Alela Diane, the Portland-based folk singer-songwriter, will showcase her seventh album, “Who’s Keeping Time?” at Soda Bar on Aug. 12 with Shannon Lay in support.
Twenty years into her career, Diane sees the record as the sound of a musician who has the perspective to say what she means. The music industry’s fixation on youth, she said, undersells what age brings to songwriting.
“I think I have a good lens,” she said. “The things that I have to say now in song and lyrically are definitely informed by having lived more life than when I was writing songs in my early 20s. And I think that’s something in music that should have more value than it does.”
That perspective shaped how the album came together. Diane recorded it in the attic of her own home, live, without a click track keeping the beat. “I really wanted to do that for this record, as an act of protesting perfection,” she said, “just making something that only humans could make together in an imperfect way.”
The album title points to the collaborative nature of the sessions. “We are all in it together, keeping that time together, and keeping the song together. There’s no machine in there doing that for us.”
The result is an album that is both expansive and down-to-earth. It has earned widespread critical acclaim, including being named MOJO Magazine’s Americana Album of the Month.
Celebrated for its warmth, poetic lyricism and triumphant return to an ensemble-focused sound, it was produced in collaboration with Sam Weber and features Peter Lalish (Lucius) on guitar, with Anna Tivel contributing backing vocals and violin, Blind Pilot’s Kati Claborn on banjo, clarinet and dulcimer, and Luke Ydstie on backing vocals, lap steel, octave mandolin, Wurlitzer and piano.
Diane has spent much of the past decade balancing music with raising two daughters, now 12 and 9, and said her U.S. career stalled for years after she was dropped by Rough Trade after her third record and first pregnancy.
Alela Diane who performs at Soda Bar Aug. 12. (Photo by Camille Bruya)“The record industry often treats people as disposable, specifically women over 30, and definitely women over 40,” she said. She kept going largely on the strength of a steady following in Europe, where she still sells out rooms in Paris and other cities.
About a year and a half ago, she started forcing herself to go out to see live music in Portland. “It felt important,” she said, “and it’s absolutely the reason why I signed with Fluff and Gravy and why I connected with these folks that I made my new album with.”
This year, she’s playing around 50 shows across the West Coast, East Coast and two European tours, including dates with Shannon Lay, whose music Diane discovered the old-fashioned way.
“One of my very best friends texted me a link to her record and said, ‘I think you would like this,’” Diane said, “and I absolutely did.” It’s a habit she’d like more people to pick back up. “We can forget that our own voices matter,” she said. “If you love something, tell your friends who you think would like it.”
Asked what she’s proudest of after two decades in music, Diane didn’t point to a chart position, streams or a sold-out room.
“Honestly, that I haven’t given up,” she said. “There have been so many roadblocks and so many reasons why it would have been easier to make a different choice. But I am just constantly inspired to keep growing and pushing myself to keep getting better and keep learning because that feels exciting.”
Todd Benton, or DJ Todd, is a DJ with KNSJ 89.1 FM, a community-funded, volunteer-run radio station.
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