Marianne Dissard - L’entredeux (2008)

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Marianne Dissard’s first album, “L’entredeux”, is co-written and produced by Calexico’s frontman Joey Burns. The French-language album was recorded in their hometown of Tucson, Arizona and mixed by Craig Schumacher at Wavelab Studio. Contributors include John Convertino (Calexico) on drums; Rob Burger (Tin Hat Trio) on piano, accordion, orchestron, cimbalom and organ; Mickey Raphael (Willie Nelson) on harmonica; Naïm Amor; Sammy Decoster (Tornado) and some of Tucson’s finest musicians.

The lyrics to “L’entredeux”, tender and biting vignettes of love and other little lies, were written by Marianne in the fall 2004, in a borrowed bedroom in the barrio of Tucson, following the tumultuous meltdown of her marriage to longtime collaborator and fellow expatriate Naïm Amor. Amor contributed three songs to the collection. Joey Burns then sketched the melodies in the intimate setting of his kitchen. Studio recordings began in early 2006 and continued intermittently as Marianne performed live—in Tucson and on tour in the US and Canada. She has since shared stages with Naïm Amor, Calexico, Alaska In Winter and many others, including poet Billy Collins!

“L’entredeux”… The “between two”, the interspace. Two countries, two languages, two loves maybe? “L’entredeux” is the space where one hand lets go and floats free of the old. It is time suspended to the antique wax cylinder sounds of a French lesson in track “Merci De Rien Du Tout”. Step back and imagine “L’Entredeux” as the soundtrack to Jon Jost’s euro-lusting “All The Vermeers in New York”. Hear Lodge Kerrigan’s “Claire Dolan” in the eerie “Ce Visage-Là” and Eric Rohmer’s lakeside frolics in “Sans-Façon”. In that borrowed bedroom where Marianne wrote the words to her first and very personal album, in the house of a poet friend, the walls were lined with books. One of them, Ovid’s “Metamorphosis”, with its invocations of the muse and tragic tales of love and punishment, surprisingly became the companion to her transformation from other people’s lyricist to her own wordsmith. Struggling in between allegiances, Marianne found her escape in these tunes she chose to write in her native language, re-inventing herself once more, this time as a singer of the suspension points.