“Songs have their time and sometimes that time comes around again,” says Iris Dement, the folk-country-gospel artist who’s been making her musical mark since the release of her first album, Infamous Angel, in 1992.
Her early career was powered by support from the late John Prine, who wrote liner notes for the album and invited her to join a duet with him on the unforgettably risque tune “In Spite of Ourselves.” It was a far stretch from Dement’s Arkansas upbringing as one of 14 kids in a Pentecostal family.
But she has always steered her own course, most recently on her 2023 album, Workin’ on a World, an attempt to process the despair she felt after Trump’s first election. The title song describes the inspiration she found by “thinking of the ones who came before,” adding, in her down home Southern spirit: “Now I’m workin’ on a world I may never see/I’m joinin’ forces with the warriors of love.”
Another tune, “Going Down to Sing In Texas,” was written in the aftermath of the Uvalde school shooting. It takes down gun culture, George W. Bush (“that president who lied about WMD”) and Amazon chief Jeff Bezos.
“That could have been one of those songs that never ended,” Dement says, talking from the road as she embarks on a national tour that includes a stop in Monterey on Friday, April 25.
Asked what Prine would make of current events, she says, “I would never presume to know what John would think of something, but he left enough charms around. He landed on the truth and love side pretty consistently.”
Did she envision a Trump 2.0 regime when she wrote the album?
“I was just thinking about staying afloat,” she says. “But somewhere in there, I made an assumption that things would get better, and certainly not get worse.”
By no means is Dement exclusively a protest singer. “The Sacred Now,” co-written with her stepdaughter Pieta Brown, reprises the universal themes of “Let the Mystery Be” from her debut album. “Whenever you put a song on an album that is quote unquote ‘political,’ the record gets cast that way,” she says, sighing. “I’m not wired for that kind of conflict. I’m talking about what’s happening on Tuesday around the kitchen table.”
IRIS DEMENT plays 7pm Friday, April 25. Golden State Theatre, 417 Alvarado St., Monterey. $41-$104. 649-1070, goldenstatetheatre.com
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