Karen Dalton, a singer and guitarist who would inspire Bob Dylan and Nick Cave, had the long hair and slim figure of her female contemporaries in the 1960s folk scene, except her look and sound was rougher and edgier—especially after she lost a couple of teeth in an altercation. She's also an artist who left behind few recorded artifacts, thus contributing to her mystique.
In their sympathetic documentary, Robert Yapkowitz and Richard Peete explain how that artistry developed through interviews with her daughter, her friends, and her collaborators. Julia Holter provides the score and alt-folk artist Angel Olsen reads excerpts from her poems and journals.
Abbe Baird, Karen's daughter with her first husband, Don Dalton, remembers that the Oklahoma housewife thing didn't suit her mother in the slightest. She tried twice with two different husbands while still in her teens, ultimately rejecting the whole deal.
In New York, she found admirers but grew bitter that original songwriters, like Dylan, were getting all the attention, while her interpretations of preexisting material failed to make the same kind of impact. Dalton just wanted to make music, so she moved to the country, and started a new life with a new partner. In Colorado, she found greater pleasure playing at house parties than music venues. It's no way to make a living, and so she and Richard struggled financially. Yapkowitz and Peete also strongly suggest that singer-songwriter Tim Hardin encouraged her use of hard drugs, the equivalent of a match to a powder keg filled with anger, bitterness, and resentment.
There were more ups and downs to come. Every time Dalton came close to making a living at this thing she loved more than life itself, some setback or another would erode her progress. By the end of her life, however, she had still managed to record two full albums (both reissued by Light in the Attic Records).
If the filmmakers don't completely solve the mystery of Karen Dalton, there's no reason they could or should. She isn't here to tell her story, and might not want to if she was, but she did leave diary entries behind, allowing them to include her voice as part of the narrative. Though friends muse that depression may have contributed to her dark moods, no one knows for sure, and they avoid any armchair psychoanalyzing.
They've also excluded details about her son, Lee, that might have provided for a fuller if more complicated portrait. At the very least, they set the record straight regarding her untimely passing, which has been misinterpreted by associates, like country singer Lacy J. Dalton—she liked Karen's surname so much she took it for her own—who have speculated as to what happened without knowing the facts. Though the truth about Karen's life is no prettier than the myths and rumors that have swirled around her, she deserves to be remembered for the person she was rather than the person people thought she was—or wanted her to be. Recommended.