Maybe being trapped on a snowy farm with a sprained ankle in Maine wouldn't be the most logical step toward a music career, but this is what gave Kris Delmhorst a running start into her chosen profession. It has only snowballed from there. From an organic farm in Maine to smoky Boston bars, Delmhorst has followed a rather unusual trajectory since leaving college - a path that has led her to semi-stardom in Boston's thriving folk scene.
"I grew up in Brooklyn and after college I decided to learn something new and experience a change of pace from city life," she told the Daily in a recent interview. "So I decided to spend one year apprenticed on an organic farm in Maine."
Little did Delmhorst know that the experience would change her life. "I was stuck at home in the middle of winter with a sprained ankle when I found a guitar and fiddle laying around," she said. "I started to learn to play a little bit, and it took off from there."
Although this was Delmhorst's first crack at folk instruments, music had been with her since she started cello lessons at the age of eight, and later played piano through high school.
"I was into instruments, but not into classical music, and so I ended up dropping it completely," she said. At Williams, where Delmhorst majored in photography, the future folkster didn't touch a piano.
After rediscovering her passion for music, Delmhorst moved to Cape Cod in 1995 to teach music. It was on the Cape that she began to write songs, before she moved to Boston to be near friends. In the city, Delmhorst played at open mikes and small shows, and soon a small following grew.
"I only intended to come here for a year but it kind of stuck," she said. "The music community here is so amazing. In Boston there are a ton of people playing and they're playing all kinds of stuff.
"It's a big enough town that there is tons going on, but small enough that there is an overlap between the folk world and the rock world. Because I play fiddle I can play with a lot of different bands and genres. I feel like the five years here have been like going to school all over again."
Like her early interest in music, Delmhorst was also interested in writing as a child, demonstrating a propensity towards poetry from a young age. "I was always into music and writing, but I just started writing songs relatively recently," she said. "I was kind of surprised that I hadn't written songs before. I had tried, but it did not work out."
Still today, Delmhorst says that songwriting is a mysterious thing. "A piece of a song comes floating down from the sky, usually it is a line that grabs me and I spend a lot of time with it," she explained. "Sometimes it reminds me of stories of my life or other people's lives. I don't sit down with a topic; I get a suggestion from wherever it comes from and I sit down and think about it.
"Some pieces happen in an hour or two, some will take a week or two," she said. "Some you get halfway through and it stops. I have songs that I have put away for a year."
On Saturday, Delmhorst will play at the Somerville Theater where she will be headlining for the first time. "I love playing there," she said. "I also like playing in all different kinds of settings. Club Passim is nice because it's a different kind of thing from other shows. It's super quiet, and everyone listens while you play."
And she is quickly expanding to new crowds - Delmhorst recently spent a couple weeks in the Midwest, exposing the region to her folk ballads and country tunes. "I have some friends out there. The crowds were a little smaller because I'm not as well known there yet. I think that overall people are friendlier than out here. They're more likely to talk back to you at a show. They speak up from the audience a lot."
Delmhorst will treat audiences to tracks from her new CD? Five Stories, named after the fifth floor of a recording studio where the album was produced. The album will be released Nov. 6.
"It has quite a mix. There are some songs that are pretty rockin'. There are also some that are traditional bluegrass, folk ballads, and pop sounding stuff," she said. Differing from her earlier album, this one, she said, is "a little fuller sounding, takes more risks, and is a more interesting production. It is more rootsy sounding, more organic."
Delmhorst is right. Five Stories is quite different from her previous release, Appetite. The new CD shows her wide range of music abilities, from a taste of country music in "Mean Old Wind," to the more powerful sound of "Little Wings," to the softer sound of "Words Fail You."
"I've reached my current goal because I really wanted to grow with this album and I feel that I have."
Delmhorst has grown in other ways. She has signed on to new booking and new publicists, which pretty much ensures that a greater range of people will hear Five Stories than has ever heard her work before. Successful at a young age, Delmhorst will continue to carve a place for herself within the Boston folk scene, and stands as a model for confused undergrads puzzling over what to do with their lives.
"I never really had a clue that this was what I wanted to do. I don't think I realized it was possible until I was already doing it. It really just happened very naturally and was never something I imagined before I started writing songs all of a sudden," she said. "It just kind of unfolded."
