Sad Lady and the "Return" of Connie Converse

originally published by Limeaid (now defunct)

I have been listening to Connie Converse for about three years now. There’s only one album to listen to, entitled How Sad, How Lovely, released in 2009. It absolutely changed my life – as a female creator, I felt understood by her sound and lyrics in a way that I had never experienced before. But I had resigned myself to this one record. After all, Connie packed up her car one day in 1974 and hasn’t been seen since. The eighteen released tracks I had access to were gifts to be cherished.

 

So, I was indelibly surprised in seeing on my Spotify last October that Connie had released an album during the summer of 2020. 

 

Her new EP, entitled Sad Lady, was released by a label called HEROIC CITIES, which is helmed by Emmy-winning sound editor Dan Dzula. I was slightly skeptical. Connie herself hadn’t released How Sad, as it was a collaboration between her brother Phil and iconic 20th-century folk producer Gene Deitch using long-lost recordings of Connie that they compiled together. I was wary of the idea that some of the intimacy and rawness of How Sad would be lost with new translation. 

 

I’m pleased to say that I was wrong. The opening track, aptly titled “Sad Lady,” induced a melancholic sort of joy that only Connie is capable of evoking within me. The sloping, circular rhythm of her mid-century style folk that she mastered in How Sad had returned. The lyrics are characteristically nomadic and unsettled. I found particularly comforting more of the floral imagery that I have come to associate with her. Even the sound quality – the same graininess that gave How Sad its vulnerability was all here. There’s a slight reverb (I’ll assume the work of Dzula) that somehow adds to the intimacy, making me feel as if I was sitting in a room with just her and I.

 

“Sorrow Is My Name,” the down-tempo sophomore track, possesses a lovelorn moroseness that feels heavier than anything on How Sad. Her brother Phil never recalls Connie having a romantic relationship in her life, but many online have speculated towards a mystery man or even a repressed preference for women, and this song only serves as fuel. She imagines herself as sadness personified, but a yearning sadness; she sings, “Oh keep on sleeping / When I pass your door / And keep on hoping / I will come no more.” Depression, potentially, or heartbreak – or maybe even a mix of both.

 

If you’re not feeling the heaviness, take comfort in “The Ash Grove (Traditional).” It’s lullabic and looping, and Connie’s gentleness is perfectly compatible with the melody of this old Welsh track. Dzula does a phenomenal job with overlay in this track, placing what sounds like various other recordings of Connie singing the same track to culminate in a swelling, choral effect.

 

This method is continued with the concluding two tracks, which will be familiar to fans of How Sad, double-tracked remixes of “Down This Road” and “We Lived Alone,” which appeared on Connie’s freshman album. The overlay adds depth and refreshes songs that, on my end, have been playing on loop for nearly four years.

 

My favorite track, though, is located in the very middle, called “Connie Checks the Mic.” With the EP’s short run time of eleven minutes, I had put on the album while doing some chores. So, I was riddled with shock when I heard, in a very old-fashioned, vaguely Midwestern timber, “I have the volume all the way up to… nine?” It was Connie’s voice, crystal clear. How Sad had clips of Connie’s voice, mostly at the beginnings of recordings as she introduced tracks to groups of friends, but nothing like this. 

 

“The Mic” is almost two and a half minutes of Connie speaking into the microphone. “Hello?” She says twice as she explains her audio settings. I was taken aback by unexpectedly hearing the spoken voice of a woman I have idolized for so long, and by the way she seemed to be speaking to me in particular. 

 

The track feels like a conversation, one with a woman who longed and yearned her whole life for something more; for love, for a successful folk career and later one in academia, to end up feeling as if she achieved very little. It’s a letter to you from Elizabeth “Connie” Converse, who hasn’t been seen in nearly fifty years and whose fate we will never truly know. It’s rare to have such a conveyed understanding between artist and listener, and one I’m grateful to have received. 

 

I had little faith that anything could live up to the feminine majesty of How Sad. But Sad Lady has evoked all that first album conveyed and more. I don’t expect to hear more from the archives of Connie Converse, but still, I will await it with baited breath. 

 

If you want to learn more about Connie, check out my December 2019 article on her. Sad Lady is free to stream on Spotify, as is How Sad, How Lovely.