In Their Words: “I’ve never had the impulse to make a holiday record until last February. I found myself enjoying the Vince Guaraldi Peanuts records and thought I’d book a few days in the studio. It was an excuse to play some classic jazz with my favorite musicians. A lot of folks have a hard time with the holidays, but they serve a purpose to us as a people — to create comfort, warmth, and atmosphere within the darkness and the cold that can crush one’s spirit. There are a couple originals in here that address this idea of light and warmth in the darkness as well as some classics that have some nostalgic resonance with me. Hark! What sounds come flowing alabaster?” — Andrew Bird
This week Z. Lupetin welcomes Madison Cunningham — a gifted songwriter, singer, and guitar slinger who has quickly risen from shy Southern California prodigy to a nationally admired, Grammy-nominated, major label recording artist redefining what could be a new genre between the fertile plains of pop, jazz, and new wave folk music.
As the eldest daughter of a big family, maybe Madison Cunningham was always meant to be an old soul. And as a young star on the rise, she thankfully hasn’t had to toil long in dive bars and retirement community gymnasiums, as many new artists do. She has already dazzled on large stages, opening for her heroes like the Punch Brothers, Iron & Wine, and Andrew Bird, all while teaming up with luminaries like Joe Henry to bring her songcraft to a new level.
If you have an hour, lock yourself in a dark room and listen to her newest release, Who Are You Now, and forget the failed love affairs and credit card debt and smoky bars of your youth and put your faith in the new generation. We are in good hands, no doubt about it.
An expansive generation of simply ludicrous flatpickers has rendered bluegrass, old-time, Americana, and folk replete with acoustic guitar virtuosos. Pickers like Jake Stargel, Molly Tuttle, Presley Barker, and Billy Strings each have in common commanding right hands and withering technique. Others, like Jake Workman, Trey Hensley, and Chris Luquette play at incomprehensible, blistering speeds with pristine precision that defies explanation — down to the most infinitesimal note durations. We can clearly see the shredtastic legacies of Clarence White, Tony Rice, Dan Tyminski, and others living on, even if chiefly through their more mathematical, aggressive, and adventurous methods and tones.
That adventurous aggression might just be why “Chisholm,” a new tune composed by guitarists Shaun Richardson and Seth Taylor, feels like such a calming breath of fresh air. It’s a welcome counterpoint and complement to the repeated face-peeling-off that we all enjoy in this current golden age of flatpicking guitar. Richardson and Taylor are both veterans of Dailey & Vincent’s bluegrass-based rootsy stage show, giving them ample experience in musical code-switching, from fiddle tunes and swinging numbers to country ballads and passionate gospel. Richardson has performed with Michael Martin Murphey as well, and Taylor is a member of the long-running, heady, Americana-tinged bluegrass group Mountain Heart.
The versatility lent by these diverse experiences gives “Chisholm” a well-traveled, though relaxed, voluminous vibe. The melodies are resonant and tactile, conjuring six-string players and composers such as John Carlini and Beppe Gambetta — with just a dash of Tommy Emmanuel. Jazz complexities are utilized here not in a gratuitous way, but rather anchored in expressiveness and musical dialogue. Richardson and Taylor’s expertise is very clearly centered not on simply displaying prowess, but in musicality. In this calmer, more subdued setting, that dynamic is especially refreshing and subtly striking.
This week, Z. Lupetin speaks with Robert Ellis, the restless, tuxedoed, Texas piano-man who has paired his fleet-fingered, high-humored, “jazz in an Austin roadhouse” keys playing with machete-sharp lyrical turns of phrase — all backed up with his smile-through-the-apocalypse country-rock band.
Ellis has gained a beloved international following all the while creating a persona that is half the tender brilliance of early Billy Joel, and half high-hatted, Southern huckster who might tell you a story that will make you cry one minute, and then steal your watch when you’re not looking the next.
Z. met up with Robert Ellis on the road together in the Netherlands.
Yes, Michael Cleveland’s brand new album, Tall Fiddler, includes a track called “5-String Swing,” and yes, perhaps the world’s foremost banjo player, Béla Fleck, is a guest on the song, but do not be fooled. This is not a banjo tune, this is is not an incendiary breakdown or a Scruggs-conjuring, “Foggy Mountain Special”-esque number. This is a fiddle tune. A five-string fiddle tune.
