Photo Credit: Chris Schoonover

 

“Set a Few Things Up” is a command and a suggestion, but it’s also the new single and music video from Pierce Turner.

An Irish bloke who put down some deep Big Apple roots over the years, this singer-songwriter has a sound and a style that is vintage and homegrown in the most superb way, but still holds your attention today, in the modern age, as if it is this creative endeavor that is shiny and new. 

Wholly unrefined  with an understated amount of rock and roll grit, the performer comes across as refreshing – the complete opposite of manufactured. Turner is a professional and a dedicated artist, which is a proven fact given his track record of collaborations and inpenetrable artistic relationships, but there is something so raw about his work that it’s easy to feel like a song such as “Set a Few Things Up” is a command given to you, the listener, as a direction that you can understand and should be following. His established musicality as a classic rocker with contemporary taste and extensive influences come to a head in 2022 with this release – which, as the third single, sets the stage for the forthcoming LP on February 25, Terrible Good. 

(Saint Patrick’s Day, March 17, is another date to keep in mind, as you might want to ‘set things up’ so that you can head over to Joe’s Pub for the album release show! It’s going to be a full band and a full set!)

Fans new and old can get ready for that with “Set a Few Things Up” and follow along to the effervescent, Robert Smith-esque track as if Turner is playing it just for them. And yet, we have to drive home again that the song emotes an intimacy and reality that makes everyone feel part of the experience. The brand new music video, which we are honored to premiere today, is just as anchoring and, surely, just as fun. It’s riveting, cinematic, crafty, and lighthearted. There are colors and harmonies, NYC ‘easter eggs,’ and more within the intricate, lively illustrations that conglomerate everything that makes Pierce Turner, Pierce Turner.

Mark Lerner and Nancy Howell of The Mark of Nancy crafted the video with love and a keen eye for what makes a song like “Set a Few Things Up” a monumental movement… on top of being a rocking song.

“Set a Few Things Up” reminds listeners that everyday is new, everyday is real, and everyday is up for the taking. If you’re anything like Pierce Turner, that day is a chance to rip into something musical with no qualms about the outside world. Uniquely his own boss of both his art and his day, he knows that sometimes you have to take the time to chase your dreams, and other times you have to let yourself rest. Why can you do that? Because as this single and its accompanying video explains: Tomorrow will come again and be there for you to start anew with an electric guitar in hand (or whatever else inspires you in the moment), so set up what you want for tht day and live in the moment until then. 

“Being a musician is a dodgy way to make a living, just like anyone who is self-employed I suppose,” explains Turner about how his life morphed into such a song like this one. “But it is a portable job, so there is always a gig around the corner that gets us out of trouble, so long as there is a guitar or a piano to play, I can make a few bob.  Being a songwriter requires a certain amount of living outside the box I suppose, the trouble is, sometimes you live there too long, and then you have to get up, shake yourself, and set a few things up. Hunt for a gig.” 

Doing what you’re passionate about and paying attention to what makes your days fulfilling, now more than ever, is vital to the joy you feel and the productivity you can have. Pierce Turner is an eloquent songwriter and a true folk rock star for all generations to jam to and learn from. He understands balance and reflects that in a track like “Set a Few Things Up!”

Balance is what makes him real. He is a musician and a rock star, as previously described, and he is a regular New Yorker, too, spending half the year in the city making connections and sharing his wide array of interests with the people he meets. (A musician and solo artist is just one aspect of who Turner is. He has also worked in movies and film scoring, operas, and other influential, melodic projects.)

Pierce Turner is living his truth and doing those exact things, working with people he is inspired by to make music that inspires others. Gerry Leonard, the guitarist known best for his time with the late, great, interstellar star that was David Bowie, is a collaborator on this new single. Leonard is an art rocker in every sense of the word. Together, Turner and Leonard teeter on the edge of glittery, atmospheric progressive music, and still have a basis in folksy, ambient, and eclectic Irish rock – both being Irishmen who set up camp in New York. 

One of his previous releases, “Where It Should Be,” has this bluesy storyteller essence. It drives home that idea that we can do and create anyting as we explore our day-to-day and share ourselves with others. It is these two songs that discuss how fleeting life is and how important sculpting our own path and passions can be. His tone as an artist builds out that idea in a Johnny Cash meets The Cure sort of way. Reflective fifties and sixties artistry with the production quality and electricity of the eighties illuminate where Pierce Turner is going and what he wants to say in his jam-worthy music.

“SET A FEW THINGS UP” IS OUT NOW WHEREVER YOU LISTEN TO MUSIC! PIERCE TURNER’S NEW ALBUM, TERRIBLE GOOD, IS OUT ON FEBRUARY 25! MORE INFO ON TURNER AND GERRY LEONARD’S SHOW AT JOE’S PUB IN MANHATTAN ON MARCH 17 CAN BE FOUND HERE!

