Dillon currently tours the US and is based in the Pacific NW. A former folk radio programmer at KBCS/Seattle, Nancy was also a founding member of renowned "cowchick" band Ranch Romance and performed in a duo with Rounder recording artist, John Miller. It's the Oklahoma 'Red Dirt' sound though that evokes Dillon's muse most powerfully - then her warm soulful voice polishes that raw earthiness until it gleams and sparkles like fire in fine jewelry. Listen to her music and see if you don't agree.