An eleven-time winner of IBMA’s Fiddle Player of the Year award (and current nominee for what may be his twelfth honor), Cleveland’s “ax” of choice has long been a fiddle with five strings — instead of the standard four — with a low, C-tuned string beyond the usually-lowest G string, essentially combining a viola and a violin on a violin’s frame.
In more standard, traditional bluegrass that fifth string doesn’t always jump out, but in a song such as this — skipping, gallivanting swing with a touch of Texas and a dash of Django bolstered by bluegrass — it can change a fiddler’s entire mindset, leading them toward sumptuous, lush double and triple stops that defy any sort of quantification. Cleveland is well known for milking these jazzy harmonies, leaning into quarter tones that no fretted instrument — and very few other fiddlers — could ever accomplish with such exact, scientific precision.
Besides Fleck, and his similarly innovative approach to combining rootsy aesthetics, Cleveland is joined by producer Jeff White on guitar, Tim O’Brien on mandolin, and Barry Bales on bass, perfect pals with which to swap licks over this cheery, energetic, toe-tapping tune.
Artist:Staci Griesbach Hometown: Los Angeles, California Song: “Blue Moon of Kentucky” Album:My Patsy Cline Songbook
In Their Words: “This classic country staple from Bill Monroe is one that has been covered by so many artists, we wanted to really take it in a new direction by adding more of a funk beat to it. The tempo and groove allow for the musicians to really dig in, and whenever I’m listening back to this, I find myself in the groove completely. Michele Weir helped me with the arrangement and first we started with the bass line. I knew I wanted something funky, but also that we could incorporate pedal steel, guitar and fiddle. Once we had that groove established with the bass line, we knew we had it.
“As I’m thinking about it, it could also be fun to do a little traditional bluegrass feel up front and then go into the funk or vice versa for the solos. Perhaps that’s something I’ll think about for the live performances. Again, to me, a good song can present a playground for many interpretations and that’s the joy of creativity right there at its purest form.” — Staci Griesbach
Just the day before, his Nashville house was filled with them, as well as with a few dozen kids. It was the 6th birthday of the eldest of two children of the three-finger-style banjo maestro and his clawhammer-style counterpart, frequent recording and touring partner and wife Abigail Washburn.
But the days surrounding this have also had a party vibe. He’s been in rehearsals with his cohorts in the beloved jazz-and-way-beyond Flecktones, in preparation for a tour marking the band’s 30th birthday.
Working again with harmonica player/pianist Howard Levy, bassist Victor Wooten, and the singular electro-acoustic percussionist known as Futureman (a.k.a. Wooten’s brother Roy), digging deep into their group catalog of complex flights of fancy mixing daredevil chops, musical depth, and persistent whimsy has been a blast.
“They’re the same guys they were when I first met them,” he says, speaking from home. “Curious, interested, ever-expanding, ever-pulling me with them. There’s a very special bond we have together. I’m realizing it more and more as years go by, one of the great relationships in our lives, musically and personally.”
They’re even pulling out such rarely played and decidedly difficult gems as “Jekyll and Hyde (and Ted and Alice)” from the band’s second album, 1991’s Flight of the Cosmic Hippo. It’s challenging and exciting, enlivening the qualities that made this alchemical combo of characters special from the very start. Futureman, he says, is an “empath and enabler — musical enabler, brings consciousness underneath you.” Victor Wooten too. Levy is “the crazy ideas on top. He’s the brains of the outfit.”
Fleck’s role? “Somehow I thought I was the heart of it, limiting it but making it more understandable for the common man — I was the common man in the band, surrounded by these crazy guys.”
But with a moment to reflect on their collective history and achievements, he finds descriptions of the magic they work together to be elusive.
This is where the balloons come in.
“It has to have heart, has to have melodies, some harmonies,” says Fleck, who turns 61 in July. “Couldn’t just be a groove or a shred-fest. That’s the power of the band. The tunes are strong, good things to pour everyone’s musical power into. Like a balloon. It’s an empty piece of rubber. But these tunes I’d written, we filled them up with Futureman and Victor and Howard — the balloons get real handsome. With the balloons at the party, it occurred to me that you fill them up and they become joyful. That’s what this music is.”
They’ll be sharing that joy on the road now, including two shows of particular import. This 30th anniversary tour began with a big “Friends and Family” kickoff May 30 at Red Rocks near Denver, the friends and family here including Washburn, saxophonist Jeff Coffin, Dobro genius Jerry Douglas, and the Colorado Symphony. And on June 8 they will be taking a cherished headlining slot at the Hollywood Bowl’s vaunted Playboy Jazz Festival.
