The release of a debut album is a momentous accomplishment for an artist. For singer-songwriter Satya, the June 5 arrival of her first full-length, Yellow House, also represents the culmination of a long and emotional journey.
A Bay Area native who recently moved to Los Angeles, Satya initially started writing the songs for this album in early 2020, with the soon-arriving pandemic serving to provide her time to work on her music along with delving into her own journals, where she explored her feelings involving growing up in a household that was both abusive and loving.
The songs on Yellow House certainly reflect this duality of emotions. Her lyrics touch upon moments of madness, darkness, and desertion, while also offering up the possibility of escape and survival. Her singing holds an alluring calmness even as she’s addressing some highly charged topics. The album’s laid-back music, which combines elements of neo-soul, dreamy folk, hushed blues, and smokey jazz, serves to support her subdued vocals, creating an inviting, enveloping sound. The blending of musical styles suits someone who has played in Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium, sung (and lived) in New Orleans, and performed at San Francisco JazzFest and Hardly Strictly Bluegrass back on her Bay Area home turf.
Satya, following some work with another producer, recorded Yellow House back around 2023 with noted blues guitarist/producer Colin Linden (Keb’ Mo’, T Bone Burnett, Bruce Cockburn) at his home studio in Nashville. When she spoke with BGS, she talked about Linden’s important contributions to the record – as well as the significance of covering Lucinda Williams’ “Fruits of My Labor” and the Grateful Dead’s “Box of Rain,” the influence of Mazzy Star, and how the release of Yellow House is both a proud moment and a bittersweet one.
How did this album, Yellow House, come together?
Satya: I started writing this project in 2020. The first song I started with was “Circles.” Then the pandemic hit. I was going through a lot at the time with family stuff. I really started writing a lot of the songs for myself.
It was something that I was working on. Then the years would go by and I would kind of put it down and work on a side project. This one always just felt so personal that I wanted it to feel right, and I wanted it to really capture sonically what I wanted.
Do you feel that your sound evolved from your prior EPs (2022’s Deep Blue and 2020’s Flourish Against Fracture) or is more like a continuation of your earlier work?
This album feels like a continuation of [my] first EP I released, in a way, sonically. … I have other stuff out that definitely feels more like soul- and R&B-forward. This one, I feel like, went back into the folky, more Americana style. I don’t even think it was kind of subconscious. It was just the songs that were happening sounded that way. And I think it definitely captures a sound that I just naturally gravitate towards.
One thing that I really loved about the album was the way your singing and the instrumentation floated harmoniously with each other – and I was wondering how you achieved this airy, lived-in feeling?
That’s a good question. I know what sounds I’m drawn to. I reference Mazzy Star a lot for this project. I’ve always kind of felt listening to her, [Mazzy Star lead singer Hope Sandoval] and listening to that band, there’s a whole world that you get sucked into sonically.
This album really is based off of my past and [is] kind of a world. So, I felt like I wanted to create that same spatial sonic feeling. I think, for me, what draws me into those spaces, I think I’ve just taken notes of other artists that I love. And I love slide guitar a lot. I love the organ. I love the Rhodes. I love things that feel like reverb or taking up space.
I grew up singing in choirs and church. So, being in a wide room and hearing sounds bounce off the wall, I really wanted to make sure that the tracks felt not too airbrushed. I wanted everything to feel very raw and, you know, some things are one take.
Colin also definitely had to remind me, too – because I like to contradict myself – as much as I love everything sounding raw, I’m a]perfectionist. So, if we’re going to do it in one take, I need to do a hundred takes. But he was very good, I think, at kind of sifting through and just like allowing things to be.
How did you get together with Colin Linden as your producer?
I met him like two years before we actually recorded the album. I connected with him through my manager, Phil Green, who used to work with an artist named Fantastic Negrito. And I believe Fantastic Negrito had been working with Colin Linden. So, he was recommended to me. At the time I was living in New Orleans, too. So, I was like, “Okay, Nashville is close.” And I made my way out there.
Actually, one of the songs on the project, “Heaven’s Cry,” we just wrote that day – the first time I met him. Then, a few years later, we brought the album to him.
How big of a contribution did he make on the album?
He is a huge part of how the sound came out, and just like how the album came out. First of all, his studio is like my dream studio. He has a home studio in the back of his house. It’s like separate, through his backyard. It’s beautiful. And he just collects so many vintage, old guitars, mics and equipment.
