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Growing up in the Australian bush and in the sleepy beach town of Torquay, Mia Dyson became fascinated by the mythology of American rock & roll when she was just a kid. “I was raised listening to American music almost exclusively—my dad was a big blues fan, my mom loved Bob Dylan and all the poets,” says the L.A.-based singer/songwriter. “Very early on I was aware of all the places in America where this incredible music was made, like Memphis and Detroit and Muscle Shoals.” Since releasing her debut album at age 22, Dyson has instilled her own music with raw passion and timeless vitality, along with the sharp musicianship she’s shown in opening for artists like Bonnie Raitt, Stevie Nicks, and Eric Clapton. In making her forthcoming sixth album If I Said Only So Far I Take It Back, Dyson deepened the connection to her musical roots by recording at Portside Sound: a studio in the same Muscle Shoals building where legendary records by the Bob Dylan, Joe Cocker and Steve Winwood
came to life.

An album charged with the kinetic energy of exploration, If I Said Only So Far I Take It Back was also closely shaped by Dyson’s intense collaboration with Sidney and Tanner. Throughout the production process, the three musicians achieved a thrillingly expansive sonic palette and brought a graceful inventiveness to each guitar element. In sculpting that stripped-down but intricately detailed sound, they enlisted musicians like David Hood: the bassist for the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, who played on classic songs like The Staple Singers; “Ill Take You There” and Wilson Pickett’s “Mustang Sally.” In another major departure for Dyson, If I Said Only So Far I Take It Back often finds her vocals attaining an unguarded fragility, a quality especially evident on the quietly anguished, string-adorned opening track “Being Scared.” “I used to always make a point of showing my power through my voice, but for a song like that—about how there’s no end to being scared—it felt much more truthful to sing gently,” she says. “So many of these songs dictated a new way of singing, even if it made me a little uncomfortable.”

Although Dyson brings an equally tender vocal delivery to songs like “Beloved,” If I Said Only So Far I Take It Back occasionally erupts into glorious chaos. With its fuzzed-out fury, “Nothing” makes for an unlikely anthem about what Dyson describes as “that raging to have everything go a certain way, and then finally seeing that things are perfect just as they are.” “Gambling” sets a swaggering rhythm to its reflections on rootlessness and risk (“It’s not a waste of time/To play without a victory/It’s not a wasted life/To be without a history”), then drifts into a joyful frenzy of layered guitar tones. Another moment of shining defiance, “Open” again proves Dyson’s extraordinary magnetism as a guitarist. “Recording that song, I just started playing wrong notes on purpose and trying out really jagged sounds,” she says. “As a female my conditioning tells me, ‘Don’t be ugly with music—be pretty!’ But there’s something about bucking against your conditioning that feels so good.” Endlessly shifting in sound and mood, If I Said Only So Far I Take It Back also includes tracks like “Fool”: a brightly uptempo number whose shimmery synth tones brilliantly contrast with its message of owning up to self-doubt (“I tell myself/Not to be a fool/It comes so naturally to me/It’s all I’ll ever be”). And on “Everything is Waiting for You,”

Dyson closes out the album with a warm meditation on the promise of hope. “I wrote that right before my nephew was born, thinking about him or any baby coming into the world today,” she says. “It felt like a nice bookend to ‘Being Scared’—both those songs are like a little loving prayer.”

MIA DYSON

IF I SAID ONLY SO FAR I TAKE IT BACK 

TOUR DATES

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FRIDAY 23 MARCH – THE GASOMETER, MELBOURNE

SATURDAY 24 MARCH – 48 WATT STREET, NEWCASTLE

SUNDAY 25 MARCH – LEADBELLY, SYDNEY

THURSDAY 29 MARCH – BLENHEIM FESTIVAL, ADELAIDE

FRIDAY MARCH 30 – MONDAY APRIL 2 – BLUESFEST, BYRON BAY

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Connect With MIA DYSON

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AMN – DH