Dafni’s soprano rings true. Her latest album, “Charlie’s Lonely Sunday” may contain echoes of a Parisian street corner, Tin Pan Alley, and an Appalachian barn dance, but the petite redhead isn’t interested in merely creating some dusty museum piece that imitates another time and place. “I’m gettin’ carried away,” she sings over percolating banjo and a smooth bed of accordion on “Carried Away.” But with her next breath she’s “…Walkin’ through the streets of L.A. in this dreamy giddy haze.” The key to Dafni’s appeal is how she examines contemporary life and love through the lens of enduring musical styles that capture our imaginations and hearts. She goes on to explain, “I don’t give a hoot because you melt my heart away/At least my darlin’ I had you for today,” and somehow the sweet and simple language of a jazz standard makes your own ill-fated romance seem like a jaunty little misstep from which you will easily recover.
Singer, songwriter, and guitar player Dafni started out far from the palm-lined streets of L.A. in frosty Wisconsin, where she cut her teeth on minor sevenths in the high school jazz band. She played piano from the age of five, and went on to play bass and French horn in addition to singing in the choir. Dafni earned degrees in chemistry and psychology at the University of Wisconsin before following her love — organic chemistry — to graduate school at UCLA where she played solo acoustic shows and formed the folk/punk band Stay at Home. In 2001 she home-recorded “Red,” an earnest collection of acoustic songs which received airplay on folk and women's music shows.
Dafni’s first studio album “Drifting in Circles” featured a notably fuller, richer sound. Building on her solid songsmithing foundation, she incorporated jazz chords and arrangements and expanded the instrumentation to include bebop trumpet, sprightly banjo and Ry Cooder-inspired slide guitar. She formed a live band with Mark San Filippo (drums), Geoff Rakness (upright bass), Wil Forbis (lead guitar, banjo), Edie Murphy (mandolin, fiddle), and Josh Bandur (accordian) and became a frequent performer at L.A. songwriter hangouts like Cole’s and the Cinema Bar in Culver City.
With 2007’s “Charlie’s Lonely Sunday,” the former folky-girl-with-guitar truly came into her own as a songwriter and musician on par with adult contemporary artists like Eleni Mandell and Madeleine Peyroux. Her smiling and demure personality shines through with her most confident songwriting yet, and her stylistic range is seamlessly sewn together, from the sultry tango “Let’s Pretend” to the lilting waltz “This One Dance.” Pasadena Weekly music critic Bliss commented of “Charlie’s Lonely Sunday,” “…lo-fi sound, snappy syncopation and instrumentation owe obvious debts to Billie Holiday and Madeleine Peyroux…she harks back to bygone eras with her dreamy soprano and sweetly romantic songs.”
-- Susan Clark
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