Syracuse New Times
October 22, 2003

War of the Words

by Nathan Turk

Spoken-word artist Alix Olson lives out her own On the Road experience, performing around 220 times a year and living out of her van named June with her tour partner and collaborator Pamela Means. It's a lonely gig considering many are planning housewarming parties by the time they reach her age of 28, but the Pennsylvania native is bringing to the streets what programs such as Russell Simmons' Def Poetry Jam can only bring to your living room.

Spoken word is "supposed to be a collective experience, collective gaps and screams," Olson says. "Now it's individuals in their chairs and sofas, drinking beers. It's very individualist, when it's supposed to be very communal."

Granted, many can empathize with Olson as she looks forward to settling in somewhere after five months of nomad status. "People seem to be very amused/concerned about my not having a permanent base," she says, noting that all her material possessions are basically either in storage or at her parents' house. "For a long time it was important to have a base, because it was where I operated from. {But} when I got a booking agent, and a tour manager, it was less pressing, since they have a computer and a desk."

Much of what she's seen on the road is filtered right into the audience. "I try to take the audience on a journey for an hour and a half," Olson says about her gig at Happy Endings Cake and Coffeehouse, 317 S. Clinton St., on Saturday, Oct. 25, 8:30 p.m. "You have to be really careful: Spoken word is a form that can be very abrasive, very loud," she says, noting that Means will contribute musically to part of her verse/comedy routine. "I also like to tell stories about places I've been. It makes people feel less alone, to know that all the people I've met, in all the towns I've been through, their stories are similar."

Considering spoken word's dalliance with rap in the hands of other storytellers such as Reg E. Gaines, it's fitting one of the avenues that brought Olson her first exposure to the former was her African-American women's poetry class at Wesleyan University, Middletown, Conn. "Certainly, {rap} has its roots in the genre. Spoken word is more of an expansive term for the rubric of forms that fall beneath it, though," she says, identifying more with what someone recently described her unorthodox style as: punk poetry. This shouldn't be confused with poetic punk, whose main emissary Henry Rollins gets his "training" via the weight bench. "I wrote traditional forms of poetry for a long time; I didn't just move to New York and start doing spoken word," she says. "I {employ} a lot of poetic techniques I've learned."

Rising from breathy, intonated half-whispers to tense verse a la Ani DiFranco and Sage Francis, Olson mines a unique style on her new effort Independence Meal (Subtle Sister). "And the TV news anchors say rage flows for no reason. Now stick these antennas on your forehead: Freedom of thought may channel treason," she quips in "Pirates," a call to "steal back the truth." Her instrumental backing is sound, from sparse, Last Poets-esque bongo in "8 x 10" to arcing violin and folk guitar in "Wholly Human."

But Olson's narrative is never lost in the mix, her delivery never shallow. "I think it's important for me to be an example that you can be a common, average ordinary citizen, and that your voice is still authentic," she explains. "You still have a right and a responsibility to critique our culture. We leave everything up to the politicians in charge and they've done a pretty terrifying job so far. It's time we take back the power."

Admission is $8 to $10. For more information, visit Olson on the Web at www.alixolson.com. Means will also headline her own show on Thursday, Oct. 23, 8 p.m., at Happy Endings. Admission is $8; call 475-1853.