WATCH the video here

MULTI-AWARD-WINNING MUSICIAN PIERCE TURNER GOES ELECTRIC ON HIS POWERFUL NEW ALBUM TERRIBLE GOOD

Turner teams up with former Bowie guitarist Gerry Leonard on the latest musical endeavor in his distinctive, much-praised career

Today, Irish-born/NYC-based rocker Pierce Turner announced a forthcoming album entitled Terrible Good. The rocking, electric guitar album was made in collaboration with acclaimed guitarist Gerry Leonard (David Bowie, Rufus Wainwright, Suzanne Vega) and is set for release on February 25 via StorySound Records.

An Irish-American musician in the truest, and most literal, sense, Pierce Turner lives half the year in his hometown of Wexford, Ireland, and the other half in his longtime adopted hometown of New York City. Both places are reflected in his songs, which frequently move between these two different worlds, linked through his keen observations and ruminations. His music expresses a duality too, sliding between the earthly and the ethereal, the miraculous and the mundane, the pure and profane. And it’s present in the title of his latest album, Terrible Good (due out 25 February on StorySound Records). Turner loves the ways the phrase’s meaning gets twisted by using “a negative out of context with the positive.”

Turner’s description of Terrible Good, however, is crystal clear. “It is my first real electric guitar album,” he says, adding “it’s an album with a New York edge.” Electric guitars definitely are central to Terrible Good, arising from his collaboration with guitarist/producer Gerry Leonard (David Bowie, Rufus Wainwright, Suzanne Vega). These fellow Irish expats (who met years ago when Leonard mixed sound at a club where Turner often played) are both fans of Bowie, the Rolling Stones, Television, and Peter Green-era Fleetwood Mac. While this shared affinity might seep into a song on occasion, Turner shares that “I like to learn from the past, but not imitate it – to take it somewhere else while using every lesson learned.”        

Turner wrote the songs for Terrible Good over a four-year period, in a process complicated by living and working in two different countries and during a pandemic. The songs taps into themes like mortality and movement, and thoughts about the past and reminders to enjoy the present and future. While Terrible Good displays a harder, grittier sound than Turner’s albums typically do, the music still contains choral touches, quiet interludes, and even playful moments. 

Bookending Terrible Good are songs that jump back and forth between New York City and Wexford. In the opening number, “Where It Should Be,” Turner recalls his father walking to the hospital with his heart full of joie de vivre. While a shadow of death lingers over the song, there also are images of blue skies and hope, much like Leonard’s ambient-like guitar is balanced by beautiful strings provided by guest David Mansfield (Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue).

Terrible Good’s closing track, “Tommy and Timmy,” also ponders mortality but with a totally different mood. Turner wrote this joyous, rollicking tale about two great buddies of his, and sang it at Tommy’s memorial service. He describes “Tommy and Timmy” as a Gaelic hurling song, but his heartfelt affection makes it a song everyone can relate to.

“Set A Few Things Up,” “Australia,” and “Love of Angels” are particularly strong examples, in their own ways, of the album’s rock edge. While Rolling Stones-inspired riffs make “Love of Angels” a spirited song to dance to, Stones tunes don’t reference Chopin or Paul Bowles like this one does. “Australia,” meanwhile, ebbs and flows between a bouncy, New Wave-ish beat and a squall of electric guitars.

“Love Never Fails,” a song about resisting negativity, is the only tune Turner wrote on the piano, but it was transformed by Leonard’s orchestral guitar work (Turner marvels at how Leonard made his guitar sound like an oboe). Working with Leonard, Latin Grammy-winning engineer Héector Castillo, and the “classic rhythm section glue” - bassist Tony Shanahan (Patti Smith, Beck) and drummer Yuval Lion (David Byrne, Sharon Jones and the Dap-tones, Chrissie Hynde) – inspired Turner to revisit two old songs of his: “Stephen” (aka “Stephen’s Preparing to Leave” from 1997’s Angelic Language) and “More” (from 2001’s 3 Minute World). Both songs benefit from their new, harder-edged arrangements, with the interplay between quiet and the louder sections (like Leonard’s ferocious solo in the middle of “More”) increasing the songs’ dynamics.

Terrible Good’s sole cover, “Rocket Man,” isn’t the well-known Taupin/John tune but an earlier, same-titled tune penned by Pearls Before Swine’s Tom Rapp. Turner’s history with “Rocket Man” goes back to his early days in NYC, when a would-be manager wanted his first band, Turner and Kirwan of Wexford (yes, that’s Larry Kirwan, later co-founder of Black 47) to record the song but they refused. “I did like the song though,” Turner admits. “The fact that it’s still a great song shows its power.”

