From Gossip to Unclassifiable

(Author's Note: I originally wrote this on April 10, 2010, just as this blog was coming to fruition)

This is the stuff of teenage dreaming, fiction, and a Disney/Nickelodeon movie swirled into one heaping serving:

You get your big break only to find it’s not really your big break.Then, your trial finds a columnist’s ear, one thing leads to another, and you really do get your big break. And in the process an icon notices your plight, encourages you to “break a leg,” and goes on to his merry way.

In the end, though, you’re elated, uplifted and buoyed by the experience yet still, “unclassifiable” by iTunes on someone else’s hard drive.

Such is the story of how I came to know of Minneapolis singer songwriter Alison Scott.

Link hopping between national news, Twins coverage, and the miscellany of the StarTribune, I was intrigued by the line, “Bon Jovi comes through for Alison Scott.”

I couldn’t resist.

I clicked, and found myself at one of my least favorite (sorry CJ) haunts at the Strib.

Undeterred by my usual aversion to the column (that’s another post altogether), I was completely taken by Scott’s plight. So smitten I clicked deeper into the world of Twin Cities gossip to find the original post concerning her “winning” the chance to open for Bon Jovi in St. Paul this past week.

The story bears reading. It makes you feel “warm and fuzzy” when you read how Alison won, didn’t won, then found herself bailed out by none other then JBJ himself (read CJ’s follow-up the story here, and the story to start it all here).

More than intrigued, I followed the threads to Alison Scott’s website where I found some of the best music I’ve encountered lately. There’s a sultry, smooth feel to Scott’s vocals, the kind equally fitting with a steaming dark roast and blog/news reading as with an evening around the fire pit with good friends and a glass of wine or a pint.

That doesn’t exactly describe Scott’s music, I know. But how, exactly, do you descrivbe someone who bounces through the rhythms and melodies of “A Little Bit,” then flows seamlessly in to a mellow yet heated crooning questioning and second-guessing of self, love and relationships in “How Do You Know”?

What I do know, is that while iTunes may considers Alison Scott “unclassifiable,”  this young singer songwriter takes me some place new and fresh, a place where, when I’m there, I can’ t help but do as she asks, more than willing to “Stop...step out of yourself to notice everything else.”

-Schlegs