The Playboy slot is, to Fleck, a particularly meaningful recognition.
“It’s one of the neat things to being around 30 years,” he says of that booking. “From the start I was begging to play it and they said, ‘Yeah, we’ll put you on at noon’ and we’d play once every four years or so. Now we’re in the headlining slot and we’re legacy artists.”
Sure, the Flecktones have had several albums go to the top of the jazz sales and airplay charts and they have won two Grammy Awards for contemporary jazz album, with Outbound in 2000 and The Hidden Lands in 2006. And last year the band was given the prestigious Miles Davis Award by the Montreal International Jazz Festival. And Fleck has found himself partnering regularly on recordings and tours with some of the greats of jazz, one in particular in an ongoing partnership. “I’m playing with Chick Corea, which is ridiculous, on a regular basis,” he marvels, having just returned home from a tour with the ceaselessly groundbreaking pianist.
But, while belated acceptance in the jazz world is frustrating, he understands. See, banjo is pretty much standard in any jazz band… in 1919. In 2019, not so much. Even after 30 years of forging a path for banjo in modern jazz, Fleck remains singular. Asked about others doing anything comparable today, he’s kinda stumped.
He cites New Orleans’ veteran Don Vappie, but he’s generally in the mode of traditions going back to those earliest years of jazz. There’s Matt Davis, a converted jazz pianist who’s on the faculty of the University of Michigan. And there are others who use some jazz chops and sensibilities while not strictly playing that style of music, notably Tony Trischka, Noam Pikelny, Alison Brown, and Pat Cloud.
“But yeah,” he says. “They’re rare.”
Not to mention that the Flecktones as a whole is anything but standard jazz, with a truly eccentric approach and reach into a lot of styles. The 3-CD Little Worlds set from 2003 showed a boundless range that felt to some at once excitingly delightful and confounding.
On the other hand, not fitting in any category is par for the course for Fleck. He’s made a career of it, holding the record for the most categories in which he has been nominated for Grammys, 16 total. The most recent win is a best folk album trophy in 2016 for Béla Fleck & Abigail Washburn.
He’s a charter member, he quips, of the “Modern American Attention Deficit Disorder Musicians.” There are really only two others he’d put in that association: Jerry Douglas (whose fusiony Jerry Douglas Band may be the only thing out there comparable to the Flecktones) and Chris Thile (who’s resumé runs from Nickel Creek to ongoing collaborations with classical cellist Yo-Yo Ma and jazz pianist Brad Mehldau).
There’s one side of his musical hexadecagon he’s underserved for a while now, though. Ironically, it’s the one that first brought him fame when he emerged as a precocious New York City musician in the ‘70s and ‘80s.
“On the bluegrass side, people go, ‘Whatever happened to Béla Fleck? He could have been a great bluegrass player.’” he says. “Someone told me he had heard that. That was when I was at the top of my game, selling out stadiums with the Flecktones on tour with the Dave Matthews Band.”
Well, it has been 20 years since his last true bluegrass album, the on-point-titled The Bluegrass Sessions. And the one before that, the breakthrough Drive, came in 1988, a year before the Flecktones genesis. Well, as it happens, Fleck has a new bluegrass album in the works with a cast of musicians including such longtime buddies as Douglas, mandolinist Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas, bassist Mark Schatz and fiddler Stuart Duncan (all of whom were on the 1988 album) and a mix of fellow veteran stars (bassist Meyer, mandolinists David Grisman and Chris Thile) and relative newcomers (fiddlers Billy Contreras and Michael Cleveland, mandolinist Dominick Leslie, and guitarist Cody Kilby).
The timing? Just seemed right, he says.
“Now the years have gone by and I didn’t have a place for bluegrass to fit in,” he says. “But I had these tunes burning a hole in my pocket and thought I would really love to have a place for them. These sessions have been a knockout. These are hard tunes. And we’re having a blast. It’s as good as I’d hoped.”
The results will be out sometime next year. But first there’s this Flecktones balloon to float.
“One thing I will guarantee you is you will never hear anything else like it,” he says. “There is nothing else like the Flecktones in the world. I promise that. And I am very proud that were are that, and that we are back together.”
