Folk 'n' Roll for Country and Home:Emily Dunbar's Catch It When You Can

She writes great songs that don’t transport you beyond your normal life. This isn’t a voyeur’s windowsill outside the musician’s tour bus. This is what you know, what you experience, what you’re living at the moment that the CD spins in the minivan stereo.

Emily Dunbar is a little bit country; she’s a little bit folk ‘n’ roll. She sings of married life and motherhood and the whimsical, poignant fantasies one has while perhaps contemplating doing the dishes piled up in the sink.

Her songwriting rose out of third person narrative charms like her signature “Boone’s Farm Wine,” a tribute to the fruity malt beverage and its partakers. As much as these narratives fulfill the obligatory country songs about trailer park queens and such, they speak of what even boring suburban families know—love, loss, wanderlust, and stilted dreams.

Dunbar has moved into her own as she’s moved into her own stories. She is telling her own love, loss, wanderlust, and stilted dreams now. She doesn’t need Paris, because she has her family (“Barcelona”). She’s content to wake up on a Saturday for “One Cup of Coffee.” Yet, she still wonders what she’d do if John Cusack came to sweep her off her feet (“John Cusack”).

“John Cusack” is one track in which it would be good to hear Dunbar try it with a different style—more of the folk ‘n’ roll and less country, more angsty in tempo and less ballad. She’s dreaming of John Cusack, and there’s a wry humor here the ballad seems to paste over with too much melancholy. One way this might work is to go over the top with the melancholy like the Gena Rowlands Band does with Jeanine Garafalo on “Garafalo, C’est Moi” (review).

For now, though, Dunbar is writing songs for home. She’s invited the listener in, and she’s invited herself into your home. She’s singing about rejoicing in the day that the Lord has made (the title track, “Catch It When You Can”), but instead of some sentimental syrup, she’s made it a song about laughter and aprons. She’s singing about recognizing it when it hits you. Dunbar invites you into these reflections with her charming voice. And you might not realize it at first, but she’s singing your life.

Emily Dunbar