Danielle Howle

April 18 - 25, 1 9 9 6

*** Danielle Howle

LIVE AT McKISSICK MUSEUM

(Mill)

South Carolina-based singer/songwriter Danielle Howle splits her time between fronting the foursome Lay Quiet Awhile (who came out with Delicate Wire on the Indigo Girls' label, Daemon, last year) and doing the solo thing, which so far has yielded a three-song single on Simple Machines and this self-released live disc. Recorded a little over a year ago at the University of South Carolina, Live at McKissick Museum documents a playfully loose nine-song set by a disarmingly charismatic and gregarious Howle.

"I like to write country songs . . . they are fun," she admits at the beginning of the plaintive "Back of Your Mind." But the songs here range in style and substance from the humorous autobiographical folk of "Big Puffy Girl Handwriting" to a reminiscence of a lonely Christmas ("Red Candles"), from poetic respites like "Spider Writer" to the delirious "Wrestling Song."

Like Vic Chesnutt, an Athens singer/songwriter who's been embraced by the indie-rock community, Howle could pass for a straight folkie if she ever ironed out the quirks that give her material a non-traditional edge. Let's hope that doesn't happen.

-- Matt Ashare

(Danielle Howle plays the opening set at a Simple Machines showcase featuring Liquorice, Ida, the Raymond Brake, and Bardo Pond at T.T. the Bear's Place on Saturday, April 20.)