Mandolinist Andy Statman is quick to deny that his identity — he’s a devout modern Orthodox Jew — has anything to do with his music. “To tell you the truth,” he says, “it never entered the picture. I was just into the music…”
However, his latest album, Monroe Bus — an exploration of traditional mandolin techniques utilized in contexts as familiar as Bill Monroe standards and as far-reaching as klezmer and jazz-infused originals — belies that denial. And, as we converse about his history in music and the harlequin nature of the album it becomes obvious that his work isn’t devoid of his identity at all. In fact, the opposite is demonstrable.
Statman’s music is, of course, archetypically and idiosyncratically his own. He, as much or more so than any other mandolinist on the scene today, is truly original. He’s reached this destination not through purposeful attempts in his music to express his identity — religious, cultural, and otherwise. Instead he simply focuses on playing the most meaningful music he can, while remaining in the moment and establishing human connection with his fellow musicians. The rest, his whole identity, shines through his art organically and effortlessly as a result. Statman is a testament to roots music’s ability — whether consciously or subconsciously, overtly or covertly — to allow its purveyors’ souls to be the keystones on which entire albums, catalogs, and genres are built.
BGS: Your record strikes me as “melting pot” music. Whether you’re playing more jazzy music or bluegrass or klezmer, you’ve always considered your music to be quintessentially American. Why is that?
Statman: First of all, I’m an American, so the culture I grew up in was an American culture. I heard things through an American ear, I saw things from an American eye, and while there might be certain regional differences, all in all it’s all pretty much the same. I grew up right after World War II, my father was a veteran. I was born in 1950, so I grew up in the early 1950s in an area in Queens, New York called Jackson Heights. It was a diverse neighborhood. Everyone got along. Everyone grew up together. The other kids were just other kids, and it didn’t matter what their background was. The music played at this time was classical music, or jazz, or square dance music, or other stuff. As a kid we used to have square dances every week in public school. I remember every year we used to have a Lebanese American come and play songs for us. At that era you were able to sort of culturally imbue almost all of the last one hundred years of American culture. It was all there to be touched and heard and seen and lived. It was there, in the air, but it was America so it was live and let live.
What was your entry point to bluegrass, then?
My brother is about eight years older than me. He went to college in the ‘60s — 1960 I guess was his first year. He got very involved in listening to like the Kingston Trio, the Limeliters, the beginning of the folk revival. Then he started bringing home records of Dave Van Ronk, Bob Dylan, and Joan Baez. That wasn’t really so much for me, but then he started bringing home some New Lost City Ramblers records and this other record that Mike Seeger was involved in, Mountain Music Bluegrass Style, which basically was recordings of the incredible bluegrass scene in Baltimore, Maryand, and Washington D.C. in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s — people like Earl Taylor and Smiley Hobbs, just an amazing collection. I really gravitated to that. I remember for my birthday he got me Foggy Mountain Jamboree, a compilation of the early, classic Flatt & Scruggs Columbia 45s. He was also involved in what they used to call jug and skiffle bands and they used to rehearse at the house. He played guitar and sang and there was a banjo player in the band who played some bluegrass and I was just very excited by that whole thing. That just did it for me. All I wanted to do was play bluegrass.
What was it about the music that grabbed your ear?
On a very simple level, emotionally, I was excited and moved by the music. It really spoke to me. The singing, the harmonies, the instrumental playing. There was an excitement to it that I really liked. I was very moved by the slower, ballad types of things, also. I started listening on the AM radio to WWVA out of Wheeling, West Virginia, which was a bastion of country music back at that time. We had a guitar in the house, my brother’s guitar, so I started learning the Doc Williams guitar method, I learned some chords, but I really wanted to learn banjo. I finally was able to get a banjo and started taking lessons.
On Sundays back then in Washington Square Park people would go down and play outside in different groups. There’d be a group playing bluegrass, a group doing topical songs, a group doing blues, so I started meeting people doing bluegrass. On these records that I liked I was getting more and more moved by the mandolin playing — it was really exciting me. Earl Taylor’s playing and I think on the Scruggs records it was Everett Lilly playing one or two solos that were just like, wow. I was getting chills from hearing this stuff. I decided I would make the switch and become a mandolinist. I had already been playing banjo and guitar for a few years. I was still in my early teens, so when I stepped into the mandolin role I already had some muscles developed and some understanding of the music.
The record, Monroe Bus, really clearly illustrates the value and the beauty that comes from allowing our musical art forms to reflect our identities. How do you think we can help foster the idea that any background or identity is valid and can be showcased through these art forms?
