“I’m having an identity crisis,” Dawn Clement says while sipping her coffee.
For years, she says, people have known her as a jazz piano player. But with her latest album, Tempest/Cobalt, Clement has shifted into pop/singer-songwriter territory – thus sparking the questioning of herself as an artist.
It’s easy to say, though, that the Washington native has multiple identities. Clement is an educator as well as a student, a mother and an admiring daughter, a bandleader and a sideman. Although new to a couple of these titles, it seems easy for her to transition back and forth between the duties each comes with.
As a faculty member at Jazz Night School and adjunct instructor at Cornish College of the Arts, from which she earned her Bachelor’s of Music in 2000, she is a well-established and well-respected teacher. Clement is also currently working on getting her Master’s in Music Composition at Vermont College of Fine Arts in Montpelier, VT, with an expected date of completion in August 2015.
Though composition and writing are areas Clement says she always wanted to get better at, she had recently experienced self-doubt about pursuing the M.M. program. She expresses gratitude toward one of her teachers in Vermont who opened her eyes about continuing down this path.
“When I was second guessing the program,” she says, “one of my teachers, Jonathan Bailey Holland, told me that I’m learning how to think, how to form ideas, how to communicate with them. He said, ‘You’re exactly where you need to be.’”
Perhaps Clement’s strong involvement in education stems from her mother, who, she unabashedly declares, is “awesome, the best!”
“She was a natural teacher,” she says, recalling a game her mother made when Clement and her siblings were little. “It was a board game to learn the human body – like she made all the parts and pieces of each system in the body, and that’s how we learned.
“She was that kind of mom – finding ways for us to learn things, nurturing us,” she says.
Clement is one of four children. Though her siblings were more outgoing and popular when they were younger, she admits to being “a super shy kid.” Therefore, she threw herself into learning piano and took lessons from their church organist, who was also a ragtime pianist on the side. “The only things I had to play were Scott Joplin and Beethoven books,” she said. “I played out of them for two years, every day.”
In high school, still suffering from shyness, she wanted to find a way to play. “Piano was an outlet for me,” she says. And so, she heard that the jazz high school band needed a pianist. Even though she played Mozart for her audition, Clement got the gig – and so began her foray into jazz music.
“Jazz took over,” she says. Living in Vancouver, WA, offered plenty of opportunities to play around the area, including in Portland. She also participated in a lot of competitions, which was why, when she began studying at Cornish, she struggled with letting go of that competitive nature.
Eventually, she was able to get past “striving to be the next greatest,” and grow as a student and artist. “There wasn’t a lot of room for ego,” says Clement.
That idea has stuck with Clement, especially as she was looking for musicians to play with on Tempest/Cobalt. “I wanted high musicianship that wasn’t ego-filled,” she says. “People who I knew would be open to doing new things, like trying to fit them to play something other than their first instrument.”
In the studio, Clement worked with fellow Cornish alums Lena Simon, who provides drums, guitar, clarinet, and backing vocals on the album, and Charlie Smith on bass and keys. Recorded last summer at Smith’s Studio Nels, Tempest/Cobalt was funded through a Kickstarter campaign. With a name inspired by an old hymn her mother used to sing, it’s a 10-track double-sided LP filled with ethereal vocals, lush textures and layers, and Clement’s enchanting, prolific piano playing.
Though not jazz music in the classic sense, Clement says her music is jazz “because it’s me.” Her identity – even though in self-declared “crisis” mode – lends itself to putting Tempest/Cobalt under the jazz umbrella. “Life changes and you get older,” she says. “I was needing a change, needing to grow, and wanted something musically different.”
Her introspective lyrics reflect on human themes like love and loss, and are all inspired by what’s happening in her life and people close to her. One song she wrote when she was pregnant with her oldest son, and another, “Cobalt,” is about her youngest because he has beautiful blue eyes. Though she states that she doesn’t have a “muse,” she finds inspiration striking at different times, like on a long road trip. And when she’d struggle with words, she would give what she had to her sister, a linguist, who would help make them more poetic.
“I’m in awe of really great lyricists,” she says. “A good song, they can change over time. Lyrics can be applied very personally at the beginning, but grow and change.”
Some of her favorite lyricists are Stevie Wonder, Yael Naïm, and Joni Mitchell, as well as some of her students and fellow cohorts at Vermont. “People blow me away,” she says. “I’m a fan of people who can put out a lasting idea.”
One of her favorite current collaborations is with Johnaye Kendrick, who is part of the live Tempest band. The other musicians are Isaac Castillo, Ryan Burns, and Jacques Willis, and they will perform at the re-release LP party at the Royal Room on June 18th, with Bubble Control opening.
Clement will also be performing later this month at the Seattle Art Museum on June 28th with Byron Vannoy and Geoff Harper.
As Clement moves forward, she wants to learn to prioritize better to have the energy to work on writing and music. “I’d like to figure out how to make [my songs] express what I’m trying to say with the lyrics and using more instruments in the arrangement.”
She also wants to learn how to use Logic for her next record, and being more involved in production.
“I’m open to a lot,” she says. “I’ll continue to play and teach jazz. It’s all connected.
“It’s all me.”Tickets for the Dawn Clement Trio at the Seattle Art Museum on June 28 are $18 Adult, $16 Seniors and Earshot Jazz members, $10 Students and are available at www.brownpapertickets.com or 800-838-3006.
