The Thao of Introspection: Thao With the Get Down Stay Down

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MAYBE THERE'S SOMETHING to be said for suburban boredom and displacement.

Growing up in Falls Church, Thao Nguyen never saw live bands at any D.C. clubs and wasn't part of any local music scene. So she couldn't help but become introspective when she began composing songs as a teenager in the solitude of her bedroom.

Isolation served her well. Nguyen's deeply personal songs such as "Bag of Hammers" and "Swimming Pools" found an almost instant audience when she formed Thao With the Get Down Stay Down. The group just released its second full-length CD, "Know Better Learn Faster," and will play at the Black Cat on Friday.

"For the most part, I stuck around at home," says the 25-year-old singer-songwriter by phone during a tour stop in Minnesota. "I'm sure there were things going on, but I led a very uneventful, insulated life, and I didn't really go out to see much live music. As far as going into [the District], I tried to go to blues clubs sometimes, but I was very underage."

Nguyen did, however, get to frequent the open-mic nights held at coffeehouses in her area. That's where she cut her musical teeth and got to test out new songs and develop her somber vocal style.

"I did that every week," she says. "And if I never do another one, I'm OK with that."
Musical salvation came after Nguyen graduated from Thomas Jefferson High for Science and Technology and went off to the College of William & Mary. There, she met future Get Down Stay Down drummer Willis Thompson (unrelated bassist Adam Thompson rounds out the trio). College also gave Nguyen the chance to immerse herself in the old-time music that would inform her intricate guitar technique.

"I listened to a lot of John Fahey and a lot of country blues," she recalls. "There were a lot of people that I knew that were fantastic guitar players. We would sit around and play, and I would try to absorb what they were doing. It was all country blues playing and picking. I listened to Appalachian music and old country, and I think that really influenced me. That and Motown."

That mélange of influences came through on her debut CD, "Like the Linen," released independently in 2005 when Nguyen was a junior in college. But it was 2008's "We Brave Bee Stings and All" that put Nguyen and the Get Down Stay Down on an upward trajectory. The group signed with the Kill Rock Stars label for the release, and it unexpectedly became the company's best-selling record of the year.

Before she knew it, Nguyen was singing her personal odes before thousands of appreciative fans. That also meant making her personal life public.

"It's a little tough, but I enjoy the catharsis of it. There's something to be said for revisiting painful things and kind of releasing them and giving that energy away so you don't let it burn a hole inside of you."

Nguyen is a Vietnamese-American woman playing music in a genre populated mostly by white men. But she says that matters little to her, since neither ethnicity nor gender necessarily informs her music: "My ethnicity is not a biographical element. I don't write songs about it, so I don't understand what the big deal is. Just like it wouldn't matter that I'm a woman guitar player."

Nguyen's newest album takes her confessional approach to a whole new level. It's a breakup album where the titles alone almost tell the tale ("When We Swam," "Good Bye Good Luck" and "Oh. No." being the best examples). Behind the guest appearances by Andrew Bird, Laura Veirs and members of Blitzen Trapper and the Decemberists are some harrowing story-songs.

"I would say it is a sweet and frenzied and helpless audit of the end of something very important," she says of the album.

As for her life beyond her songs, Nguyen found a place to live that's about as removed from Falls Church as possible: San Francisco. She first visited the city while working on a college service project to help the homeless and decided to make it her home.

"I'd always wanted to see the city," she says. "So I decided after I graduated I would move there. We went on tour the next week and when I ended the tour on the West Coast, I moved to San Francisco. I feel that it's the only city I could live in. I do love it out there."

» Black Cat, 1811 14th St. NW; with the Portland Cello Project, David Shultz; Fri., 9 p.m., $15; 800-551-7328. (U St.-Cardozo)

Written by Express contributor Tony Sclafani
Photos by Tarina Westlund