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NPR Music: Tiny Desk Concerts
Tiny Desk Concerts from NPR's All Songs Considered features your favorite musicians performing at Bob Boilen's desk in the NPR Music office. This is the AUDIO only archive.Are you a fancy A/V nerd and need video? Visit our new Tiny Desk Concert video channel. Eye-popping video and all of the music you've come to expect.

Jolie Holland: Tiny Desk Concert

By Bob Boilen
Published April 23, 2012 at 11:55 AM MDT

It'll take just a few seconds to find out if you're likely to fall in love with Jolie Holland. That's what happened to me about eight years ago: Holland was a founding member of The Be Good Tanyas, and I've been listening faithfully to the Texas-born, Brooklyn-based singer ever since. It's the yearning in her voice that gets me: I've heard it most poignantly in Billie Holiday, and it's such an honest expression of pain and want.

In this intimate performance at the NPR Music offices, Holland closes with a special, unrecorded song called "First Sign of Spring." The other tunes — "Tender Mirror" and "The Devil's Sake" — are from her sixth album, 2011's Pint of Blood.There's rocky grit in that record that you won't hear in this acoustic performance, but the unadorned tone just makes her lyrics and voice all the more touching.

Set List:

  • "Tender Mirror"

  • "The Devil's Sake"

  • "First Sign of Spring"

    • Credits:

    Producer and Editor: Bob Boilen; Videographer: Michael Katzif; Audio Engineer: Kevin Wait; photo by Mallory Benedict/NPR

    Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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    Tiny Desk Concerts
    Bob Boilen
    In 1988, a determined Bob Boilen started showing up on NPR's doorstep every day, looking for a way to contribute his skills in music and broadcasting to the network. His persistence paid off, and within a few weeks he was hired, on a temporary basis, to work for All Things Considered. Less than a year later, Boilen was directing the show and continued to do so for the next 18 years.
    See stories by Bob Boilen
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