Greenwich Entertainment Presents Karen Dalton: In My Own Time, An Essential Portrait of The Late Legend & Singular Folk Singer

Today, Greenwich Entertainment announces the release of Karen Dalton: In My Own Time, a brand new documentary that not only honors the long-overlooked legacy and musical impact of the late folk legend, but saves her largely misunderstood story from near devastation. Directed by Robert Yapkowitz and Richard Peete, and executive produced by the multi Academy Award-nominated Wim Wenders, Light in the Attic Records and Delmore Recording Society, the film will open in theaters across the country beginning October 1, 2021, with a premiere at New York City's Film Forum. Following a tragic fire in 2018, which destroyed all the remains of Karen Dalton's personal archive, Yapkowitz and Peete worked closely with her family and estate to capture the vanishing fragments of her life. From troves of newly unearthed material and raw footage, to candid conversations with Dalton's daughter Abralyn Baird and commentary by loved ones, ex-lovers, collaborators and close friends, Karen Dalton: In My Own Time serves as an essential portrait of her singular voice and indelible influence.

Karen Dalton: In My Own Time also features Karen Dalton's handwritten poetry and journals read by Angel Olsen, music composed by Julia Holter, plus interviews with fans like Nick Cave and Vanessa Carlton, Woodstock creator and Dalton's one-time label head Michael Lang, country singer-songwriter Lacy J. Dalton, Peter Walker, Peter Stampfel and more. The film was produced by Traci Carlson and Richard Peete at Neighborhood Watch (Blue Ruin, Low Tide, Super Dark Times), and The Hollywood Reporter says, "As [Karen Dalton: In My Own Time] introduces a one-of-a-kind artist to the uninitiated and celebrates her for aficionados, above all it listens - and invites us to do the same."

Following its theatrical release, Karen Dalton: In My Own Time will be available on-demand via digital platforms and DVD starting November 16th.

Read more about the film at Rolling Stone, and watch the official trailer out today:

https://youtu.be/hTxE98tNxko

While Karen Dalton's music has been rediscovered, reissued, and celebrated by the likes of Courtney Barnett, Lucinda Williams, Patty Griffin, Sharon Van Etten, Vagabon and increasingly newer generations in recent years, to many she remains "the most tragically beautiful folk singer you've probably never heard of" (VICE). When she arrived in New York City's Greenwich Village in the 1960s - an early twenty-something from Oklahoma with two children, two marriages and a whole life behind her - she stunned contemporaries such as Bob Dylan, who once said, "My favorite singer in the place was Karen Dalton...Karen had a voice like Billie Holiday and played the guitar like Jimmy Reed, and went all the way with it." On her only two albums, 1969's It's So Hard to Tell Who's Going to Love You the Best and 1971's In My Own Time, her plaintive, affecting and nuanced performances showed how she could inhabit songs and convey meanings that were never apparent to anyone else. But between an apprehension for the music industry and a personal dichotomy of darkness and self-confidence, Karen Dalton discarded the traditional trappings of success and led an unconventional, reclusive lifestyle until her untimely death from AIDS in the early 1990s.

On the making of Karen Dalton: In My Own Time, their feature-length documentary debut, directors Robert Yapkowitz and Richard Peete say:

"Back in 2013, we were in a bar in Brooklyn talking about how it was such a shame that all of Karen Dalton's male peers were on the jukebox but she wasn't. By drink two or three we had schemed up a plan to make a documentary about Karen in six months, release it to the world and she'd be on the jukebox the following year. That was seven years ago, and while there was always this idea of preserving something that had spent its life on the edge of obscurity, we have made a movie that above all celebrates Karen Dalton's bravery. Artists like Karen Dalton are often portrayed as tragic figures, failures and neglectful mothers. This is an idea we really wanted to dispel. It took a lot of courage for her to live life on her own terms at that time."

For additional information on screening locations and more, visit the documentary's official site at www.karendaltonmovie.com.

In celebration of the 50th anniversary of Karen Dalton's 1971 album, In My Own Time, the film's co-executive producers, Light in the Attic Records, will be presenting a beautifully packaged expanded edition of Dalton's masterpiece, featuring unreleased songs, newly remastered audio, and rare photos, along with liner notes and testimonials from Lenny Kaye, Devendra Banhart, and Nick Cave. More info will be available soon at lightintheattic.net.

Filmmakers & Production Team

Directed by: Robert Yapkowitz and Richard Peete

Produced by: Traci Carlson and Richard Peete

Executive Producer: Wim Wenders, Light In The Attic & Delmore Recording Society

Edited by: Lance Edmands, Thomas Niles, Robert Yapkowitz, Ed Yonaitis

Karen's Poems and Journals Read By: Angel Olsen

Composer: Julia Holter

Key Interviews: Nick Cave, Danny Goldberg, Michael Lang, Vanessa Carlton, Peter Walker, Peter Stampfel, Lacy J Dalton, Abralyn Baird

About Robert Yapkowitz

Robert Yapkowitz is a New York-based filmmaker. He began his career working in the prop department on many major motion pictures and TV shows such as Winter's Bone, Robot and Frank, Billions and the Golden Globe-winning mini-series, The Loudest Voice. Since then he has shifted his focus to directing and creating original projects. His first feature-length documentary, In My Own Time, about the blues and folk singer Karen Dalton, premiered at Doc NYC in 2020 and he is currently executive producing a yet to be announced documentary series which is in production.

