Author Rachel Peden walks to the mailbox with son Joe, daughter Carol, and the family’s beloved dog, Rose in this photo from 1951. hen Krista Detor arrived in Europe great songwriters of our time,’ and comparing in 2006, she was greeted by a rush me to Tom Waits and Joni Mitchell.” of photographers and reporters from In truth, Detor had secretly imagined that publications like Rolling Stone and she belonged with those artists since she first WRevolver. Her second album, Mudshow—written began composing as a teen. But she had strug- in a single week—had reached No. 1 on the Euro- gled so long with stage fright, self-image issues, Americana chart, and she was booked at all and the doubts that plague many artists that the top venues frequented by the genre’s stars she was seldom sure how to evaluate her talents. and tastemakers. As she interviewed with BBC The European reception amazed her and made Radio and similar stations, she found herself her wonder, for the moment, if she was actually fighting back tears, astonished by the care with on the road to stardom. which the DJs had studied her music. As it turned out, the path was not unswerving. “They knew my material backwards and for- “The American DJs got wind of the album, but wards. Their interpretations of the songs were it’s a harder row to hoe in America,” she says. brilliant. I couldn’t believe the way they were “The American folk world wanted me to be more speaking back to me the things that I had said, categorized, and they weren’t sure where to fit just looking me in the eye, and saying, ‘Here’s my music. Then the European journalists were your soul on the table,’” she remembers. “They like, ‘If the American reviewers aren’t embrac- put me in a category higher than I had ever ing her, why are we?’ It all got confused, like a seen myself in, saying things like, ‘One of the bunch of marbles rolling around.” 92 Bloom | December 2011/January 2012 December 2011/January 2012 | Bloom 93 Five years and several albums later, Detor still Growing up in Southern crowd, performing in musicals. Certain of her At the end of her junior year in high school, tours North America and Europe. Her latest California, she baffled her impending stardom, she adopted a too-cool-for- she suddenly realized she was “going nowhere.” disc, Chocolate Paper Suites, not only made household with her ability to spend school attitude, earning mostly C’s on her report So she quit both performing and partying, countless “Best of 2010” lists on both continents hours at the piano. “My brother Rob cards and missing so many geometry classes that turned all her attention to her schoolwork, and but is also taught alongside Kafka and Yeats in was a surfer,” she remembers. “He she failed the subject. made the dean’s list with a 4.0 average her the writing and rhetoric program at Stanford was always outside and I was inside.” “I was a bit of a wild child,” she says. “I was senior year. By the time she graduated high University. Detor makes a good living off Both children were adopted, which voted ‘Least Likely to Be a Nun’ at the Sound school, she had been admitted to California shows and album sales and raises substantial was never kept a secret. of Music cast party—because I was least likely State University, where she planned to study funds through benefit concerts for a variety of “I always did feel separate from to be a nun. I was the one who brought the classical history. charities. most of the world,” she says. “I whiskey.” She was still writing songs, but her The AllMusic website recently described was different from everyone in As she continued to develop her musical newfound sobriety brought its own problem: Detor as “an artist of rare ability...with a deep inexplicable ways. I was chubby and tastes, however, Detor became less interested stage fright. “When I was in high school, it was freckled and had little round glasses. in her manager’s plans for her. “He had Geffen always a shot of whiskey before I went onstage. One of the reasons I started writing [Records] looking at me, but even then I Always. Or two,” Detor says. Then, when she so young was because I had so much wanted to be Elvis Costello. I wanted to be quit, performing was like “drinking battery acid. time alone.” Peter Gabriel. I wanted to be one of the people I was like, ‘I’m not doing it.’ So I said, ‘I don’t Her parents supported her piano making those statements, not the girls who were even want to be a musician anyway. I want to be habit, though, even insisting that she shaking their asses and selling records for labels.” a professor.’ I had myself convinced for a good continue training when she tried to long time.” quit at age nine. “I’m very lucky that I ended up with these hardworking A WEIGHTY ISSUE Midwestern people,” she says. “They There was another factor, one she’s only just had the attitude that you make a begun to consider. For much of her life, Detor commitment to something and you struggled with her weight, at times carrying finish it.” almost 100 pounds more than she does today. By the time she was 15, her “It’s wrong of me that I have not really made that musical abilities were so outstanding part of the story,” she says, surprised by her own that an enterprising Los Angeles realization. “I had forgotten how important that manager picked her out of a talent fact is. I was really self-conscious. I think there show. was something in the back of my mind that said, “He wanted to make me famous,” ‘You are too fat to be on that stage.’” she says. “He had me in whatever At college, she tried to focus on her studies, performance situations he could get but music tugged at her “like a ball and chain me in. He would call a guitar player, around my ankle,” she says. She wrote songs a bass player—studio musicians constantly and two or three times a year would looking for work—and we’d play perform at open-mic nights. weddings, bar mitzvahs, cocktail “I felt compelled to do it, but it felt like crap,” poetic gift,” and called Chocolate Paper Suites parties, things like that.” she says. “so good that it deserves to make the artist ABOVE: Detor loved performing— Two years into college, Detor realized that famous.” It leaves fans and the many reviewers Krista Detor and her pretending to be older, drinking she lacked the passion of her fellow classical- brother Rob as toddlers. who love her work to wonder: Why is Krista Champagne, and anticipating her history students. “They lived and breathed Courtesy photo Detor one of the music world’s best-kept secrets? big break—but even then, she saw history in a way I did music,” she says. After a MIDDLE: herself more as a songwriter than a (l-r) Detor, David Weber, A SOLITARY CHILDHOOD pop star. Her lyrics, at 15, were of bassist Steve Mascari, and Music is in Detor’s blood, though as a child drummer Jamey Reid at the dubious merit (“I run for cover/in she didn’t know it. Her parents, only 17 when CD release party for Choco- the wild of your eyes/no other lover/ late Paper Suites. she was born in 1968, gave her up for adoption, can take me where you’re going and the originally Midwestern parents who OPPOSITE PAGE: baby”) but were, she says, “an early raised her were not musically inclined. Only Teenage Detor performs on indication” of her potential. Her the wedding/bar mitzvah later would she discover that both her biological manager disagreed, considering circuit. Courtesy photo grandfathers were singers, her mother and her voice and piano skills her more grandmother played in an accordion orchestra, marketable assets. “It didn’t stop and her father was a prolific poet. Her me from writing,” she says, “but it biological parents first named her after a song, definitely slowed me down.” in fact: Dawn, from the song by Frankie Valli Meanwhile, Detor was playing and the Four Seasons. (“Dawn, go away, I’m no with her high school rock band good for you.”) and hanging out with the drama 94 Bloom | December 2011/January 2012 December 2011/January 2012 | Bloom 95 TOP: Weber and Detor with their daughters Detor recognized that the scene wasn’t (l-r) Lena, Aurora, and Isla. healthy for either of them, and that George’s BOTTOM: real talent was as a chef. She convinced him Detor and Weber performing at the to attend Le Cordon Bleu in California, after Buskirk-Chumley Theater in 2010. which they moved to Portland and a relatively OPPOSITE PAGE: stable period in their lives. At 26, Detor was Detor at home with her dog Luna. a property manager at a real estate company, George was a chef’s apprentice, and they had a daughter, Aurora, born in 1995. breakthrough in Detor’s weight management that freed her “There we were, working toward our middle- of her long-running self-flagellation. class American dream,” she says, “when my “Seeing my family made me realize, ‘This isn’t biological parents called.” necessarily a personal failing of mine,’” she says.