You know, I don’t think that way. Forgive me. I’m just into playing music, playing the best music that I can, and I’ve been fortunate that I’ve been able to study with a lot of musicians of different cultures and different backgrounds, both playing American music and music that maybe isn’t played here so much. To me, it’s all about the music. When I’m playing, I’m just playing. Identity or background is really meaningless to me. It was always like that, but at this point in my life even more so. When I’m playing I’m just looking to play the most meaningful music I can play. Those are my only real concerns.
Bill Monroe (foreground) and Andy Statman at Fincastle Bluegrass 1966. Photo by Fred Robbins
You are always blending different musical forms in these crazy, unexpected ways. How do you respond to folks that are worried that that dilutes bluegrass or that it will kill the genre in the long run? What’s your response to the typical, “That ain’t bluegrass” kind of gripe? Do you have one?
First of all, this is not a bluegrass record, obviously.
But there are undeniable bluegrass threads throughout.
Of course, but I’m not presenting myself as [pure bluegrass.] I spent a lot of time studying bluegrass, and there are always new insights and things to learn, but for me, the original blossoming of bluegrass is where it’s at, where it reached its fullest expression. If I’m going to listen to bluegrass, I’m probably going to listen to bluegrass from before 1970. Not to say that what came after is bad, this is just my preference. The feelings and creativity of that particular period, to me, are really unsurpassed. And while the technical level might have gotten better, this doesn’t necessarily make for a more meaningful, deeper music, it just makes for a more athletic music. [Laughs]
Listen, people have to be who they are. It’s just music. There are always going to be people who hear things differently, who want to add or subtract things, and if you don’t like it, then you don’t like it. I can see that there’s a strong core of people who are really interested in playing music in the mode of what was played in the ‘40s, ‘50s, and ‘60s. I think there isn’t any danger of that not continuing.
I do believe, though, that it’s important for musicians to really try and master a traditional style. Because, if you’re going to try to build on something, you really need to understand where it’s coming from, to be able to relate to that music on its own terms. Which is getting back to the roots of all this music and being able to speak that language naturally, in your own way and find your own voice in it. You’ll understand phrasing, variation, improvisation, how to play melodies, how to bring out what’s in the melody, how to play rhythm. Without that firm grounding in a particular style, particularly when we’re talking about folk music, it won’t click.
It’s interesting that you say that, because I think that a song that perfectly illustrates what you’re talking about on the record is “Raw Ride,” a sort of version of Bill Monroe’s “Rawhide.” I love this version because the song is so iconic, but you’re still turning it on its ear. You’re demonstrating that foundation that you’re talking about, but you’re finding your own voice in it. How did you come up with this arrangement?
Well, I’ve been playing the tune for years. “Rawhide” is one of those tunes that, if played in the traditional Monroe manner, requires a lot of energy. It’s always a question of is it worth the energy for the payoff? [Laughs] It usually is. There’s obvious extensions of the melody or the chords that you hear if you’ve been involved in playing other types of music. So I just sort of followed those. As with all of these things, it reflects who I am, my musical experiences, and my studies.
…When you’re writing music and playing music it really just reflects who you are and what your experiences are and how you live. It’s a reflection of that. That’s what Bill Monroe did. His music was a synthesis, an ongoing synthesis, and he developed a certain kind of aesthetic.
When I came out of the closet and was going through that process of coming to terms with my identity as a gay man, I had a moment where I doubted my place in bluegrass. I thought maybe bluegrass wasn’t the place for me, it wasn’t a place where I could belong. Did you ever feel like your Jewishness made you question your place in bluegrass?
Not really, no. To me, it was all about the music. All the musicians I know are wonderful, thoughtful, and kind people — in the bluegrass scene and in others as well. We’re all in this together and we all have a common passion for the music. It’s a uniting force. It has a real life of its own, and we’re just sort of passing through it, so to speak. If you’re worried about the thoughts or beliefs of the people you’re playing music with, then you can’t really be playing music. Music, in its essence, is the great unifier. It can unify people in terms of ideas and feelings and speak to the commonality of everyone. At that point, all of these other things melt away.
It really has to do with heart. It’s a spiritual thing. In Hasidic teachings they say that music, particularly instrumental music, can go higher than anything. A song without words isn’t even bound by the concepts of those words. In certain ways, it’s a universal heartbeat. You can see the tremendous life force that music carries. To me it’s something that’s very sacred.
