Danbury News-Times November 26, 1999 ‘You can say a lot more if you sing it’ by Stephen Krcmar There are two types of good bands; the groups who do one thing really well and the broad, complex, constantly moving kind. One’s not necessarily better, the three-chord simplicity of straight-ahead rock and roll can give you as much as some ‘60s psychedelic exploration. But the beautiful thing about the latter complex type is the hidden gems that are unearthed with repetitive listenings. As far as musicians and people go, you can make the same divisions: one-trick wonder or a whole helluva lot goin’ on. Danbury musician Lys Guillorn is the latter. She’s only been in Hat City a short time but already there’s a good underground buzz about the 26-year-old. The attention is well-deserved. She’s a good musician who just put out a very impressive first album. Unfortunately, it’s not available commercially yet, but that may change soon. It seems there’s some label interest. She likes her debut and compares putting out your first record to the good ol’ Standard Aptitude Test. "It’s like the SAT’s, you either know it or you don’t, and my first record is what it is," said Guillorn. Unfortunately, quoting her doesn’t give a full picture of the person. She speaks with confidence and intensity, but tickle her funny bone and you’ll get a squeaky laugh out of her. Put her on stage and there’s another facet. She says a part of her falls away when she hits the stage and lets her use a part of her personality she doesn’t use in daily interactions. She’s had numerous transcendent gigs, which keep her coming back. She describes those experiences as "like having a really great day...where everything is going great. The air’s beautiful, you take a walk outside. It’s all good and fabulous." But when she’s on stage, the spotlight is on her and the crowd is the witness. It’s like watching Narcissuses have a great day. Her CD, like herself, is nothing if not multi-faceted. The sounds range from Beatle-esque to Johnny Cash and Liz Phair, and if you talk with her you unveil a slew of interests. During the day she works at Connecticut Photographics lab, which has lead her to continue her passion for photography. Before signing on there, she wrote for Spin online. She also does web design on the side. In addition to that, she has a passion for fabric arts. She sews, spins wool and weaves. She cooks, too. She likes song writing because the addition of notes adds resonance and depth. "When I’m writing for music it’s different because you can get meaning from music as well as the words, so they really work together in concert, as opposed to just writing text, where all of the meaning has to be there in vocabulary and words. You can say a lot more if you sing it." Guillorn started regularly writing songs in the mid 1990s. "I’ve always wanted ot write and didn’t know how to break into it and then, suddenly, I got in the habit of setting aside time to do it. I had a four-track (recorder) and that helped me really set things down, instead of having them disappear into the ether," she said. Until that point, without recording device or the skills to write her music down, she would lose the compositions in her mind. "I have since learned to write my music down, but it’s really a struggle for me. It’s a good exercise. It’s like learning math all over again—forces me to think of symmetry and structure in a way I don’t if I just write out lyrics and then chords next to it," said the Fairfield University graduate. Growing up in Trumbull, there was always music around the house. At 3 years old, little Lys climbed up on the piano bench and started figuring out TV theme songs. She started lessons but by sixth grade decided she wanted to be a rocker and switched to the guitar. Now she’ll play whatever instruments she can get her hands on. After finishing her album she got out of her song writing habit. "Right now I’m just recording ideas... The way the songs that made the record came to be was I had snippets in my head for a long period of time, and eventually came into songs. Or, I’d write down a phrase or something that really interested me, and the it would come out full-blown." She draws influences from all over. One of her songs is based on a poem by Rilke, and she says her music is born of poetry, though she writes more songs than poems. "It’s like the next step for me. It gives me an excuse to perform them and to make them more beautiful and real in the world," she says reverentially. That’s how she talks, without any arrogance whatsoever, just passion. She writes songs because she doesn’t wants her words to be lonely; she’d rather they be covered in a blanket of music. Good music.

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