Fri 2/14 @ 8:05 & 10PM
Sat 2/15 @ 8 & 10PM
Dionne Farris’s haunting voice contributed to the distinctive sound of Arrested Development’s 1992 debut album with its big hit “Tennessee.” It was a key element in the group’s widespread appeal to a mainstream audience hungry for a hip-hop alternative to the then-burgeoning gangsta rap, offering a smoother and more sophisticated sound.
Her vocals on that song and several other Arrested Development tracks allowed her to launch her own career with 1994’s Wild Seed — Wild Flower on Columbia Records. Well, she tried anyway. After a flurry of activity in the mid ’90s, including a hit single “I Know,” TV and soundtrack appearances, and recording a second album for Columbia which didn’t come out until 2007, she fell off the radar.
She re-emerged with 2011’s appropriately titled Signs of Life, followed by Lady Dy The Mixtape Part 1 later that year.
Then last year, she released Dionne Get Your Gunn featuring the Russell Gunn Quartet. (Like Signs of Life and Lady Dy the Mixtape, it came out on her own Free & Clear Records, which sounds like a dig at her former major label.) With jazz trumpeter Gunn, whose resume includes a stint in the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, Dionne explores her jazz leanings on this live recording. She’s spectacular— wailing, crooning, declaiming, leaping long intervals, wrapping complex phrases deftly around her tongue.
Next on deck is a duo album with guitarist Charlie Hunter titled DionneDionne in which she sings songs associated with soul legend Dionne Warwicke. With so much output, it looks like she’s making up for lost time.
Farris will be at Nighttown with the Russell Gunn Quartet to recreate what she called in the Pledgemusic campaign that funded her album “some pretty magical renditions of my music with Russell’s incredible arrangements.” She’s performing two nights, two shows per night, so you have plenty of chances to catch her and realize how much she’s been missed.
Tickets are $25.
Cleveland Heights, OH 44106