The Beat: Alternative Arts & Culure

Sunny Times for Denise Dill : Singer-songwriter's upcoming album Bloomington-inspired

By Jimmy Rae, The Bloomington Alternative, Bloomington , IN. July 19, 2006.

     Being a nature lover, singer-songwriter Denise Dill was in her element at Bryan Park when she sat down with The Bloomington Alternative to discuss her music, her life, her interests and her views on politics.  It was a perfect, sunny day with a slight wind blowing through the trees.  With plenty of green space around, Dill and her dog, Shade, felt at home.

     Dill says she satarted writing songs at 15 to impress a crush and went on to study piano and songwriting at Berklee College of Music in Boston.  Her home page - www.denisedill.com - describes her as an "earthy-folksinger with a queer twist" who is always reinventing her music.  Her songs are personal, political and poetic, and they all have a nature metaphor, she says.

     Dill has recorded four albums, one a compliation CD for Ladyfest Ottawa in 2005.  She is working on a new album, Heartbeat Balloon, that should be out in September. 

     The new album has an overall theme, she says, because she was getting heavily involved with the origins of words, the science of biomimicry and chemistry.  She also took a permaculture class, from which listeners will find many themes in her lyrics.

     "Permaculture was a huge influence on me that still continues, and it has redirected my life and my choices in ways I'm still learning to understand," she says.  "I'd say it has become my root, the place I start from."

     The place Dill actually started from was her hometown of Evansville. 

     After dropping out of Berklee, she became disillusioned about music and the whole idea of the music industry, she says.  She then moved back home to Evansville and started a homegrown kind of music in a band called Orenda.

     "There was a lack of acceptance for queerness, for original music," she says of Evansville.  "And the people I was surrounded with seemed more interested in doing drugs and talking the talk rather than doing the action.  At the time, I did not have much of a political consciousness, but my instincts just felt like I needed to find a community where all that oculd be nurtured."

     The band started to fall apart and her girlfriend moved to Bloomington, sealing the deal for Dill's next move.  Frustrated with music and feeling like she needed to find a new path in life, DIll felt IU was a great reason to come to Bloomington.

     "Little did I know tha tit would just lead me back to music," she says.

     Dill played many spots in Bloomington, such as Second Story, Collins Coffeehouse, Encore Cafe, Willy Jo's, Boxcar Books and Upland Brewery.

     Her favorite Bloomington venue was Boxcar Books because it's such a rare and amazing place, Dill says.  She's also had two live radio performances and interviews on WFHB's program BloomingOUT.

     "This is a great town with great people," she says.

     Bloomington was also a great place for Dill because of her love of nature.  She enjoys the Cedar Bluffs Nature Preserve because she says nobidy is usually there, and the bluffs are a great place to write.  The preserve may be her and Shade's favorite spot in the Bloomington area.  She even wrote a lot of the songs for the new alubm there.

     "I was totally shocked to find a place that looks like it could be in California," she says.  "it almost doesn't fit."

     Dill and Shade also love Paynetown, the Hoosier National FOrest fire tower, Lakes Lemon and Griffy, Crooked Creek and the Dog Park

     Nature holds a strong place in Dill's heart, and somtimes that is how other topics come about in her lyrics, such as the political aspects of I-60, which connect Bloomington and Evansville, where she returned to live earlier this year.  She wrote a song called "Chameleon" about the highway.

     "I suppose I-69 was very close to me because I could perceive how drastically it oculd alter the landscape aorund me, " she says.  "I fell in love with that landscape.  Now, I live in the town which is most supportive to the highway because it will shave mere minutes off the drive to Indy," she says.

     She hopes to find people in Evansville who are aware of the degradation it will cause.

     While living in Bloomington, other politcal aspects that drew Dill's attention were transgender rights, queer rights, the living wage, affordable housing, classism and racism.  She said she doesn't really set out to convey political messages in songs.  But while man of them have political undertones, someone may have to listen a few times to get the message, she says. 

     "I think I write in a very photographic way, so the imagery invoked in many of the lyrics will draw to mind a picture that will probabaly portray a political idea," says Dill.  Her songs are about localism, technology, organics, discrimination, reltaionships, love and abuse - all the things one experieneces as a transgendered American citizen.

     When asked if she supports President Bush and his administrations, Dill says, "Fuck no."  She did not vote for Bush, and she feels he didn't fairly win the election.  She disagrees with his war and his excuses for occupying a country that does not want us there. 

     She also disagrees with his so-called "Marriage Amendment" that will place discrimination into the Constitution.  Dill feels there is nothing in the Bush administration that represents her, but she is sure that there are people in the world who are represented even less.

     "After all, I do have a bit of white provilege," she says.  "But those who are invisible populations or of another color have disputes with Bush I have not yet painted in a song, though I wish that I could.  Have you ever had an instinct that causes your stomach to turn?  I feel that when I think of Bush and his administration."

     From nature to music to politics to Bush, Denise Dill packs everything into herself and then dishes it out in powerful songs.

     She just wrapped up a tour that took her to Illinois, Maine, New York, Michigan, Vermont, Rhode Island, and Maryland.  She hopes to focus more on the Midwest for her next tour in September, promotin Heartbeat Balloon.

     In the meantime, Dill plans on working for her parents' recycling company and on an organic farm in Evansville.  She also has a love for farming and a love for the organic landscape and hopes to find a farm to intern on, hopefully in Missoula, Montana.

     Missoula is where Dill's mother's side of her family originated.  Maybe she is trying to find "herself" through the ways her ancestors lived - just like she said about permaculture: "The place I start from."

~jimmy rae can be reached at jrae@indiana.edu