Louisville has heard Dawn McCarthy's enchanting and powerful voice, even if they've never heard -- or heard of -- her California-based music vehicle, Faun Fables. Dawn the Faun, as she's sometimes called, was responsible for the enthralling female harmonies on "The Letting Go," the 2006 album by Drag City labelmate Bonnie Prince Billy, aka Will Oldham.
Oldham had begun e-mailing McCarthy after the release of Faun Fables' 2001 album, "Mother Twilight." The two would eventually tour. (With Joanna Newsom, for what must've been some awesomely weird shows.)
"Me and Will would hang out during the tour, singing Everly Brothers songs," she said. Soon after, Oldham invited McCarthy to Iceland to record.
Like Oldham, McCarthy reconfigures soothing folk twisted by her own personality quirks. The perspective is enhanced by McCarthy's deep interest in mundane topics. Faun Fables' new EP on Drag City, "A Table Forgotten," explores domestic life -- cups in kitchens, photos stored away in drawers. It's the first volley in what MCarthy promises will be a long-reaching exploration into home life, which she expects to include at least a couple more releases.
"I guess I'm a pretty domestic gal -- totally by my own volition," she said while chasing a neighbor's cat from her Oakland home during a phone interview. "I feel like our generation, that's not a thing we learned to do.
"Really, I just wanted to learn to cook. It all started there."
That fact struck her in the early 1990s, during a visit to Berea, Ky., to see a friend who also happened to cook well.
"I asked her, 'What do you stock in a kitchen?' I just didn't know," McCarthy said. "And when I got back from that trip, I headed straight to the store."
Her last study in mundanity yielded the 2006 full-length album, "The Transit Rider" -- about the New York City subway system -- and was paired with a touring theatrical show.
A theater enthusiast and one-time student, McCarthy said the intertwining folk and experimental music with performance art -- a coupling that makes the shows doubly interesting -- is natural to her. "It's always kind of been there," she said of theater. "Even when I don't set out to make a theatrical kind of show."
Chances to see Faun Fables perform might be rare, at least for a while -- McCarthy is expecting her first child in October. "I want to visit some of our good towns in the eastern part of the nation," she said.