About Richard Peete

Richard Peete is the founder of Neighborhood Watch, a New York-based production company which produces feature films, commercials, music videos and short films. Before producing, he was the Prop Master of many award-winning films, including Blue Valentine, The Place Beyond the Pines and Winter's Bone. He produced Jeremy Saulnier's critically acclaimed Blue Ruin, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2013 and received the International Critics' Award. Since then, he has produced Kevin Phillips' Super Dark Times and The Lumineers - III, Charlie Curran's See Know Evil and Kevin McMullin's Low Tide. He is currently in pre-production on Isaiah Saxons' The Legend of Ochi and Andy Bruntel's Wolf in White Van.

About Greenwich Entertainment

Founded in 2017, Greenwich Entertainment is an independent film distribution company specializing in distinctive, theatrical-quality narrative and documentary features. In 2018, Greenwich handled the record setting theatrical release of Jimmy Chin and Chai Vasarhelyi's Academy Award-Winning Documentary Free Solo, which grossed over $17M at the North American box office. In 2019, Greenwich released two of the top documentary hits of the year with Andrew Slater's Echo in the Canyon ($3.4M) and Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice ($4.3M) from Oscar winners Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman. Recent narrative releases include Isabel Coixet's The Bookshop starring Emily Mortimer and Bill Nighy, and Madeleine Olnek's Wild Nights with Emily starring Molly Shannon. Greenwich is led by an experienced management team that has overseen more than 150 theatrical releases generating over $100 million at the US box office and garnering 8 Academy Award Nominations and 2 Oscar Wins. www.GreenwichEntertainment.com

About Neighborhood Watch

Neighborhood Watch is a Brooklyn-based production company specializing in feature films, commercials, music videos and branded content. The company represents a roster of award-winning directors based in New York, Los Angeles, and the UK. Neighborhood Watch gained international recognition producing Jeremy Saulnier's critically acclaimed Blue Ruin, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2013. The company's next feature, Kevin Phillips' Super Dark Times, premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2017, where it sold to The Orchard/Netflix. Neighborhood Watch produced Phillips' prior short Too Cool For School, which premiered at the 2015 Cannes Directors Fortnight. The company's most recent feature, Low Tide, premiered at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival and was released by A24. In the documentary race, the company produced films including See Know Evil, The Six Sides of Katherine Hepburn and Fashion At War: Crafting The Nazi Brand, all in partnership with M2M, the WME/IMG owned fashion, arts & culture media platform. Neighborhood Watch's commercial and branded work includes spots for clients such as Coca Cola, Ford, Taco Bell, Stella Artois, New York City Ballet and Google, among others, and has won the Cannes Lion Award. The company has produced music videos for bands like The Lumineers, M83, Washed Out, and Small Black. 

About Light In The Attic

Known for their grassroots success with Rodriguez, the reclusive singer-songwriter whose unlikely story of personal triumph received long-overdue worldwide acclaim in the Academy Award®-winning documentary Searching For Sugar Man, Light in the Attic Records has gone on to garner nominations for multiple GRAMMY Awards, including one for Best Historical Album (2015) for Native North America (Vol. 1). Their exuberance and dedication to spreading joy through music has propelled them through the release of 200+ titles worldwide, setting the pace for reissue labels and the archival process. From Karen Dalton to Betty Davis, Nancy Sinatra to Donnie & Joe Emerson, the list goes on and on.

Light in the Attic is co-owned and operated by co-founders and high school friends Matt Sullivan and Josh Wright. In addition to the label's acclaimed output, the company also distributes for nearly 150 record labels. In 2010, LITA expanded from their native Seattle by opening offices in Los Angeles, including a successful music house focused on licensing for film, television and advertisements, along with music supervision. Light in the Attic also operates a thriving physical brick and mortar record store in the KEXP Gathering Space in Seattle. For more info, visit LightInTheAttic.net.

About Delmore Recording Society

Delmore Recording Society exists solely to expose singular artists who don't quite fit into the world: Karen Dalton, Vince Matthews, Jay Bolotin, Gary Stewart, and Diana Darby, being prime examples. The pursuit and discovery of lost tapes, such as the Kris Kristofferson publishing demos that became Please Don't Tell Me How The Story Ends, and the previously unknown CBS sessions by Arthur Lee of Love that became Love - Lost (both Delmore co-productions) is another driving force. Delmore began as an offshoot of the Do Easy Booking Agency/Management Company, which Mark Linn established in 1989. Linn spent his time getting gigs for (and in trouble with) Arthur Lee, Michael Hurley, and John Fahey; and served as executive producer for the 1992 album "Arthur Lee And Love," and managed Lee's subsequent, successful European tour.  

Since falling completely under the spell of Karen Dalton in the 1990s, Delmore has been on a mission to unearth previously unheard Dalton recordings. Delmore acted as North American distributor for Cotton Eyed Joe and Green Rocky Road, and in 2012, released the intimate cabin recordings that would become Karen Dalton - 1966. Next spring, Delmore Recording Society will unveil Shuckin' Sugar, a riveting live set featuring Karen Dalton and Richard Tucker duets and seven Karen solo performances. The release will feature previously unheard songs, beautiful, never before seen photos, and a heartfelt essay by UK journalist and author, Kris Needs. More info will be available soon at delmorerecordings.bandcamp.com