Idgy Vaughn: Press

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Song of the Day
By David Brown

A Country Song Springs to Life
'Good Enough' by Idgy Vaughn
Idgy Vaughn seems to exist out of time, like a classic country singer from the '50s.


NPR.org, August 11, 2006 • As she steps to the microphone in her sundress, holding her jumbo-sized guitar, Idgy Vaughn looks out of time somehow, like a classic country singer from the '50s. Even her story resembles an old country song come to life: A single mom moves from Illinois to Austin, Texas, and works as a truck-stop waitress until one day, one of her coffee-sipping regulars wins the lottery and loans her the money she needs to chase her dream as a singer-songwriter.
That’s actually how Vaughn's debut CD, Origin Story, came about. A winner of the prestigious Kerrville New Folk Competition in 2004, Vaughn has already established her gifts as a songwriter. Now, with a delicate voice reminiscent of Nanci Griffith's and a support crew featuring an impressive assortment of Austin-based musical talent, Vaughn straddles the line between contemporary folk-pop and traditional country, offering 10 subtly hued yet largely autobiographical stories.
One of the most affecting is "Good Enough," a song about a daughter losing her mother's love -- and that, sadly, was inspired by a nightmarish child-custody battle with her own disapproving parents. Vaughn's debut may or may not make a big splash, but it resonates with a rare authenticity.

THE AUSTIN CHRONICLE
Texas Platters
Record review
by MARGARET MOSER

Idgy Vaughn
“Origin Story”
Some debut albums set up careers with the promise of good things to come. Idgy Vaughn delivered Origin Story without warning, a recording so potent it can't be ignored. "Look into my eyes; now do I look like the dangerous type?" she beckons on "Dragging the River," while smacking a honky-tonk punch in the mouth to "Mister Wrong," co-written with Pauline Reese. Vaughn's own story is so marketable it reads like a tabloid headline: "Single Mom Waitresses, Lottery-Winning Customer Finances Record." That happened when she worked in Buda; the rest of her story unfolds on "Midwestern Biography." Musically, Origin Story falls on the country side of Americana, serving literate stabs at heartbreak and heartache ("Attic Window," "Redbone Hound") with wise and witty retorts ("Small Town Girls"). Occasionally, she veers maudlin ("Over You"), yet even her wry resilience doesn't prepare the listener for "Saint Francis Fire," the devastating account of 12 schoolgirls who died in a Christmas pageant fire. That storytelling sensibility sends her right to the head of the class, where she need not cheat off Eliza Gilkyson or Sara Hickman, because Idgy Vaughn's done her homework. Origin Story just might be the local debut album of the year.

Texas Top 10 of 2006
Margaret Moser

1) IDGY VAUGHN, ORIGIN STORY

2) Alejandro Escovedo, The Boxing Mirror (Back Porch)
3) Charlie Sexton & Shannon McNally, Southside Sessions (Back Porch)
4) Carrie Rodriguez, Seven Angels on a Bicycle (Back Porch)
5) The Texas Sapphires, Valley So Steep (Lowe Farm)
6) Ray Wylie Hubbard, Snake Farm (Sustain)
7) Jon Dee Graham, Full (Freedom)
8) Sara Hickman, Motherlode (Sleeveless)
9) Hickoids, Corn Demon (Saustex)
10) Bob Schneider, The Californian (Vanguard/Shockarama)

Folk singer finds words in a life less ordinary
By EILEEN McCLELLAND

Idgy Vaughn swears that her improbable life story is all true.

In a hometown talent contest in Quincy, Ill., she was beaten out seven
years in a row by Christian karaoke singers.

"They would sing God Bless America or God Bless the U.S.A.," she
explained. Who could compete with that?

And, yes, she was thrown out of her high school orchestra and choir,
became a single mother at 21 and lived in the projects of Quincy with
her infant daughter.

No wonder she claims to be 102 on her MySpace Web page.

"It's all horrible, but true," said the 30-year-old Austin
singer-songwriter.

But it gets better, if progressively more unlikely. She was working as
a waitress in a truck stop when she befriended a customer who won Texas
Lottery money and funded her first album, Origin Story.

Through it all, Vaughn was writing her story in song, in a style
inspired to some degree by the only two records her family owned — by
the Everly Brothers and Patsy Cline.

Vaughn was born to a German-Catholic farm family in Missouri and
christened Audrey Ellen. Her sister, stumbling over Audrey, called her
Idgy instead. It stuck. "Thank God that character [named Idgy] in Fried
Green Tomatoes wasn't a total (jerk) or a kleptomaniac."

Her family lost their northeast Missouri farm in the early '80s,
leading to a move to Quincy, where she eventually settled into the
town's seediest area with baby Georgia.

