ONES TO WATCH: LARKIN GRIMM

She's got an elemental voice that comes from somewhere under the earth. She alternately moans like a woman-in-full orgasmic release, wails like a banshee, or coos like a crazed little girl, depending on her mood. In addition to singing and writing Larkin plays acoustic guitar, banjo, decrepit Casio, Chinese harp, and mountain dulcimer.
Larkin Grimm was born 26 years ago in Memphis TN to hippie devotees of the religious sect The Holy Order Of MANS - her parents were runaway kids that met in San Francisco in the late 60's and eventually found their way into the group, which later moved to Memphis. Larkin spent her early years in this communal environment, raised by several "parents" at once.

When the cult disbanded Larkin was 6, and her nuclear family moved to the Blue Ridge Mountains in Georgia and quickly grew to include 5 siblings. Larkin says she ran wild in the mountains and was "raised by the family dog." Larkin got her taste for music from her fiddling, singing father and folkie mother. She stopped going to school at age 10 and didn't return till she was 12. At 13, she was sent to boarding school (courtesy of Coca Cola, which funds this school to help gifted Appalachian children). Larkin excelled, (though her hormones and wild imagination were already erupting) and she won a full scholarship to Yale to study art. She spent a while there then freaked out at the elitism of the place, eventually leaving and returning several times.

She soon found herself in Thailand, where she studied Thai healing massage and "befriended strippers and watched them being humiliated and abused by sex tourists." Then she bummed around Guatemala. Finally she wound up hitchhiking through southern Alaska until she came upon a place "so beautiful I couldn't leave, camped out there in my tent for about 2 months with the plan to starve to death, get eaten, or get enlightened." Larkin says a Cherokee shaman named Jezebel Crow found her on the mountaintop and lured her to her truck with the promise of maple syrup and sausages. She became her "first great teacher, initiating me into the shamanic practice of using natural hallucinogens to gain spiritual wisdom. On one such trip, I got my first jolt of golden light to the brain and was possessed by a forest spirit who taught me to sing." Jezebel drove her down to her commune in Olympia, Washington, where she would live off and on for a few years, soon hanging out with "eco-warriors, vagabonds, sexual deviants and various other miscreants."

Jezebel encouraged Larkin to go back to Yale and when she returned Larkin started incorporating singing into her art practice, which led her finally to decide to become "a real musician". Back at Yale for the last time (eventually "graduating" with one credit left to go) Larkin met Dave Longstreth and became a member of Dirty Projectors for a time. When she left that band she joined up with the Providence RI Noise/Art scene and was active in arranging gigs and festivals there, as well as working on her own music. Larkin soon made 3 self-recorded albums of freeform, improvisational songs (or "acoustic noise" as she calls it), 2 of which were released by Secret Eye (Harpoon, and The Last Tree).

These days, Larkin books her own tours, travels constantly, and has by her own force of will, itinerant nature, and sense of reckless adventure managed to build a supportive network of friends and fan around Europe and the US/Canada. Larkin has shared bills with Devendra Banhart, Spires that in the Sunset Rise, Espers, Mi and L'au, Brightblack Morning Light, Entrance, Viking Moses, the Microphones, and Old Time Relijun. She has no permanent address (and doesn't want one), but in the warm summer months can usually be found living in a tent in the woods.

www.myspace.com/larkingrimm