By Steve Warden (11/25/99)
Like most everyone who has combined the words "starving" and "artist" into a solitary adjective, Shelly Dixon is waiting to be found. Parallel to the dreamers before her who have plugged a six-string into an amp and leaned into an unforgiving, unprocessed mic, she picks up work along the way ã when she can, where she can, on nights when her throat, her truest instrument of music, is so raw she drinks hot tea just to ensure her next song doesn't sound like a female Joe Cocker (if one could ever get past the imagery).
And yet Dixon doesn't wear the label like a self-pitying badge of courage. It doesn't take courage for an artist to starve. What takes courage is to sing her own songs her own way and not to wander down the acquiescent path of cover tunes. If she wants to sing somebody else's stuff, she might as well climb the stage at Crooners, wait her turn behind the drunken cowboy's off-key "Margaritaville" and an even worse duet of "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" and bedazzle a sorry karaoke crowd.
After nearly two years fronting the Celtic group Usquebaugh (prnounced Ish-KAY-bah), Shelly Dixon has ventured out on her own ã a common theme for the 29-year-old mother of son Jordan. The first song she ever wrote seven years ago, "(I Don't Need a) Romeo," celebrated her divorced independence. For a long time, she left the song alone. But now that she's on her own again, she's revitalized it and includes it in her set list. Perhaps there's a correlation.
"All my songs," Dixon says, "are about something.
She has written about the joy of her son ("Saved by the Light") and the deaths of young friends ("Stones") and the serenity that she seeks in her life and finds in her music ("Peace"). Just as some take photographs to capture life's moments, Dixon has chronicled her last few years in her music.
She freely admits the tenor of her songs can often be as dark as her eyes and as black as her hair. She doesn't wear her emotions on her sleeve; she simply carries them in her guitar case. That way she can latch up her feelings at night's end and put them away so only she knows where they are.
"I think singing is the closest thing to crying," Dixon says. "It's the closest thing to grieving that's acceptable in front of other people. I think I write soothing music because I have that need to mourn. I'm full of sorrow, and I cry, but I don't want to feel sorry for myself. But when I sing, it's such a release, and yet it's more productive than crying."
This is the depth of Shelly Dixon ã the one who isn't afraid to search her soul to find her music. Do not, however, be misdirected by the intensity of her lyrics, but enjoy the melody in which she bathes them. Laughter is as much a part of her set as introspection.
Although she's not immune to tears, Dixon's eyes are more focused on what will be than what was. She has overcome stage fright and shyness (she wore sunglasses as an adolescent when she sang for her young sister), and the self-doubts that dogged her in thise early years when she sang alone in her living room have blossomed into an air of confidence. She will, she says without hesitation, make it.
But what does that mean?
"Fame, to me, is going to be when my music is available to the whole world," Dixon says. "The whole world doesn't have to buy it. I don't need fame for that reason. I just want everyone to have the opportunity to be exposed to it. I'm happy in my life. Money would bring me freedom, but money wouldn't bring me happiness."
Even as she dots the city and plays her music ã her music ã she is beginning to see familiar faces in new places. There is an increasing groundswell of support, those who sit and truly listen to her hauntingly soulful voice and the innermost stories of her life. They have discovered that beauty is not just in the eye of the beholder, but the ear, as well.
Once in a while, she will cover other artists ã Jewel occasionally. Sometimes Fleetwood Mac. And although she enjoys some country, she won't join the maddening crowd and ride on the saucer-sized beltbuckle of a line-dancing culture.
"I think it would be fake, and I'd be selling out."
So Shelly Dixon stands by her convictions and, for now, stands alone, a singular voice in a chorus of starving artists. Only her starvation is for acclimation when an in-process CD is about to be released.
"I see it now," she says of tomorrow. "I have all the time in the world. It's not like I have a clock ticking. I don't need the fame, and I don't need the money to be happy. I'm impatient because I want the recordings to be done so I can get them out to people. I'm impatient that I've been passed over and lost in the shuffle. But I don't think it's been my time yet, and that's OK."
But that time is coming. And even if she with the heavy voice and dark eyes and dark hair can't see the light yet, she knows it's out there ã much like her, waiting to be found.
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