Sometimes you have to be willing to make sacrifices for your art. Sometimes you spend extra hours rehearsing or extra days touring; sometimes you have to become a martyr for a larger cause. Sometimes all you have to do is wax your chest.
On the cover for his latest album, the cheekily titled My Finest Work Yet, the Chicago-raised, LA-based multi-instrumentalist and virtuoso whistler Andrew Bird lies in an old tub, his head hanging askew: the poet on his deathbed, expiring after scribbling his final testament. He recalls, “A few days before the shoot, the photographer said, ‘OK, you have to wax your chest!’ She wanted me to be as smooth as a dolphin. My first thought was, ‘Oh lord, is she just testing me? Is she just seeing how committed I am to the concept?’”
Bird’s chest hair. “We just ran out of time,” he says, no small amount of relief in his voice. Despite his hirsute torso, that image is startling, beautiful yet gruesome, and strangely fitting for an album that examines in a roundabout way the artist’s responsibility to his audience.
The cover is based on Jacques-Louis David’s 1793 painting The Death of Marat, on view at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium. “I stumbled across that image in a book called Necklines, which is a funny title for a book about the French Revolution. I had already decided to go with My Finest Work Yet for the title, and I was trying to find an image that would make that title work, that would make it funny. When you don’t know the history of that painting, you just see the suffering poet on his deathbed penning his last words with his dying breath. I thought it was pretty tongue in cheek,” he says.
The more research he did on David’s painting and its subject, the more it revealed a slightly more serious, slightly less self-deprecating undercurrent running throughout these new songs. Jean-Paul Marat was a radical journalist during the French Revolution and one of the leaders of the insurgency against the Crown. He took frequent medicinal baths to soothe painful skin infections, and he wrote most of his most famous works while soaking in his tub. That’s where he was assassinated by the conservative royalist Charlotte Corday; shortly after, David painted him as a martyr, a stab wound to the chest stained his bathwater red. “We went to great lengths to re-create the painting,” says Bird. “There’s a lot of detail, but we drew the line at blood. It felt like if I had the wound and a bathtub full of blood it would go just a little too far.”
An album that might actually live up to that title, My Finest Work Yet, makes clear that we are living in revolutionary times, that we are at the precipice of some great calamity, some great upheaval. “The best have lost their conviction, while the worst keep sharpening their claws,” Bird sings on “Bloodless,” a sober, even scary examination of American factionalism. “It feels like 1936 in Catalonia.” That last line might sound cryptic, but it is a reference to another revolution – not the French uprising, but the Spanish Civil War. “There’s a lot to unpack in these songs,” Bird admits. “Maybe you don’t know what happened in Catalonia in 1936, but you’ve got Google and three minutes to figure it out. I think that makes people a little more invested, maybe not quite knowing what the references are but hopefully thinking, ‘I need to find out.’”
His lyrics have always been brainy, often bordering on merely clever, but the allusions to the French Revolution and the Spanish Civil War — not to mention to Greek mythology, J. Edgar Hoover, Japanese kaiju, and whoever Barbara, Gene, and Sue are — lend the album weight and timeliness, as though we might better understand our current political predicament simply by looking to the past. And the artist in 2019 might understand his duties by looking to past examples like Marat. “The flipside to music being devalued as a commodity these days is that it can maybe make even more of an impact than any other medium can. Everything is commodified, but music is slipping away, but it’s still this thing that is very powerful. It helps people get through hard experiences,” Bird says.
Released back in November following the midterm elections, “Bloodless” was the first song on which he found just the right vocabulary to sing about issues that he and so many other artists are pondering. It was also the moment when a sound gelled alongside his lyrical strategy — a sound that incorporates bits of folk, pop, gospel, even jazz. Bird was fascinated with what he calls the “jukebox singles of the early ‘60s,” when jazz vocals were popular, when the piano was a prominent pop instrument, when bands worked out songs and recorded them live together.
“The piano contains so many references, a couple centuries’ worth,” he says. “Our ear gets taken in certain directions, but something was happening during that period in terms of not overly complicated jazz and gospel. I knew I wanted to make a piano-driven record with Tyler Chester, and I knew I wanted to make a jazzier record with a good room sound. And ‘Bloodless’ was the first time we got it right.”
Bird and his small jazzy combo recorded live in the studio, which wasn’t easy. It involved rehearsing heavily and using only a handful of microphones. He says, “There is so much work before you record the first note, so it’s risky. But if you spend the time, you end up with something that I think is weightier and has more value, even if it goes against the last 34 years of production trends.”
