Tag: brad mehldau

Becca Stevens Strips It All Back on ‘Maple to Paper’

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

In her dynamic, restless career, Becca Stevens plans to never repeat herself, like the proverbial waterway that’s never the same river twice.

Since being noticed by New York Times jazz critic Nate Chinen in 2008 as a 24-year-old “best kept secret,” she’s collaborated with: David Crosby and his Lighthouse Band; jazz orchestra Snarky Puppy; the modernist ensemble Kneebody; pianist Brad Mehldau; harmony genius Jacob Collier; the neo-classical Attacca Quartet; and others. Her five solo studio albums, especially the mind-stretching and richly grooving Regina (2018) and Wonderbloom (2022), have mingled folk-grounded melodies and jazz-deep harmonies with pop dazzle. The common denominator has been her uncommon voice, which is conservatory-trained, but utterly unique and enthralling. She is, in my humble opinion, one of the finest overall musicians making song-based music today, a peer to 21st century savants St. Vincent and Madison Cunningham.

One frontier that remained for Stevens was, ironically, the most obvious for a singer-songwriter – the solo acoustic album. Her version of this venerable format finally arrived in late August with Maple to Paper, a 13-song collection that was shaped at every level by a series of landmark life events. After marrying Nathan Schram, violist in the Attacca Quartet, she gave birth to daughters in 2022 and 2024. Their family moved from New York to Princeton, New Jersey. Her mother died, as did her close collaborator and friend David Crosby.

Stevens alchemizes this season of change, love, and loss through songs that challenge conventional forms with rich and fearless lyrics that play at times like Emily Dickinson set to classical guitar. On the cover, she’s demurely naked behind a guitar. In the grooves, she’s as vulnerable as we’ve ever heard her. As she told me of her emotional multiverse of the past few years, “I felt uncomfortable about sharing it, but I also was like, well, if I’m going to do this, I might as well make it completely exposed.”

It’s easy to suppose that the changes of the past few years – moving, having children, losing your mom – made a solo acoustic record sound more appealing at both artistic and practical levels?

Becca Stevens: Absolutely, yeah. You’re spot on. Two things can be true. So the choice to do this album completely solo and from home both served the concept and integrity of the album. But it also was maybe the only way that I could have gotten it done during that time.

Just to put that into perspective, you know, there was the logistics of the grieving. The loss of my mom was super fresh, and I had a six-month-old who was part-time in daycare. And then towards the end of the recording and writing process, I was pregnant again. So there was the logistics of being a new mom, of having morning sickness, of being in a new place, of grieving my mom, and all of that was so much more possible to do from home. But I resisted it.

For a long time, I had the idea of recording the demos at home and then going into the studio. But I went back and forth a lot with Nic Hard, who mixed it with me. He also did Wonderbloom. And the deeper that we got into the material, the more crystal clear it was that the songs were best served if performed live – guitar and singing at the same time – and performed at home, where I was really in the character and in the feelings.

Did writing and making art feel like what you wanted to do under all those cross-cutting pressures and changes, or did you have to force yourself a bit through the work?

“Want” is maybe the wrong word. I felt like, at least for the grieving part, I had to do it because it was like I was going to explode if I didn’t do something. And it was a confusing loss – something that left me with a lot of questions. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been somebody who processes confusing emotions through writing songs or stories, or art in some way.

I felt like I needed to do it. But also, yes, there were times where I just absolutely did not want to and just wanted to lie on the floor. And I had to find a way to incorporate that as part of the process, so that I could forgive myself. I literally had a futon on the floor of my workspace, where I told that part of my brain, “You are invited to lay down there whenever you need to. You’re not at a studio. The clock’s not ticking. You’re not paying for this.” I called it my Womb Room. And I would put on salt lamps and put the lights down really low and lay down. And then some of the songs came from that space.

Some of these feel more like classical art songs than folk songs, in that they’re not shaped around a set number of measures or predictable beats. Did they feel a bit like that to you?