"It's the socioeconomic equivalent of a Roach Motel," she said. "I made
it out after a year and a half when Georgia was still really little,
and I had this overwhelming feeling that if I didn't just change
everything and do music and move down here that I was going to regret
it for the rest of my life. Everybody in my hometown thought I had
completely lost my mind. I can count on my hands the number of people
that said, 'Yeah, you could go down to Texas and be a songwriter.' "

She'd never been to Texas. She loathed the traffic but delighted in the
balmy weather. "I thought Austin was going to be all cactus and
everything," she said. "All I knew was that it had a music scene."

Working at a Buda truck stop, she became friends with one of her
customers, an older man who fell ill. She took care of him, and they
became as close as family. Around the time she won the New Folk
Competition at the Kerrville Folk Festival in 2004, her friend won $1
million in lottery's Texas Two Step game. He loaned her money for the
record, which was produced independently in Austin.

Every song on Origin Story is instantly memorable, an unpredictable mix
of pathos and humor. It's delivered by a sweetly powerful voice with a
hint of a twang that sounds like Texas.

Her move to Austin began to make sense once the CD was finished.

"To hold it in my hands was very surreal," she said. "Then, I heard it
on the radio the other day for the first time. I was completely alone
in my truck and . . . pulled over to the side of the road and listened
to it. You want to be all cool and nonchalant, but I'll never be that
cool. I'm still a big yahoo when it comes to stuff like that."

She admits it seems odd that people she knows can identify characters
in her autobiographical songs, such as Mister Wrong:

Mister Wrong, Mister Wrong, Mister Wrong You told me you were sterile,
now I'm seven months along.

"My friends would remember that guy," she said. "I remember him, too.
I'm really fighting the urge to write another predictable song about
getting dumped. I need to stop getting dumped. That's my problem."

Her favorite songs from the album are not autobiographical. She's most
proud of St. Francis Fire, about 12 little girls who lost their lives
in a fire at St. Francis of Solanus School in 1899 in Quincy, and
Dragging the River, about a jilted woman who kills her ex-lover by
pushing him off a bridge with her "little hands."

"The piano part in St. Francis Fire was written when we moved into a
house that was next to the cemetery where they were buried," she said.
"I was 10 or 11 years old. So the oldest part of the album is 20 years
old, and the newest part, Good Enough, got written almost as an
afterthought when the recording was almost completely finished."

But unlike some singer-songwriters working on their second albums,
Vaughn doesn't really need to sweat the writing. She has a stockpile.

"I'm not one of these superprolific people, but I probably have 60 or
70 songs that I would consider to be as strong as the ones that are on
this record. Getting 10 or 11 that work together is really the hard
part."

She said it's like trying to put jigsaw puzzles together with too many
pieces.

"Breathing Ain't Living is probably one of the best songs I've ever
written, but it's a waltz, and I already had too many waltzes, so I had
to save it for the second album."

Vaughn's Aug. 3 show will be a song swap with Hayes Carll, whom she has
not yet met.

"You never know with a song swap what the chemistry's going to be
like," she said. "Sometimes you're up there and it's like you're being
slowly suffocated with a dry-cleaning bag. But sometimes it's very cool
and very exciting."

Next steps include a visit to Nashville, Tenn., and a tour of the East
Coast and England. She's not living in the projects, but life's not
easy yet, either. "Now it's sink or swim," she said.

But you never know what'll happen next in the Idgy Vaughn story. As she
writes in the liner notes of Origin Story, the very best moments of her
life have happened as suddenly as strikes of lightning.

“…I've played this track probably, you know, six or seven times now over recent months on this program but each time I play it I get huge numbers of requests to play it again…. I think she's got a wonderful and tugging voice.”

A playful spark flickers through-out the debut by Austin singer/songwriter Idgy Vaughn, blurring the line between her dark and light sides and lending a sneaky edge to both. Take the opening “Redbone Hound,” a perky shuffle complete with howling dog “ahrooos” in the chorus. Fun, right? Not so fast. The song’s protagonist thinks her heart would be safer at home with a dog after “our April romance died on the first of May.” Vaughn puts such romantic anxiety over time and again with detail, spit and emotion, and it’s not standard victimized country fare. “Dragging the River” is a murder ballad with an unlikely killer at its center: “No one ever thinks that little hands are capable of much / But in the end these little hands were just capable enough.” And “Good Enough” has a genreless perfection that could make it a pop or country hit if the right pre-fab artist jumped on it. Vaughn’s voice is supple and has just the right touch of honkytonk warble; it fits the grit in her songs, be it poignant (“Truckstop Waitress”) or peppy (“Mr. Wrong”). The 11 songs on Origin Story are thoughtful and heartfelt, and they read as good as they play—establishing Vaughn, a 2004 Kerrville New Folk winner, as a fantastic new voice with something to say.

