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Blustery Sound

1 January 2010 1,033 views No Comment BY Mark Stalcup

In Christina Blust’s music, the darkest days are illuminated by the sudden flowering of a friend’s amaryllis. Magnolias dream of flowering under the snow. Her accordion conjures the hoodoo of a hurricane- ravaged New Orleans where she once volunteered.

And the cancer that once plagued Blust’s mother and sister — now, thankfully, in remission — is wished away, becoming poppy seeds, a wooden desk or a cotton skirt.

“It just seems to me that, of all the things a group of cells could be, why would it want to become cancer when there’s so much better it could be?” observes Blust, smiling as brushes her hair back from her glasses. “Tumor,” the song spurred by the 25-year-old’s discovery her mother and sister had been diagnosed with cancer during the same week, was written about two years after “Sudden Amaryllis,” the title track on her first full-length CD.

The latter song was drawn from a winter’s day during her sophomore college year, darkened further by “a real good friend” suffering an abusive relationship and her own crisis of faith until the gloom was alleviated by the bloom.

“Underlying everything, I think, is the message that you should pay attention, and don’t take for granted anything, that this or that is your situation, whether it’s good or bad,” Blust says, smiling thoughtfully. “I didn’t feel that way when I wrote it, but I realized that later…today could be the day it all turns around.”

Playing the songs back-to-back one evening, the multi-instrumentalist realized the connection between them, twinning them on her new record, released independently Oct. 17 on her own Blustery Day label.

Blust’s songs are often strikingly beautiful, with full-band material followed by pensive meditations on guitar and piano under a poet’s imagery. The album ends with an optimistic refrain “wake up, wake up…” echoing into the distance.

“When we ordered the tracks, we wanted to draw the listeners in, then let the more raw pieces speak for themselves, I think.” But getting such intensely personal songs across to the bar crowds — and
radio programmers — can sometimes pose a challenge, she admits. “None of us consider local radio an option, because the unfortunate fact is, local radio just doesn’t play local music,” Blust sighs, her hands circling her mug as she sits in the Coffee Grounds.

Local coffee shops and showcases at colleges have proven better venues. Blust also aims to place her record in Headstone Friends, a longtime supporter of Wabash Valley artists. Few other venues exist to sell it here.

She’s turned to her own Web site, christinablust.com, where buyers can purchase the disc or download it through Digstation.

Still, if Blust’s press kit wryly quotes “The Onion” mocking the idea of a “Terre Haute sound,” the disc, two-and-a-half years in the making, offers ample evidence of a thriving artistic community locally.

The new record, produced by Don Arney, features Blust playing piano, guitar, accordion, and “whatever else is lying around, aided by a core band of David Goodier, Travis Dillon and Eric Rasley.

Jon DaCosta, Holly Granzow, Samantha Harding, Shannon Hayden, Malik Lahlou, Ryan Lammey, John Murray, Jim Rasley and Dana Williamson also contribute.

Releasing her music independently offered the songwriter greater control over her record. Blust provided photographer Samantha McGranahan’s Roxy Studio with a song for her Web site in exchange for professional photos, including a record cover in which the singer lies recumbent with her guitar in Dobbs Park, seeming to grow from the ground like a flower.

Still, Blust’s record reflects a world view much broader than the one seen from the banks of the muddy Wabash River.

Soundwave files of birds recorded in Cologne, Germany trill and warble amid the clang of church bells recorded at St. Mary-of-the-Woods College, where the narrator of “Providence” plays among the gravestones.

El Salvador, where Blust took a college trip, exists alongside the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, where she volunteered with relief efforts immediately after graduation. New York City lapses into darkness in a blackout and the libraries of Mesopotamia burn in a war.

She came here from northern Kentucky via Cincinnati’s Xavier University, whose academic call to service took her first to a post-Katrina New Orleans, where she donned hazmat gear in the relief effort, experiences memorably recalled in “Spilled.”

Blust takes a poetic, rather than political, point of view, favoring timeless imagery that inspires contemplation. “I think it’s not in my nature to be attacking something. It is in my nature to want to make people think. I also think there’s more than just two points of view on anything.”

After New Orleans, Blust was drawn to the Sisters of Providence, first as a volunteer and then as a graphic designer.

Soon enough, Arney saw the singer during a showcase, and their collaboration solidified songs Blust had recorded, sometimes in sparser form, on EPs. She also collaborates with Yearbook Committee 1973 (featured in the September/October 2009 issue of Terre Haute Living), a mercurial six-songwriter group of local musicians composed of Blust, Goodier, DaCosta, Dillon, Brad Lone and Jimmy Rinehart. John Murray, Eric Rasley and Jessica DaCosta have also contributed.

“We can write something where we have an accordion and a banjo in the same song. It’s not conventional, but it sounds great,” Blust enthuses, noting that with six songwriters, the band already has more than enough songs for a record of its own.

Blust plans further collaborations with the group and more of her own solo recordings, perhaps following the new record with an EP of accordion and piano, though she insists, laughingly, those may sound a bit like torch songs, “just without some of the connotations that phrase has.”

The collaboration also has helped her grow as a writer, she says, noting her solo record’s music was brought to her band “pretty much fully formed already.” With Yearbook Committee, her optimistic world view sometimes provides a contrapuntal view to the other writers’ darker leanings.

“Lately, we’ve been saying that a lot of the Yearbook Committee songs lean toward the depressing, where my own music favors some buoyancy,” she said. “It’s fun to be able to just do that, collaborate, and enjoy myself. I love my album. It’s dear to my heart, but at the same time, it’s so damn earnest, and everything matters.”

She cradles her coffee, her smile unveiling like a flower in winter. “Sometimes, it’s really great to just have a little fun.”