Dear Companion

(Credit: John Rott)

Cheyenne Mize is the musician with whom everyone in Louisville wants to play.

At the Brown Theatre late last month for the CD release celebration for “Dear Companion,” Ben Sollee and Daniel Martin Moore were the marquee names — but it was Mize who spent the most time performing.

She opened the show with her band Maiden Radio, standing between two women, each sporting banjos and singing rootsy, old-time songs with soaring three-part harmonies into a single microphone. Then she returned with the headliners, Sollee and Moore, adding gorgeous texture and color to their songs on a variety of instruments.

Indeed, Mize might be the consummate collaborator on the Louisville music scene.

The 26-year-old singer and multi-instrumentalist has performed with the Health and Happiness Family Gospel Band, glittering and bombastic rockers Wax Fang and Louisville freak-folk hero Will Oldham. Mize wants to be the centerpiece of her own band someday soon, but recognizes that many music fans usually see her name after an ampersand on album covers and concert fliers.

“The people who do know me know me because of my collaborations on other people’s music,” Mize said.

“I think flexibility and versatility, those are the main things. I love playing so many different types of music, and I guess I have kind of gotten to a place where I’m comfortable with just jumping into things.”

All aboard for Funtown

Mize has earned big-name supporters through her skills and friendliness and has stayed busy with an unending series of projects, from Maiden Radio to Arnett Hollow to the “Dear Companion” tour.

“Ben and I approached Cheyenne about joining us for this tour because of her tremendous abilities and kind heart,” Moore said. “She has a wide and masterful and seemingly effortless musical range.”

Mize’s meteoric rise began in summer 2008, when she joined Oldham and Thomas A. Minor and The Picket Line for a show literally in the middle of nowhere — well, a rural section of Jeffersontown — dubbed by Oldham and his cohorts as “Funtown.” Before then, Mize had performed in the little-known ambient rock band Century of Aeroplanes and the only slightly more well-known rootsy band Arnett Hollow, in which Mize still sings and plays violin.

Music was more of a hobby than a career goal then. Mize grew up in a musical family: Her parents were both DJs at WLRS in the 1970s, and grandparents and uncles and aunts were constantly playing guitars, pianos and singing around her. She played violin throughout high school and studied music at the University of Louisville. She began a career as a music therapist, founding a program at Kosair Children’s Hospital and later starting a private practice. The clients were hospitalized adults, ill or disabled kids, children with autism. She would introduce to them instruments, teach them songs or perform for them.

“I wanted to play music and I wanted to help people,” Mize said. “I had no idea you could do both at the same time.”

The Funtown gig, however, changed her career trajectory.

“They were planning the Funtown, um, ‘adventure’ and they were going to do different versions of a lot of Will’s songs,” she said of Oldham and Oscar Parsons, the frontman for The Picket Line. “Will had just come out with ‘Lie Down In the Light,’ and there’s a lot of violin and a lot of female vocals. Will’s only request was to find a violinist who can sing female vocals. That started the quest of Oscar to fill those shoes, and we thankfully have mutual friends who got him in touch with me.”

Mize rehearsed only with The Picket Line; Oldham didn’t join the assemblage until a series of guerilla shows at unlikely venues the week prior to Funtown. The show was Mize’s biggest to date — a mass of Louisville’s in-the-know scenesters on picnic blankets, swatting away mosquitoes in front of the flatbed trailer that served as a stage.

“It was a really intimidating thing at the time for me,” she said. “I’ve gotten a lot more comfortable as a performer and singer on stage in the past year and a half, for sure. I was still definitely unsure of myself. Especially, Louisville being what it is — looking out into the audience and knowing virtually everyone there, and also knowing a good portion of them were also amazing musicians.”

Oldham, who is notoriously private, took a liking to Mize’s performances. Months later, he invited her to join him for a series of shows in Italy and on a U.S. tour.

Their association took another step last year when Oldham joined Mize on “Among the Gold,” initially a vinyl-only EP consisting of six folk songs written in the late 1800s and early 1900s. It immediately became the most successful release from the Louisville-based Karate Body Records. The small pressing of records sold out in a month and garnered impressive reviews on music blogs and a blurb on Pitchfork.com.

“He’s a lot less weird or intimidating than you would imagine,” Mize said of Oldham. “He’s actually just, you know, a person. When you get along with him musically, it just happens and there’s not really a reason for it. We just immediately realized how much we enjoyed singing together. I’m eternally grateful for the fact that he was interested in being involved in ‘Among the Gold.’ It was just so personally enjoyable. We had a great time recording it.”

Whispered news

The collaborations came with whispers attached. Gossip-prone scenesters were quick to assume that music wasn’t the only thing they were doing together. Mize had to confront the talk — which she said was untrue — whenever she ventured to restaurants and bars where hipsters congregate.

“That would be the obvious thing that people would assume,” Mize said, venting. “I’ve even had someone comment off-handedly about how easy it is when someone takes you across the world because he’s involved with you. My response was, ‘Or they take you across the world with them even when you’re not involved with them.’

“Will and I recognized early on how much we enjoy working together, and how important it was that we wanted to continuing working together,” she added. “We have a really good working, business relationship, and that’s pretty much impossible to maintain when romantic things are involved.”

The duo intend to work together again, she said.

Before then, Mize is preparing, finally, to venture out alone. Mize’s debut solo album, the self-released EP “Before Lately,” was released last month, but she has yet to play a show around it. That will wait until Sollee and Moore’s “Dear Companion” tour ends in April, she said.

Like Oldham, Mize’s solo music is impossible to pigeonhole. Mize has collaborated with such a diverse range of musicians — folksy gospel bands, loud rock bands, bluegrass acts — that her preferred style is an enigma. Does Arnett Hollow’s subtle, acoustic sound describe her? Oldham’s oddball sensibilities? All of them, she said, and none of them. She grew up listening to her father’s massive classic rock collection — Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix — and later discovered P.J. Harvey and Shannon Wright.

“Before Lately,” which Mize recorded alone, most resembles songwriters such as Joanna Newsom and Faun Fables. The songs are subtle and experimental, with Mize reaching a broader vocal range than the sweet folksy voice she uses on stage with Oldham or Sollee and Moore.

This is the year Mize moves beyond collaborator and protégé; front and center on a stage, touring with her musician friends behind her instead of in front of her. But even the songs she’ll play from “Before Lately” don’t fully represent the sound Mize wants to project — the Cheyenne Mize sound will remain a mystery until she’s ready for a full-length album and she can assemble a proper band.

“I like to rock out as much as the next gal,” she said. “It’s definitely a side of me that’s always been there, but there’s not been the opportunity to explore that. And that’s part of why I’m getting it out there. I like to play rocking guitar and I like to sing loud, even if generally I get to sing nice pretty things.”