Dagmar Wakes Live Music Week Listeners Up!

by Jamie Loftus

Good morning, WERS-ers! Two-piece meta-folk (like metaphysical for the indie set) band Dagmar stopped by the studio this morning for a live performance and succeeded in waking everyone up with their upbeat energy and attracted much enthusiasm for donations to the station. Arriving with an arsenal of instruments from the basic acoustic to the mandolin, the pair played three live songs, including works from their most recent yet-to-be-released album Door #3, as well as a song from member Jim Bauer’s musical The Blue Flower, which was written with his wife Ruth and is ten years in the making. The duo admits that their style and classification of their sound is ever-changing, now referring to themselves as “meta-folk” as opposed to “free-folk”; main vocalist and member of the cast of The Blue Flower, Meghan McGeary laughed and jokingly said “oh, that was so last year”.

Dagmar’s two previous albums, Door #1 and Door #2 tie into their newest work; each has an intentional and distinct sound and storyline, but McGeary is quick to point out that for now, no new “Doors” are going to be opened. “Our music keeps changing, so we’re not really married to a genre” she says lightheartedly of the group’s versatility, “the whole point is that we’re experimenting and Jim is writing things differently every time”. Their next move, after the first professional premiere of The Blue Flower with American Repertory Theater in Cambridge this December, are an album of piano ballads and a party record, as well as more playing in the subways of New York and the Boston Commons, where they essentially got their start. Bauer mentions that Boston audiences are “more open” as opposed to that of McGeary’s native New York; “New Yorkers tend to be more jaded”, he said, and McGeary adds laughingly “if you miss one note in three seconds, not only do they leave, they give you that look of disgust, you know?”. Some of you way even recognize the pair from their constant performances throughout the city, often in public forums, playing famously across the street from the WERS studios last year in hope of being played on Live Music Week (and they were!). An extremely prolific team of ever-changing musical fusion, Dagmar is a shock to the system and a treat for the ears.

Be sure to check the band out tonight at Tupelo Music Hall with Howard Jones and The Blue Flower at the Loeb Drama Center throughout November.