Grammy winning artist, Carrie Newcomer writes, 'Krista Detor is one of the finest singer/songwriters I’ve run across in years… with a voice that could sing the phone book and make it sound beautiful and compelling'.

Krista Detor began her performing career playing the wedding and cocktail party circuit as a sixteen year old in Los Angeles. While running at breakneck speed from the onset of adulthood – hiding out in Louisiana shotgun shacks, a flat in Seoul, a travel trailer, thirteen different apartments and one haunted house – she’s managed to live and perform all over the U.S. and parts of Asia. Around the turn of the century, she inexplicably found herself in the Midwest and fell in love with the rolling green hills of Southern Indiana. Beautiful Bloomington, Indiana, to be precise, where she now lives and records. 

With the release of Mudshow her second CD Krista began to reach new levels of critical acclaim in the U.S. and Europe where Mudshow had reached the number one position in the Euro Americana chart.

Musical styles and influences abound in her writing and she displays a versatility that is hard to categorize.  A poetic and sought-after lyricist, Krista’s songs are vignettes, telling stories of time and experience. Her quiet musical intensity has been compared to that of Leonard Cohen and Laura Nyro.  She’s more than humbled by the comparisons – but Krista tends to shy away from discussion of inspiration and influence:  We’re all constantly absorbing the physical and social landscapes. We process mountains of information every day… how could anyone single out one inspiration, one influence? There isn’t ever just one. My biggest influence is every word I’ve ever read, every melody I’ve ever heard… and Leonard Cohen. 

Mudshow, like her first album ' A Dream in a Cornfield', was a collaboration with producer/recording engineer & musician David Weber. “We wrote a little bit together too, which is a slower process, but a very rewarding one. When someone else comes along with a different way of looking at a piece, the possibilities are limitless if the collaboration works its different right down to the very basics. He writes on guitar, I write on piano, and guitarists and keyboard players write in completely different ways. So I always see it as an opportunity for expansion”. 

Like many musicians Detor is puzzled about how to describe her music to those who want or need the musical shorthand. It’s almost a lose-lose situation. Sometimes people want to say ‘Americana’ but as soon as you say that, you’re pigeonholed.  She explains, ‘singer-songwriter is so ambiguous. I have been called everything from straight-up rock to straight-up country, to new folk, new country, and finally alternative country. ‘Leonard Cohen meets Joni Mitchell’, she laughs, I kind of like that one’. 

How to describe her work then?  Perhaps Crossroads Gold Star award winner, Slats Klug, says it best: “Like a voyeur peeking into our homes, relationships, myths and the dark night of our souls, Detor has left the truth bundled at our doorstep and rung the bell. “

Krista's album ‘Cover Their Eyes’ spans an era and style, incorporating the musical influence of some of the places in which Krista has lived and travelled – South America, the Midwest and Europe. All distinct in their own way, these regional and cultural influences are woven together in a continuous pattern of sound and story.

In 2007, she completed the collaborative CD and stage show ‘Wilderness Plots’ with Grammy-winning songwriter Carrie Newcomer, as well as Tim Grimm and a small group of talented Indiana based songwriters. This limited release album and the stage show itself received rave reviews. A song from this show ‘More Than I Dare Say’ is included in the CoraZong compilation album ‘The Fine Art of Music’. The work itself is based upon the book by noted author Scott Russell Sanders.

In March 2009 Krista was chosen to be a part of the Darwin Songhouse a group of writers challenged with creating new songs that had a ‘resonance and relevance to Darwin’.
For seven days in a farmhouse in Darwin’s hometown of Shrewsbury in Shropshire, Krista, with songwriters Chris Wood, Karine Polwart, Jez Lowe, Mark Erelli, Emily Smith, Rachael McShane and Stu Hanna worked intensely to create songs to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin.

Discography Solo

Chocolate Paper Suites              Tightrope          255102              March 15, 2010

Cover Their Eyes                        Corazong          255102              October 12, 2007

The Silver Wood                         Tightrope          TR1107             November 1, 2007

Mudshow                                   Corazong          255087              May 5, 2006

A Dream In A Cornfield               Tightrope           KD0130             March 14, 2003

 

Discography Compilations

The Darwin Project - Shrewsbury Folk Festival      SFFCD 001       August 31 2008

Wilderness Plots                         Rosehill             RH111              March 2, 2007