Hope Dunbar
Singer-Songwriter Hope Dunbar is a pioneer of the new American prairie style – the incarnation of Americana and Country-Folk sound staking claim under a big sky, shouting at the north wind, digging in and refusing to leave.
It’s early morning in Utica, Nebraska, population 800. The three kids are off at school, her minister husband has begun his day at the church, so Hope Dunbar settles down at her kitchen table to write songs. Behind where she sits, a window opens on what most would consider an empty vista: a dirt road disappearing through fields toward a flat horizon. Hope sees art in the simple and spins tales of limitless possibility, conjures stories of people near and far, living lives inside similar walls, internal and external. Where you’d least expect to find the mystical is where Hope Dunbar’s songs live. And after her morning writing, Dunbar heads out to to begin her shift at a cafe in town. “I write like a sailor knowing the ship is going down. / This is my flare in the night, hoping that one day I might be found.”
