Underground singer begins to rise
The streets can be a hard teacher, but for Somerville singer-songwriter Lisa Bastoni, they have offered soft lessons in music. Performing for spare change on corners and in T stops has taught her about the healing powers of songs and the redemptive joy of sharing your art with others. The hard lessons have come from other places.
"I think music on the streets can really help people," she says. "Just being down there and playing, you can put a smile on people's faces. I've learned a lot about performing, how to be comfortable singing in front of strangers."
Bastoni, 27, may soon see her audience expand. She has just come out with an impressive self-released CD, "Your First Sweetheart," which she'll celebrate Sunday with a show at the Burren in Somerville. And she continues to make the rounds at area clubs and busk around town.
"She tends to write about her life in a way that gives us insight into our own lives," says Geoff Bartley, who hosts the songwriter open mike Mondays at the Cantab Lounge in Cambridge. Last winter, after he heard Bastoni sing for the first time, he immediately made her the featured performer for the open mike set. "As a performer, what attracts me is that she does not push; she sings with a quiet confidence and unforced candor that I find refreshing and believable." Go to www.boston.com/ae/music to hear clips from "Your First Sweetheart."Music has always been a lifeline for Bastoni. She grew up in Westport, Conn., the troubled daughter of parents who are now recovering alcoholics.
She spent a lot of time with her arty grandparents (her grandfather drew the Merrill Lynch bull that eventually became the company's logo), and she first heard folk music at song-swapping hootenannies that her guitar-playing grandmother hosted.
When Bastoni was 13, her grandmother gave her a guitar, which she immediately clutched as a security blanket during hard nights at home.
"I found myself in my room a lot, just kind of trying to be invisible," she recalls. "I found that the guitar gave me something to focus on away from the things that were difficult in my life. It's soothing, and it's something I can feel very deeply. It was a lifesaver; I really don't know how else to describe it."
She began writing songs almost immediately: "My first 20 songs were just kind of like throwing up in song, you know, getting all the bad stuff out, all the crazy teenage emotions."
When she was 14, she met Eric Von Schmidt at one of her grandmother's music parties. His career-transforming advice to '60s folk stars such as Bob Dylan and Joan Baez is the stuff of legend.
She sang him one of her brooding originals, and he asked for another. She sang the sweet old Scottish courtship song, "Wild Mountain Thyme."
He smiled and said, "That's the kind of song you should be writing."
Bastoni wrote the conversation down in her journal, knowing it was important, even if she didn't fully understand it yet.
"He used the word `anthemic' to describe what he meant," she recalls, "but I knew he didn't mean it like a heavy-metal ballad anthem. He meant something timeless, that other people could understand and sing."
After graduating from Skidmore College, Bastoni moved to Boston and worked several day jobs while trying to start her music career. In 2001, she had a bad day brightened by a street singer and decided to try it. Like the best buskers, she sees it as a social service, not merely a steppingstone to better gigs.
In fact, taking the next step nearly drove her out of music. After a couple of lean tours playing small bars and coffeehouses, she stopped performing and concluded that she was probably ending her fledgling career.
But then Bastoni fell into a frenzy of creativity, which is beautifully evident on her new disc. A few of her older, brooding ballads are there, but they're overshadowed by her new spare and inviting style.
Shaped by the discipline of the streets, her songs became less vehicles for self-expression than for communicating with others. The best song on the CD, "Bird by Bird," inspired by Anne Lamott's book about writing, is a simple gem about taking life one small step at a time: "Brick by brick, bird by bird/ Tell your story word by word." It wears the knowledge of deep pain, but turned to life-affirming purpose.
"A few years ago," Bastoni says, "I was writing these clever kinds of songs that I was thinking about a lot. I'm learning how to step out of my own way, to not be as precious about it. I try to just say what I want to say in plain words, as simply as I can. I think people want to hear songs like that. I know they're the kind I need to hear, songs that are soothing and that give people hope. I think songs like that are always necessary."