Yeah, the song “Payin’ to be Apart” comes to mind. It definitely felt that way; a little less folky, more like poetry that just happens to be on a wave of music. It’s interesting to hear you say that, because in the writing process – harmonically and in the accompaniment – I took a much simpler approach than what I have done before, on Regina or Wonderbloom, on everything really. Because I put so much intention and honesty and, like, blood, sweat, and tears into the lyric, I gave myself permission to let the waters that it was floating on be a little less turbulent artistically, a little less complex and a little more like I was trying to cradle them and deliver them in a way that takes care of them and makes it easier to metabolize – or something.

Was your mindset different, knowing there’s not going to be the grid of the drum beat? Can drums be a bit of a cage sometimes?

Yeah, they can be a cage. But they can also be like something that’s really cozy to lean on in the arrangement. Like, I can drop everything and have it just be drums and vocals for a verse and it feels really good. But for this album, I set a goal that the songs are meant to be performed as just me and the guitar, because that’s how they were recorded. That means that whatever break that I gave you in Wonderbloom by stripping down the arrangement and going to drums now needs to be created with whatever tools I have by myself, whether that’s narrative, or a right hand finger pattern, or fill in the blank.

This made me wonder how much you have performed solo acoustically in your career, given the emphasis on arrangement on a lot of your records.

Quite a bit, yeah. I have a lot of respect for my bandmates. And if there were ever gigs that we were offered where I felt like I couldn’t cover their fee and treat them well, I would just take it solo. I’ve done that a lot. I’ve done a lot of solo tours. A lot of my writing has started out solo, and I have solo versions – for example, “You Didn’t Know,” the song from Wonderbloom that was inspired from watching the documentary about R. Kelly. That song, I poured my heart out solo and then stripped the solo version back when I was in the studio turning it into the Wonderbloom version.

Solo feels like a home base to me, and it’s something that I think I’ve resisted, because maybe I felt like it wouldn’t be enough. There’s this narrative, especially in the booking world, that they don’t want to book you unless you have more than one or two people on stage, because it’s not enough to create the energy to get the focus of the audience. And maybe it’s not loud enough, you know? I also had that in mind. This might not be very marketable, but I’ve got to do my best to just serve these songs to the best of my ability. And it’s got to get done anyway, because this is how I’m processing this part of my life,

Meanwhile, your tempo of collaborative work never seems to let up. I have my personal favorites, but can you address some of your favorite partnerships here in the last few years?

We haven’t mentioned this yet as part of the story of this record, but knee-deep in the writing and recording stages of this album, we also lost David Crosby. I’d already gotten punched in the face and then I was like, kicked on the ground. Not that it’s about me. The whole world grieved that loss. As I mentioned, when I lost my mom, it was a very complicated grieving process. I took a lot of inspiration from listening to albums like Sufjan Stevens’s Carrie & Lowell, where it’s okay for grief to be ugly and complicated and to show that. But with Croz, it was so sad, because I loved him so much, and I loved being in his band, and I loved writing music with him. But the presence that he held in my life didn’t diminish. I couldn’t hug him, but there was this sort of heavenly presence when I was writing the songs for this album, where I could hear him and see him in my mind, kind of rooting me along.

And tell me about Michael League of Snarky Puppy and the universe that he inhabits with the GroundUP record label, which has been supportive of you all this time. It’s such a fascinating record company. I feel like they’ve got a lot to teach the music industry about curation and cultivation of a tribe, and I’d love for you to remark on how that model has served you.

I like the word tribe. I often think of it as family, but I think tribe is even stronger. I feel safe with that label in a way that I’ve never felt safe with labels before, especially major ones, where, if you’re not performing exactly the way that they want you to, you get kind of put on a shelf, and then your art doesn’t get heard because, because you’re not pleasing the corporation.

With GroundUP, I’ve always felt like whatever I’m getting into is what they want me to do. They’re like, “Your health and happiness and artistry come first and if that’s what you need to make right now, we’re behind it.” And I can’t tell you how liberating and comforting that is as an artist to know that the people that are helping you put your music out have your back. And we all love each other too. We all play together and love each other too.

And speaking of Sufjan Stevens, you got to be on Broadway in his Illinoise musical. What did that add to your world?