I really just loved his approach, too, because a lot of these songs I came with were fully written. A lot of [what he did] was just kind of restructuring [the songs] or him taking the lead with rearranging.
We spent a week. I flew out to Nashville. We recorded every day, and it just felt really organic. I think that’s also why I really gravitated towards working with him. I just really loved his approach to music and also just his passion for it.
I don’t like using a lot of auto-tune or things on my voice. I really love performing live and I also love performing with a band – just having the live instrumentation… Colin loves live tracking and bringing in instrumentalists and all of that. So, yeah, I just gravitated towards working with him and it just felt really comfortable.
There was a lot of live tracking during the week you were at his studio?
Yeah, definitely. I brought the vocal stems to him. I had kind of recorded all these songs with a different producer, and then we put it down. So, I brought all the stems with me. Some stuff I already had tracked, but some of the stuff we fully reopened. He’s all over it playing slide guitar. His wife actually was playing organ on a lot of the tracks. We brought in an amazing bassist who is playing upright on some of it and a live drummer. So, we definitely had a lot of live tracking.
How significant was it to have done some work with Colin before getting into the studio with him?
I think I was very used to – especially because of the pandemic – being in my own studio and being kind of isolated with writing, which I think there’s a lot of beauty in, too. But that was the first time in a long time where it was just a full week dedicated to just “the art.” And I think that was really special.
The song “Circles” was the first one that you recorded, and did that song show you a way into the album and led to the songs connecting with each other?
Yeah, definitely. I wrote “Circles” and it just kind of sparked all the other songs – and just the concept, too, I think. “Circles” just opened up the idea; it felt like that song was needed to be next to others. “Circles” definitely felt like, sonically, “Oh, okay, this sound feels really nice.” And I think it kind of creates the world for all the other songs to live in.
The album contains two covers – Lucinda Williams’ “Fruits of My Labor” and the Grateful Dead’s “Box of Rain.” How did they become part of this album?
When I perform covers, I try my best to embody the song or embody the lyrics and tie them to my own feelings.
Well, “Fruits of My Labor” – I loved that song forever and ever. I didn’t plan to have that on the album. It was the first day that I came to Colin’s house. I had been covering that song [since] when I was doing small tours with my band. We were doing an arrangement of it, I played it for Colin, and he was like, “Okay, so we’re tracking that right now!” I was listening to that song so much after the pandemic and her lyrics just really stuck with me.
And then “Box of Rain”… that was another song that I had covered. My grandfather, he loves that song a lot. I grew up listening to it and I just love the lyrics. I wanted to add it on the album too, just because the whole album is around my family. “Box of Rain” really reflects to me just so much beauty, as well, in my family. When I hear that song, it just reminds me of a lot of the joy and a lot of the sweetness. So, I wanted to add that too.
When did this week of recording take place?
I think it was 2023.
So, it has taken some time to get it all done?
Yeah, I took a while for sure. You know, if I lived in Nashville, after that week, I could have gone back and listened to everything. But a lot of it was kind of one and done, so it was a lot of him sending me tons of different forms of the mixes and me writing feedback and going back and forth – getting the project mixed and mastered, and then everything else around it. But, yeah, it was a long time coming.
It must be really an emotional experience to have these songs finally coming out?
Yeah, it definitely is. It feels like a mixture of emotions for sure, because I’ve sat on these songs for so long. I think it’s just like – with a lot of musicians, I’ve heard and I’ve always felt this way – by the time a song is ready to release, I’ve already heard it a thousand times and I wrote it years ago. A lot of these songs were heavier, so they were a way for me to process everything I was feeling. It definitely feels like a release to be able to just finally let it all go and give it away.
I feel like I had to really take a step back when this project was done and just look at my own personal life over the last six years – and how much I think I’ve grown and overcome and a lot of things I feel have healed. It feels like, I think, a lot of things at once. I think I feel very proud and also very bittersweet from that time.
I think that also just writing this project kind of showed me the power in music and art, and how much it can bring, and cultivate so much healing, and connection with other people even. Like the conversations just kind of sparked by sharing these stories have been really special. But at the same time, I’m going to be unwrapping a lot of this stuff forever and I think it will always spiral outward, you know.
Photo Credit: Lola Lankford
