NPR's most recent Tiny Desk concert featured a fiddle player by the name of Gaelynn Lea. Ms. Lea, who suffers from Osteogenesis imperfecta (commonly known as "brittle bone disease"), is a classically-trained fiddler from Duluth, Minnesota. Her songs of heartbreak and despair resonated intimately at the Desk, which featured, perhaps, its largest crowd to date.
Ms. Lea's approach to music is humble, and when you watch her perform on the NPR segment, you may notice her attitudes toward her playing and how she writes are similar. Performing, for the violinist, is about deft precision since one of her tools is a loop fx pedal. Loop pedals rely solely on timing, so a lack of confident playing can work against your rhythm and tempo.
Ms. Lea's writing, then, resembles this precision, with her poignant lyrics detailing stories of love lost and how the first moments we feel love for someone may also be the most terrifying. In her opening tune, she sings:
"We walked the pier and back again / it was the most scared I've ever been / You held my hand until the end / and I love you."
Tales of a morose narrator, she also spins a different story later in her set, where her and fellow bandmate (and member of the band Low), Alan Sparhawk, sing about being a bird who can't be brought down.
The songs are tragic; you want to cry when listening and such emotion is invoked not just through Lea's words and singing but her undeniable believability when she bows the violin. An artist such as this is not an easy find, so it's lucky NPR received her audition when they did.
But let the music do the talking. Check out Ms. Gaelynn Lea in her Tiny Desk debut below.
