FOUNDERS KEEPERS: Visiting With Iris DeMent’s Sublime ‘The Way I Should’ 30 Years On
On the occasion of its thirtieth anniversary, the indispensable Yep Roc imprint has restored to the marketplace a remastered version of Iris DeMent's sole major label release, The Way I Should. It should be…it should be a big hairy deal.Just listen.If nothing else, listen
Black News 
On the occasion of its thirtieth anniversary, the indispensable Yep Roc imprint has restored to the marketplace a remastered version of Iris DeMent's sole major label release, The Way I Should. It should be…it should be a big hairy deal.
Just listen.
If nothing else, listen to “There's a Wall in Washington,” but we'll come back to that.
* * *
Iris DeMent was raised in the Pentecostal church, the last of fourteen children, born in Arkansas, dropped out of high school in California, left the church, ended up in Kansas. At twenty-five she wrote “Our Town,” and then some other songs, played around enough to attract the attention of Rounder Records.
Rounder put her in the studio with producer Jim Rooney. Supporting musicians include Jerry Douglas, Roy Husky, Jr., and Stuart Duncan, with guest vocals from Emmmylou Harris and a couple paragraphs on the cover from John Prine. Those first two albums, Infamous Angel and My Life, are perfectly lovely folk records, a bit toe-in-the-water like Lucinda Williams' early Smithsonian blues albums.
