Dayna Kurtz
Smoky, late-night vocals that bridge the gap between jazz noir and dusty Americana. Intimate, emotionally heavy songs for the hours after midnight.
Smoky, late-night vocals that bridge the gap between jazz noir and dusty Americana. Intimate, emotionally heavy songs for the hours after midnight.
Dayna Kurtz possesses a voice that feels like it has been cured in tobacco and aged in oak. It is a deep, resonant alto that can shift from a whisper to a hair-raising wail without losing its grounded, earthy quality. Her music occupies the shadowy intersection of a New Orleans jazz club and a desolate Texas highway, blending the sophisticated phrasing of a classic crooner with the raw, unvarnished honesty of a folk troubadour.
What truly sets her apart is the way she integrates 'weird-ass' sonic textures into traditional song structures. You might hear a standard accordion or a weeping slide guitar suddenly enveloped by a wash of ambient electric guitar noise or a haunting string arrangement. This tension between the classic and the experimental gives her work a timeless, cinematic feel that avoids the clichés of the 'singer-songwriter' label.
Start with 'Beautiful Yesterday' to hear her masterfully interpret the Great American Songbook alongside her own compositions. If you prefer something more raw and politically charged, 'Another Black Feather' showcases her ability to turn a Bill Withers or Johnny Cash cover into something entirely her own, dripping with intensity and dark atmosphere.
Dayna Kurtz is an American singer/songwriter. Her music is a blend of jazz, folk, pop and blues. She began her career in 1989, touring small stages up and down the East Coast, promoting her work with a sparse but haunting self-recorded demo tape. She was named Female Songwriter of the Year in 1997 by the National Academy of Songwriters. Norah Jones (who duets on Duke Ellington's "I Got It Bad And That Ain't Good" on Kurtz's 2004 album Beautiful Yesterday) and Bonnie Raitt have raved about Kurtz in interviews, and she's performed on the radio shows World Cafe, Mountain Stage and NPR's Morning Edition and Tell Me More. She has toured as a supporting act with Elvis Costello, Richard Thompson, Mavis Staples, Dr. John, B.B. King, Richie Havens, Rufus Wainwright, Keren Ann, Chris Whitley, and The Blind Boys of Alabama. Kurtz has recorded two Secret Canon albums, collecting obscure standards and blues and R&B gems originally recorded in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. Critic James Reed of the Boston Globe wrote in a review of Beautiful Yesterday that "there's no logical reason why singer-songwriter Dayna Kurtz is not a full-blown star". In 2015 Dayna Kurtz released Rise and Fall, which features "You’re Not What I Needed (But You’re All That I Want)", which she called her "Dan Penn" song. The Here Volume 1 and Volume 2 albums are a compilation of great songs by Dayna, which were recorded during a live tour in the Netherlands in 2016. Dayna is accompanied by guitarist Robert Maché. In December 2017 Dayna started a new blues dance band called Lulu and the Broadsides. Next to Dayna the other band members are James Singleton, Carlo Nuccio, Robert Mache and Glenn Hartman. In 2019 the band released its first EP.
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