There is a lot of bleed between the instruments, which creates an intimacy even when you’re listening over your computer speakers. However, it means you have almost no opportunity to make changes after you’ve recorded a song. “If you want to change the vocal sound, you have to change the drum sound. If you want to change the drum sound, you have to change the bass sound. Everything is connected,” he explains.
It became a house of cards. Remove one and the whole thing tumbles. That meant Bird had to surrender his usual self-criticism to focus on other things besides listening to his own voice. “When you record, you have to have something to fixate on and fetishize — something that has some ceremony to it. Maybe it’s a certain microphone that gives you a certain sound, or a tape machine. It helps you remember who you are,” he says. “I tend to forget who I am when I’m recording. I know exactly who I am when I step onstage, but you have to trick yourself into being yourself in the studio. I liken it to hearing your voice on an answering machine, and you’re like, ‘That doesn’t sound like me.’ Same thing happens when you’re recording: You hear yourself back and you don’t recognize yourself.”
During the sessions for My Finest Work Yet, Bird focused on the piano and more generally on the live-in-studio approach to keep himself centered. Rather than make him more prominent, however, it only makes him one musician among many: the singer and creative force, certainly, but only one member of a lively band. That connectivity — that sense of musicians joining together in a common artistic goal — is “philosophically important,” says Bird, as are the pop references he’s making with that approach. “The music I’m referencing was deep in the Civil Rights era, the beginning of all this activism and turmoil. I wasn’t thinking about that when we were in the studio, but I think it makes sense,” he says.
In other words, those connections weren’t planned, which means My Finest Work Yet lacks the self-seriousness of a concept album or the self-righteousness of a political album. Instead, Bird wrote and arranged and recorded intuitively, as though posing a question to himself that would be answered on this album. “I’ve always had a tendency to say, ‘Here’s some stuff I’ve been thinking about,’ but I’ve always trusted that the listener has the curiosity and intelligence to think about what I’m bringing up.”
Photo credit: Amanda Demme Illustration: Zachary Johnson
Many seeing Leyla McCalla’s performance at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival last May had a bit of a surprise midway through the set. It wasn’t just that the musician and singer, generally associated with cello and banjo, strapped on an electric guitar. And it wasn’t just that the guitar was poised precariously over her very pregnant belly (she would give birth to twins three weeks later).
It was the music she and her band launched into that provided the shock, intentionally: A powerful new song, dense in structure, forceful in rhythm, marked by her despairing vocals and distorted guitars.
“You were like, ‘Wow, this is different!’” she says now.
The song, “Aleppo,” captures deep emotions she had while watching in-the-moment accounts of the horror experienced by those caught in the 2016 siege of the Syrian city. It was a dramatic departure from the largely acoustic Haitian/Louisianan/Delta/etc. inspirations of the rest of her set and of the two solo albums she’d released to that point, as well as from the African-American string band renewals she’s done in the Carolina Chocolate Drops.
But it’s also a sonic center, if an extreme one, of her new album, The Capitalist Blues. Working with producer Jimmy Horn, a.k.a. the formidable frontman of New Orleans’ rowdy ’n’ raw R&B stompers King James & the Special Men, she broke into new territories while staying firmly grounded in her musical and personal histories. The whole of her is here: being raised in New Jersey by her activist Haitian-born parents, spending two teen years living in Ghana, staying with her grandmother in Haiti during childhood summers, and now living in New Orleans as a concerned citizen and mother.
BGS: “Aleppo” really is quite different from anything you’ve done. How did that come about?
McCalla: I was watching Facebook Live testimonials of the people in Aleppo during the siege of 2016. People basically saying, “I exist. I’m here. This is what’s happening in my city.” It was really surreal… I had the line come into my head: “Bombs are falling in the name of peace.” That opened the doors to exploring the idea, not just the idea, but exploring how violence is seen as a way to peace in our society, how backwards that is, how messed up. I wanted it to sound angry and frustrated and devastating. I think we got it!
It’s not a surprise that you’d take on social issues. You’ve done it before, of course. And the title of the album and the first song is “The Capitalist Blues,” after all.
