When Natalie D-Napoleon, the singer, songwriter, and poet, walks into my office early in the morning, she looks, to my surprise, well rested. She’d played a gig at SOhO the night before, so I was expecting her to be more exhausted. But she’s bright-eyed, relaxed, and open-hearted.
Natalie recently won the prestigious Bruce Dawe National Poetry Prize in Australia. “I started writing when I was 10,” she tells me. “I would toss and turn and I’d get up and write my ideas in my notebook. And as soon as I wrote them down, I could go to bed.”
I’d heard Natalie perform at Sings Like Hell a few years back, and was moved by lush sound — combining folk, country, and bluegrass, she’s at once modern yet able to recall a timeless, rural sound. Those qualities have allowed her to grace the stage with such luminaries as Vic Chesnutt, John Doe, John Butler, Steve Kilbey (The Church), Grant McLennan (The Go-Betweens), Morphine, Mark Olson (The Jayhawks), Ken Stringfellow (REM/Big Star), Henry Wagons, and Victoria Williams.