Song Bird

Paul Trapani

Jolie Holland with her most recent instrumental obsession: the cornet.

Paul Trapani

"Jolie does not put up with bullshit. No way," says her producer Lemon DeGeorge.

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More About

• Jolie Holland
• Samantha Parton
• Lemon DeGeorge
• Billy Bragg
• Dave Mihaly

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"I just know that she was always a musician," Mihaly says. "She never came to it as a careerist thing. She always played music. She's a poet, but she was born to play music." He brings up an Emily Dickinson poem that can remind you of Jolie Holland. Of course, it's about birds. It warns about trying too hard to understand the song of a lark. It begins "Split the Lark — and you'll find the Music." By the time the poem ends, the creature is dissected into silence, and it asks, "Now, do you doubt that your Bird was true?"

Holland would probably agree with Dickinson's sentiment. Is Holland herself true? It's a dumb question. Of course she is; it's in the sound of her voice.