Dawn Oberg

Career

Oberg was born and grew up in Minnesota, where she wrote her first song at the age of 14. She later wrote what she called "perverse drinking songs" throughout her twenties. She attended Berklee School of Music in Boston, after which she moved to Nashville in the mid-1990s. While in Nashville, she played in multiple country music bands, during which time she recalls having been influenced by Bob Dylan and Hank Williams, before switching to playing piano-based songs influenced by R&B and jazz. The first band she played in was Honky-Tonk Happy Hour; she contributed to their first album before leaving to form a cabaret duo called Blossom Theory, in which she played piano. In 2008, she released her first solo album, Horticulture Wars, followed by Rye in 2013 and Bring in 2015.

Reception

A review of Bring in L.A. Record said that, with regard to lyricism, Oberg "has all [the] lightly mocking wiseass of Noel Coward plus a sentimental side very much in the old Master’s line, if completely beyond most of his imitators past and present." Robert Christgau also reviewed Bring favorably, giving it an A- grade. In his review, he wrote that it consisted of "nine expertly wrought songs in 27 minutes" and that on the album, Oberg "plays acoustic piano over G-B-D with jazz gestalt, zero-plus solos, and a beat more martial than swinging." ChicagoPride.com contributor Gregg Shapiro wrote that Oberg "deserves a place alongside contemporaries such as Ben Folds and Aimee Mann," writing that on her songs, "Her lived-in voice is that of experience and she maintains a singular sense of humor."

Discography