IDGY VAUGHN
Origin Story
This flame-haired single mum is out to set the cat among the country pigeons.
Her sweet vocal belies a vengeful songwriting bent, vowing to give her heart to a Redbone Hound, playing the killer in the murder ballad Dragging The River and singing the praises of a Truckstop Waitress and Small Town Girls.
With a valiant spirit and a rebel heart this is a talent to watch.

Currently being hailed as the best new thing out of Texas, the Missouri born, cowboy booted, flame-haired (Audrey) Vaughn plies her trade in familiar rootsy Austin Americana with a voice and style that blends hints of blues, folk and country and has seen her vaguely compared to Iris DeMent. But it's the raw experience of her embattled life as a single mother who had to fight her own estranged family for custody of her daughter that informs her autobiographical songs that really sets this apart.
Backed by a gospel organ, Good Enough is a shattering song that emerged from the custody battle to detail a daughter's loss of a mother's love swiftly followed by the lullaby melodies of Pearl of Georgia, a naked love song to her own child, while Midwestern Biography pretty much spells out her life path to date with disarming yet unselfpitying honesty.
Elsewhere she'll sing of disappointments in love (the Opry leaning Redbone Hound, a warble keening Over You), the hard life of a Truckstop Waitress, getting knocked up by some guy who claimed to be sterile (the sassy swing Mr Wrong), those Small Town Girls who do it better (very MacColl pop country) while, departing from the autographical, Saint Francis Fire recalls the death of 12 girls in a 1899 school fire during the Christmas play and Dragging The River is a swampy blues, mandolin and slide guitar backed murder ballad.
Quite what she'll do for inspiration if she becomes a star and finds life smooth sailing from now on I don't know, but worrying about her creative future should be no reason to stop you investing in her past-present.

Idgy Vaughn - Origin Story (Self label)
Idgy Vaughn came out of 2005's SXSW festival like a breath of fresh air, and while it has taken a year for the UK to be able to appreciate an unique talent, some things are well worth the wait.
Vaughn approaches country music like the Midwest farm girl she is, unfettered by tradition and convention. On Origin Story she hitches up her skirts and plays it her way.
And that spirit is mirrored and magnified in the rebellious edge to her voice, it creates the bolt electricity that shoots through the epic Good Enough.
She has also neatly sidestepped being typecast, equally adept at the deep dark emotions of Dragging The River, the poignant Truckstop Waitress or the bewitching Saint Francis Fire.
While Origin Story defies neat labelling it does put Vaughn into the category of no-nonsense singer/songwriters, not for her the frippery of cheesy love songs, Pearl Of Georgia is both homely and honest.
The image on the front of the CD sees her dressed in cowboy boots and short skirt, suggesting eccentricity, don't be fooled, she is a clear-eyed, direct songwriter, Midwestern Biography is unequivocally and openly personal, while Mister Wrong and Redbone Hound are the perfect antidote to mushy romance. Idgy Vaughn is well able to use her talents as a musical payback.
Some time in the not-too-distant future there will be attempts to squeeze Idgy Vaughn into a more commercially lucrative direction. She is far too original to fit easily or comfortably into the world of the 'rock chick', Origin Story is merely the opening chapter.

“Impressive classic country debut”

Debut albums this good are few and far between, and in Idgy Vaughn we
may well have one of the household names of the future.

She has a
clear unadorned voice, with just a hint of a tremor in it, and sounds
rather like a poppier Iris Dement. It’s a classic sound and producer
and drummer Paul Pearcy has deployed an equally classic Austin
country sound behind it. High, light and semi-acoustic with grace
notes from steel and slide, it swings like a demon when it has to
(“Mister Wrong”) and backs off and fills in the gaps with delicacy
and grace when it doesn’t, as with the desperate “Good Enough”. A
tale of a daughter losing a mother’s love and recognising that she
will never regain it, “Good Enough” is almost too much to listen to,
but the power and strength in the narrator pull the listener through.
It’s followed by “Pearl of Georgia”, a near-hymn to Vaughn’s daughter
that avoids all the dreadful clichés that abound in such songs, and
is redemptive and uplifting. These two songs are the album standouts,
but “Origin Story” is one of those rare beasts that doesn’t have a
weak track.

Although Vaughn owns that the album is unashamedly autobiographical
pretty much throughout (bar murder ballad “Dragging The River”),
often extremely overtly as with “Midwestern Biography,” there’s no
sense of that dreadful “look at me me me!” that you get from lesser
performers. Instead, as the story of her life unfolds the listener
warms to her and her life, her struggle to succeed (and sometimes
just to survive), and is captured by her charm and honesty.

“Origin Story” is an album that could, and should, sell in
truckloads. It has a radio-friendly sound, great songs and great
music and is a joy throughout.