Yeah, it was a limited run on Broadway and I did half of the run. So I had Isla, my second daughter, on February 24 of this year. And then I got a call from Timo Andres, who did the orchestrations, saying, “I know you’re on maternity leave. This is crazy. I shouldn’t even be calling you, but I can’t not think of you for this role. Is there a world where you would ever audition for this?” I was like, “Yeah, I could audition and see what happens…” and didn’t expect to get it. I came in with my newborn baby. I handed her to my manager, did the audition, and they called me within a day and said they’d love for me to do it.

Initially I thought, “There’s no way.” I’m giving you all of this extra detail because a huge part of the experience for me was the chaos and the balance of the life that I was living at home for the first half of that day in Princeton – nursing my baby and being a new mama – and then handing her to my husband and jumping on the train for two hours, going into the city just in time to perform, and then coming back home and doing it all again and nursing through the night. It was this superhuman thing that initially I thought, “Oh, there’s no way this is going to work.”

The whole experience was like a dream state – being on stage and singing that music, which I’ve loved for so long. And also, having it not be about me was very refreshing. I’m not the band leader and I’m singing someone else’s music as a narrative that’s coming from the bodies of the dancers. We can lean on the coziness of the production, and just enjoy it.

I would say coming out of that helped me to be less self-absorbed. The headspace that I was in for Maple to Paper was very me, me, me, me, me, me. And then Illinoise was like, “No, it’s not about you. It’s about being in service to something greater than you.” Whether you’re writing a song about your feelings or singing somebody else’s, that’s always what it’s been.

Editor’s Note: Need more Becca Stevens? Check out our recent Basic Folk conversation with Stevens here.

Photo Credit: Shervin Lainez

Chris Thile and Brad Mehldau: Playing Against Type

Posted on by Editor

The repertoire for mandolin and piano isn’t exactly teeming with arrangements. Compared to other duets, those two specific instruments haven’t conversed with one another as often, but consider that dearth a starting point from which anyone daring enough can create their own dialogue. Mandolinist Chris Thile and pianist Brad Mehldau, virtuosos in their own right, have concocted just such a conversation — by way of original composition and cover, alike — on their first duo debut album, Chris Thile & Brad Mehldau.

The pair first experimented with what they could “say” when they performed a handful of live shows together in 2011 and briefly toured later in 2013. But getting to the studio would take some time. Thile sums up the reason in one word. “Schedules,” he admits, with a sharp chuckle. “We both have pretty voracious appetites for musical projects, and we both love to perform. The little touring things that we had were always coming in the cracks of other projects.” Those projects ranged from Thile’s role in progressive bluegrass band Punch Brothers to Mehldau’s eponymous trio, as well as a whole host of solo, duo, and collaborative projects in between.

The two stay busy, to put it mildly.

Thanks to their respective projects, Thile and Mehldau have learned the art of accommodation, but embarking on this particular album required a novel approach. “I felt like Chris and I were orchestrating for each other a lot,” Mehldau says. “We were finding the right ‘instrument’ to play for each other. Sometimes Chris gave me a drum part during my piano solos, sometimes I gave him low cellos during his. That orchestrating is a big part of the fun of the project.” Beyond that, Thile and Mehldau needed to find a balance between airy mandolin and weighty piano. Mandolin lacks dynamic range. It excels at being soft — Thile compares all the ways it can “whisper” to the myth about the Inuit’s many words for “snow” — but other instruments tend to sacrifice their own clarity to make way for it. “The challenge for me was to not drown out Chris with the piano, because the instrument is simply louder and bigger,” Mehldau explains. “I really enjoyed that challenge, though.” Thile credits Mehldau’s ear with helping the two instruments find a shared space. “He’s such a sensitive listener,” he says. “He immediately intuits the potential issues.”

Listening, as an exercise, has shifted for Thile ever since he took over hosting A Prairie Home Companion. “I feel like my ears have grown four or five sizes,” he says about his new gig. “I’m listening to everything with far more open ears. I’ve often listened to music like, ‘What can this do for me and my musicianship?’ as opposed to listening for pure joy. But joy is improving. Within my craft, I can get so mercenary about it. That hunger to improve can result in unhealthy listening habits, and I feel like this show is actually helping me grow out of that.”

