Music | October 23rd, 2021
By Sabrina Hornung
sabrina@hpr1.com
Amanda Standalone is a force, in fact one could say she’s an old soul with the Midas touch of musicality. You may have seen her playing any number of instruments with a bluegrass band: a washtub bass with a burlesque troupe, a musical saw with a jugband, or busking on the sidewalk with her violin…and then there’s that voice…
With two albums under her belt, “Millions of Blackbirds” recorded in 2011, and “Trouble” in 2014. She is in the process of recording a third and has set up a gofundme campaign to cover the cost of her studio time, session musicians, album pressings and marketing. This will be the third album under her belt.
She truly is a dynamic performer and gifted songwriter and her latest concept album that’s in the works is a true testament to that.
The former Fargoan is now based in Crosby Minnesota. She has spent the last year in rural Minnesota collecting stories from people about their experiences with the paranormal. Much to Amanda’s surprise, instead of tales of UFOs or cryptids she found an underlying very human element that tied the interviews together, and may have even taken a deeper turn by adding a bit of insight toward human spirituality.
“I get into conversations about things like that and it's just always intriguing to me -- when people are believers, especially. Because, I guess in my mind, it is something that people could call you crazy for but yet people still hold on to these stories, and they believe in them. And what I’m finding throughout this whole process is the idea of spirits and thinking that there's something else out there. It's just really comforting for people. And I like to hear that. I like to hear that people have things like that in their lives. And it doesn't have to be something tangible. It can just be a story.”
She says that old stories, interviews, and folkways recordings have always fascinated her and during lockdown she found herself diving deeper into podcasts and even alluded to a potential interest in starting her own podcast with the stories she had collected. She even mentioned that if she wasn’t on a deadline she wished that it could have been a double album, but then again, there’s always an opportunity for a sequel.
Common themes within the interviews involved intuition, connecting with ancestors and the concept of energy. One interview subject was a graveyard douser, also known as a grave witcher who was also a caretaker of rural graveyards, a concierge at a haunted hotel.
Charlie Parr even makes an appearance on the album-- not as a musician but as an interview subject.
This album is uniquely different from her previous two, not only because it’s a concept album in which the interviews fade into the songs they inspired, but due to the fact that there’s so much variety within, which proves how truly dynamic her skill is as a songwriter.
She laughed. “One of the songs in particular I think has some strange pop potential, which sounds really weird because that is the least thing that people really relate me to, but I mean you’re not going to hear any synthesizers or see a video of me driving a racecar or anything.”
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