A lot of my songs come from a very personal place. And then I start to realize that my personal experience is related to many others’ experiences. I started writing that song several years ago when I was really just starting my [solo] career. It was new to me having an agent and a manager and discussing publishing deals and the business of music. It was a conflicted feeling of making music and being an artist. And I saw how many people can’t even find jobs, and the housing market is out of control and gentrification is everywhere. I sat on the words a long time and one day just came up with “I’ve got the capitalist blues,” and very quickly realized that it would be the title of the record.
You made it at Preservation Hall in the French Quarter in a traditional New Orleans jazz mode.
I’d always imagined it as a brass band, but didn’t know how I’d pull that off. It was such a dreamy experience to record it at Preservation Hall with basically the original Palmetto Bug Stompers band featuring [drummer] Shannon Powell and [banjo player] Carl LeBlanc.
The move into new sounds seems a natural progression.
[On my earlier records] I was inspired by field recordings, before there were amplifiers and electric guitars. But I was listening to Coupé Cloué, one of the forefathers of konpa music, Haitian dance music, what bachata is to the Dominican Republic. The origins of konpa are in Haitian troubadour music, music I was inspired by. A lot of these songs talk about social and political issues, metaphorically in coded language.
I was listening to [Cloué] and Trio Select records, same concept musically but with electric guitars. Magical music. I thought about the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, everything being plugged in, Bob Dylan at Newport. My band has been cracking me up — “We’re like the Band for you!” Yeah, and it’s 2019 and people might still be upset about this! But it’s a natural extension of what I did before. I’ve never been a purist.
“Heavy as Lead” is as personal as it gets.
I wrote that song in one day. All the words came down and, Boom! it was a song. My daughter had elevated lead levels in her blood and I was devastated with that. I don’t like to think of our home as unsafe, but I realized all my friends with young children have that experience. This is a systemic issue.
You have three cover songs on this. The calypso “Money is King,” originally by Neville Marcano, and the Haitian “Lavi Vye Neg,” by Gesner Henry, are familiar territory for you. But “Penha” is Brazilian, with you translating the Portuguese lyrics into Kreyol and English, something a bit different.
That’s a Luiz Gonzaga tune. I’ve been a big fan of Brazilian music since I was a teenager. My dad introduced me to the [1993] album Tropicalia 2, by Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil. Then I got into Caetano and saw him perform when I was 15, blew my mind, how he mixed indigenous Brazilian music with rock ’n’ roll. I hear the same chord changes and inflections in Kreyol music, not just in Haitian music but Louisiana and Cape Verde and all over Latin America, Trinidad.
The original title of this song is “Baião da Penha” — Baião is rhythm and Penha is the statue of the Virgin Mary. I loved the sentiment of it, believing in peace. I found the lyrics in Portuguese online and I went on Google Translate to translate the lines. I liked the melody but had no idea what it was really about. Then I thought, “Oh, this would be so cool if I could also sing this in Kreyol!” And that’s what I did.
You’re fluent in Kreyol.
I grew up with a lot of people speaking Kreyol around me, but not necessarily to me. Spent the summer with my maternal grandmother in Haiti in ’95, and after that was fluent, but after that I lost it. My comprehension has gotten much better since I’ve been exploring Haitian music, and spending more time in Haiti. I was 10 with my grandmother there. She was very determined to make me love Haiti and help me develop a Haitian-American identity. I think she thought me and my sister were spoiled brats and needed to come experience what other kids were like. That had a huge influence on my life path.
I can’t really talk about why I’m influenced by all these different kinds of music without addressing the oppression of Haitians and black people in the world and why that exists. I live in this. I deal with racial bias on a daily basis. It’s endlessly fascinating, not something that will be solved. I try to puncture the glass ceiling of preconceived notions of what it means to be Haitian, what it means to be black, what it means to be Kreyol, what it means to live in Louisiana. All that becomes part of my music.
You close the album in Haitian parade mode with the band Lakou Mizik on “Settle Down.” How did that happen?
I got really lucky. They played at JazzFest this past year and in 2017. When I recorded with them it was the spring of 2017. I was listening to NPR and they were talking about people protesting at the inauguration who were arrested. They want us all to settle down and fall into place and be complicit to whatever political motives they have. I was thinking about what it means to protest, what it is to march in the streets, how powerful that experience can be. They were putting anti-protest legislation on the table. They just want us all to settle down. So I knew I wanted the song to be part Kreyol and heard it as a rara tune. They [Lakou Mizik] have those instruments and play that style, that’s how they started as a band. It just magically worked out. Hard not to feel it was meant to be, it was written in the stars.
Photo credit: Sarrah Danzinger
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