As critical as Thile may be about his listening habits, he has always heard outside the box. It’s a connection he shares with Mehldau. Both men have covered artists seemingly antithetical to their styles, such as Beyoncé or Nirvana but, in that kind of play, they’ve forged edifying creative spaces, and the same is true on Chris Thile & Brad Mehldau. The 11-track album features an array of covers. There’s Gillian Welch’s “Scarlet Town,” Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright,” the 17th-century Irish tune “Tabhair dom do Lámh,” and more. “I think the reason why it worked so well was because of the common musical ground Chris and I share,” Mehldau says. “Roots rock, Bach, Radiohead … a whole bunch of stuff.” In short, there’s a level of fanboy about the album.

Thile and Mehldau went back and forth trading favorite songs, some familiar and some not. Thile says, “He and I have operated that way for a long time, as individuals, whether it’s something we’re listening to because we love music and hope that this thing we’re listening to seeps into the stuff we’re creating on our own, or whether it ends up as a performance piece or something we record.”

One particular track shows off the imaginative possibilities inherent in piano and mandolin, or at least when Thile and Mehldau play them. It’s a striking seven-minute cover of the jazz standard “I Cover the Waterfront.” Mehldau takes over the song from Thile’s anxious mandolin shortly after the 1:30 mark, at which point Thile concentrates on singing. What results is one of his most diaphanous vocals thus far. “I really enjoyed it because I had all this time to listen,” he says about the song’s extended phrases. “So then it was like an out of body experience for me. When I would start singing, I didn’t feel like I was singing, I felt like I was listening to myself sing.”

If there’s a parallel to Billie Holiday’s infamous version, it’s because she influenced Thile. “It’s so mournful and beautiful and delicate but strong,” he says. Thile captures those qualities in bits and pieces, but puts his own hurt on the track, as well. Mehldau says, “I think it’s a double challenge for Chris when we think about the possibility of a cover. Sometimes with vocals, the original performance is so iconic, it’s not immediately clear what more there is to do. I was just thrilled by what Chris did with all the covers that he sang on — he got to the heart of what was great about the song in the first place, lyric included, but also just completely made it his own, in this very easy-going manner, like he wrote the tune himself.” Thile, for his part, admires what Mehldau accomplished on “I Cover the Waterfront,” calling it a “masterpiece of a solo.”

As much as Mehldau brings a jazz and classical sensibility to the album, playing with Thile revealed a new quality to his own style. “In some deeper sense that is hard to put in words, I really have discovered another kind of musical expression with Chris, but I would say it was like unearthing something inside of me that I didn’t know was there,” he says. “It’s definitely not the jazz guy from New York; it’s the hillbilly who was born in Jacksonville.”

Aside from covers, Thile and Mehldau include a handful of original compositions on their debut, like “Noise Machine,” a song about a restless infant and sleep loss. Thile wrote the song to his son Calvin, but it ends up taking on the form of an ode indirectly addressed to his wife, actress Claire Coffee. “Whatever I go through pales in comparison to what she goes through, and she has a full-time job,” he explains. “I’m doing what I can, but I travel and he needs her because he’s still nursing.” The song oscillates between explaining sleep’s incredible fun to Calvin and making sure he knows just how lucky he is to have the mother he does. “So I sing just above the noise machine. Your mother is a hero,” Thile sings on the chorus, extending his delivery while Mehldau dances around him on piano. In the lyrics’ nuanced construction, Thile hit his intended mark — a way to praise Coffee for all she does — without becoming overly saccharine about it. “I’m amazed at my wife and won’t hesitate to praise her, but a song where I’m like, ‘Baby you’re great,’ doesn’t feel like the right approach in this case,” he says. As for sleep, that’s still hard to come by in their house. “I wrote that song over a year ago now and I thought for sure it would only be relevant to me for a little while, but, no, it’s still very relevant,” he says.

Chris Thile & Brad Mehldau is, at turns, compelling, curious, and playful. The two create soothing music together because they bring such care and consideration for one another to the recording process. Each track contains a deep breath, of sorts — one that comes from Mehldau’s jazz approach and Thile’s bluegrass-tinged response. But Thile knows the real secret to the album’s success. It’s not a matter of experimentation or improvisation or the sheer gumption of taking two instruments and exploring the conversation that results. “The secret is for the piano player to be Brad Mehldau, and then it works real well,” he says with a laugh.

Lede illustration by Cat Ferraz.