Abbie Gardner (photo by Kathy Gardner).
Abbie Gardner, a gifted New York area singer-songwriter and dobro player, who also is part of the rootsy female Americana trio Red Molly, is the Lennon Award winner in the folk category of the John Lennon Songwriting Contest. Her winning song, “The Mind of a Soldier,” now competes with the winners in the contest’s 11 other categories for the $20,000 Maxell Song of the Year Award, to be announced in July.
“I wanted to write a war song, but not from the perspective of either side, not something preachy or political, something more personal that people can relate to,” says Gardner of her award-winning song. She recalls listening to a lot of radio news reports about the war in Iraq while driving in her car and being bothered by the way in which “everyday I would usually just hear a number of how many people had died. It was just like a weather report.” “The Mind of a Soldier,” which can be heard on her MySpace page, seeks to address the human element.
“I have received a lot of comments about the song from veterans and families of service men and women around the country,” says Gardner. “People like that being touched by something I created, well that truly means more to me than anything.”
Gardner, who claims on her MySpace page to sound like “the love child of Bonnie Raitt and Jerry Douglas,” both of whom she cites as influences, started writing songs around 1998, when she first started playing guitar. “I really wanted to sing, and it was kind of the next logical step,” she says. “I don’t really have one type of song. I kind of mix it up,” notes Gardner, whose musical tastes and original songs are wide-ranging — running the gamut from jazz to blues, country to bluegrass and folk/pop ballads. “Sometimes I write story songs, but the story has nothing to do with me, the emotion does. I’m usually trying to convey some kind of emotion through a story.”
Asked to name other songwriters who have influenced or inspired her, Gardner is quick to cite Steve Earle and Darrell Scott. “More locally, I’ve been pushed to write more songs and better songs by Jack Hardy and also Anthony da Costa,” she notes. “Both of them have this attitude of just write it; don’t worry so much, which really helps.”
In addition to frequent touring and recording with Red Molly — who are starting to travel more and are playing a number of festivals this summer — Gardner heads to the Tonder Festival in Denmark this summer with da Costa, an 18-year-old singer-songwriter and 2007 Grassy Hill Kerrville New Folk Winner, with whom she’s performed some duo shows and released an album last spring called Bad Nights, Better Days.
Like her sometimes duo partner, Gardner’s interest in music began when she was a young child. She played flute while in school, began singing in a cappella groups in 1992, and served as musical director and arranger/transcriber for the Boston University Treblemakers. Gardner credits her dad, the noted jazz pianist Herb Gardner, with whom she’s also performed and recorded an album of jazz standards entitled My Craziest Dream in 2004, as a major influence in her desire to pursue a musical career. “He’s always shown me how much fun he’s had with music,” she says. Although Gardner has limited time to join him and his five-piece swing band for gigs these days, she acknowledges that “It’s really fun to play the swing dances. People are really physically responding to the music. I like that kind of feedback.”
Of course, she’s also been garnering awards and getting a lot of positive recognition for her own music. Gardner is a two-time Independent Music World Series Northeast finalist (2006 and 2008) and was a Rocky Mountain Folks Festival New Song Contest finalist in 2006. The Lennon Songwriting Award comes on the heels of her being named as the grand prize winner for 2008 in American Songwriter Magazine’s Lyric Contest for her song “I’d Rather Be.” As a result, she flies down to Nashville next week for a co-write and recording session with Chris Stapleton of the Steeldrivers, whom she describes as a good complement. “He has a rock n’ roll voice, but he plays bluegrass music.”
Acknowledging that she’s excited and honored to have been chosen as a Lennon Award Winner, Gardner also is pleased that winning in the folk category entitles her to a CD duplication package from DiscMakers. “That’s going to enable me to make another solo record… probably around the middle of next year,” says Gardner, whose last album of mostly original songs, Honey On My Grave, was recorded in 2006. “I was still just learning the dobro then,” she notes. “People always ask me for a really heavy on the dobro-type record,” says Gardner. She took up the instrument five years ago this July and the lap-steel guitar last year.
“The dobro seems to attract a really nice group of people who play it,” says Gardner. She professes to have learned a lot on the melodic side from Sally Van Meter in Colorado, while Rob Ickes has shown her a lot of rhythmical things she could do on the instrument.
Despite an increasingly busy touring schedule, Gardner can be found at New York City’s Googie’s Lounge on the first Thursday night of each month. That’s when she hosts “The Slide Sessions,” a series she launched last December, featuring her and other musicians who she says push her to grow and learn. Among the special guests who have joined her are New York-based artists Pat Wictor and Natalia Zuckerman and Philadelphia-based father-and-song blues and roots duo Beaucoup Blue. Citing the laid-back nature of “The Slide Sessions,” Gardner says “It’s kind of more like a jam session than a performance, and it really keeps me kind of sharp with being able to listen in the moment. I think it’s going to keep going for a while.”
So too will Abbie Gardner’s burgeoning musical career, both as a multi-talented singer-songwriter and musician in her own right and as part of Red Molly. Looking ahead, Gardner says “I’m really trying to work on a lot of songwriting. I’m looking forward to the next Red Molly record, which we’ll make at the end of the year, and to a lot of practicing on lap steel just to get better for that record and life in general.”
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