Diane Marie Kloba is a Chicago-based singer-multi-instrumentalist-songwriter. ‘Find a Road in’ is her ninth full length solo album. Diane’s songs are heartfelt and thoughtful, unconventional and warm.
Diane has released collaborative recordings with creative musicians around the world in a wide variety of styles, and has received airplay on many radio stations globally. This has enabled her to reach a diverse and appreciative audience, and she has received a lot of positive critical attention.
Diane’s recordings throughout her career have been characterized by an oblique straightforwardness, and by a creative generosity that is perhaps best summarized by the title and cover photograph of her 2008 full-length, For You, Stranger. The artistic gifts she proffers are represented in that image by beautiful, rough-hewn rocks, given as found, in the same way as her many and illuminating creative insights. They are also emblematic of her enduring interest in the natural universe, which often emerges in her songs in meteorological or astronomical references. Across all of her varied releases there is a consistent dedication to presenting the unalloyed truth of her experience within the recognizable format of the song, but there is also continual, restless change and growth. She explores the varied possibilities of her chosen instruments, she incorporates new sounds, her approach to orchestration evolves and develops, she finds new subjects and thematic territories, and she journeys to the boundaries of the song form, sometimes taking an overtly experimental approach. Through it all, her audience, the stranger to whom she proffers her gifts, is welcomed with warmth and wonder into the capacious dwelling that is her uniquely creative heart.
We asked Diane a few questions for her to answer in her own words:
Who would you include in a list of your musical influences?
Radiohead, Bowie, Prince, Andrew Bird, Fiona Apple, Wilco, Dylan—among others.
Do you imagine your songs as being addressed to particular people, or to a particular audience? If so, who are they?
Some of the time they are fictitious situations, but other times I write for people whose music I love. I never tell anyone when I write a song for them.
How important is live performance to your overall creative practice?
It helped me develop my confidence to perform for an audience.
Do you see yourself as a guitarist, independently of being a singer and songwriter, or are all of those activities one thing for you?
They are one thing. Sometimes I record the guitar part first, other times I write the words first. Other times I write both at the same time. I rarely plan what a song will be about. My hand writes the words and it is not until later that I find out what the song is about: it is a very automatic thing with me—I just pick up the pencil and let it flow. When I make my vocal parts I hear the syllables first, and it feels like I am filling in the blanks.