Carol Kleyn got her start in the early 1970s, playing Ren Fests and community fairs, busking on street corners for loose change and whatever professional advancement she could muster. In 1976, she had made enough to fund her debut album, Love Has Made Me Stronger, which was reissued on Drag City last year. By the time she got ready to record a follow-up at the tail end of the decade, she said, "I'd developed a following at the faires and on the street corners, and felt like I'd actually earned the title: Harpist/Singer/Songwriter." That's her writing in the liner notes for the reissue of her second album, 1980's Takin' the Time. It's a telling statement, not only because this humble, self-taught musician asserts her identity so forcefully, but primarily because it reveals exactly how she thought of herself. She was first and foremost a harpist, a vocalist second, and lastly a songwriter.
Both of these reissues bear out that impression and especially that order, which is not to say that Kleyn was a deficient singer or songwriter. It's just that the harp dominates, as much by its size as by its sound. Kleyn toted the thing everywhere, and the sight of the diminutive, sunny-faced California blonde hauling such an instrument, her dog trustily at her feet, must have left a visual impression on passers-by as strong as the music she played. How odd, then, that Takin' the Time begins not with the sounds of her folksy plucking and strumming, but with the rambling riff of a full band. Produced by her former romantic and musical partner Bobby Brown (whose Enlightening Beam of Axonda ought to be next on Drag City's reissue schedule), Takin' the Time places Kleyn in a variety of settings, and the most disarming is at the front of an electrified rock group.
It's not necessarily a bad sound for her, although her voice does get lost in the relative squall of "Jethro". But the band sounds a bit prim, as though hesitant to cut loose with such a delicate voice at the fore. And still, Kleyn manages to make the title track sound sweetly pastoral, as she sings about the small pleasures of domestic life as she lived it: "Making love in a yellow school bus/ Tall eucalyptus around us." Even when she deals in hippie ephemera-- one song involves a unicorn, another invokes "the song of the harp"-- Kleyn can be a disarmingly descriptive lyricist, evoking the world around her in softly concrete imagery.
Brown's production is light and naturalistic, which, especially on the second side, creates an intimate space for Kleyn. She's accompanied solely by what sounds like a thumb piano on "How Long Till Forever", and a flock of sympathetic seagulls joins in on "Prayer". What initially sounds like steel drums darting around the island rhythms of "Sailor Take Me" soon reveals itself to be Kleyn's harp, a clever and startling sonic transformation made all the more impressive by the fact that it sounds undoctored.
By the time the needle starts circling the label on the first side, the band has packed up its gear and left the stage, leaving Kleyn mostly alone to accompany herself on harp. Here's where she truly shines, as the staccato plucks and pastoral glissandi of the instrument nicely contrast her sweetly high-pitched vocals. Adventurous and wide-eyed, Takin' the Time is nevertheless much more professional and consistent than Love Has Made Me Stronger, yet it lacks the homemade aesthetic of that debut-- the impression of a young artist finding her own unique voice and style-- and therefore much of its offhand charm. Still, Kleyn proves a warmly intuitive and self-possessed musician, and some of the best moments here are also the smallest and humblest: Pay attention to her vocals as she sustains her notes on "She Lost Her Crown", striking a homespun vibrato that buoys the verses. Or listen to the way her voice cracks subtly as she soars up to a high note on "Prayer". Moments like these make Takin' the Time sound like the work of a lively personality, one who obviously loved hauling that harp around and seeing what she could do with it.