Music has always been a constant presence in Turner’s life. His parents ran a record store in Wexford, a coastal city in southeastern Ireland. As a child, he sang in the church choir and played in a brass and reed band. During his teen years, Turner performed in various beat and folk groups, and, at 18, he had a short stint in the popular Irish showband, the Arrows. When he was 22, he left for New York City with his pal Kirwan. As Turner and Kirwan of Wexford, they played around the city during the 70s, eventually recording one album, 1977’s Absolutely and Completely, which inventively mixed folk music with prog rock. By the start of the 80s, the pair started a synth-y new wave dance group, Major Thinkers, whose several releases included a 1983 EP on Portrait Records.

In the mid-80s, Turner went off on his own. He composed music for modern dance and hung out in NYC’s downtown art scene, where he got to know composer Philip Glass. Glass wound up co-producing Turner’s first solo album, It’s A Long Way Across, which received a New York Music Awards Best Debut nomination, starting a seemingly endless series of accolades.

Turner’s Now Is Heaven, helmed by legendary producer John Simon (the Band, Leonard Cohen), was voted a top 5 album of the year in Ireland. Hot Press Magazine voted him Solo Performer of the Year and later Maverick of the Year. His album, 3 Minute World, ranked among Ireland’s top 100 records of all time and his song “Wicklow Hills” made the list of Ireland’s all-time top 25 songs. New York Magazine hailed Turner as “New York’s hidden gem” in their cover story on him. Turner was proclaimed easily one of the most important Irish artists of the last twenty years” by The Irish Times’ Tony Clayton Lea, while The Sunday Times’ Liam Fay declared that he created “the finest body of work in contemporary Irish music, bar none.”

Over the years, Turner has worked on a broad range of projects. He has written for opera, scored movies, and composed a contemporary Mass. He collaborated with Philip Glass on the song “Yogi With A Broken Heart;” done a concept album about time and his last release, Vinegar Hill, was a set of reimagined traditional Irish folk songs. His genre-hopping, style-blending approach reflects Turner’s belief that if you do the same thing all the time you will always have the same result.

Being an artist who defies categorization, however, does have its downsides. With the release of Terrible Good, Turner has decided it was time to pigeonhole his music – at least, he says, so he can fill out his Spotify form. He is quick to clarify that “the pigeonhole was created by the music, not vice versa.” Let the world know: “I hereby divorce myself from the Singer-Songwriter category, and do join the shelf of Irish Rock!”

Terrible Good tracklist:

1. Where It Should Be
2. Set a Few Things Up
3. Love Never Fails
4. Love of Angels
5. Stephen
6. Rocket Man
7. Don’t Get Too Fallen
8. Australia
9. More
10. Tommy and Timmy 

VIDEO PREMIERE: Ana Egge "We Lay Roses"

LISTEN: “Want Your Attention” Is a Perfect Song for an End-of-Summer Soundtrack

Rock & Roll Globe premieres Ana Egge’s new single

August 24, 2021 Lee Zimmerman

Ana Egge has always been a thoughtful and provocative singer and songwriter.  Her debut album, 1997’s River Under the Road, won immediate kudos and garnered her the title of “Best Singer Songwriter” and “Best Folk Artist” at the Austin Music Awards, and marked the beginning of a critically acclaimed career. She quickly accelerated her efforts from there and began working with a number of notable artists, among them, Steve Earle, producers Alex Spiegelman, Stewart Lerman, and Joel Plaskett, as well as the Stray Birds and The Sentimentals.  

Earlier this year, Egge released a pair of songs as a virtual two-sided single, “This Time/“The Ship,” which, accordingly, received further praise from both friends and fans. Now with a new album, Between Us  — remarkably, her 12th effort to date — she’s staking out new sonic territory while continuing to explore themes that dig deep into the human psyche. She claims that many of the songs on the album were inspired by dreams, and further processed in collaboration with Irish singer-songwriter Mick Flannery, with whom she shared FaceTime during the early stages of the pandemic. Their efforts resulted in eleven songs that made their way to the new album and several others that Flannery will use on his own.

With producer Lorenzo Wolff behind the boards and an ethnically and racially diverse group of musicians enlisted as her backing band, Between Us diverges from her previous efforts in terms of its sounds and sonics. While her hushed but pointed vocals are still prominent at the fore, there’s brass dominating nearly every track, with added embellishment from synths, steel guitar, and other added instrumental accoutrements. It is, as Wolff says in a press release, “a big, messy record.”

That ambition is reflected in the album’s first single “Want Your Attention,” which Rock & Roll Globe is privileged to premiere. Catchy and playful in an eager yet easy sort of way, the song suggests a chance encounter between two people who find a shared attraction.

“You make me laugh, take me off

Wanna catch you lookin’ want your attention
How you nod when I talk when you want what I got

Don’t you stop not listening”

“‘Want Your Attention’ is all about catching someone’s eye and being desired,” Egge told us exclusively. “About feeling good and moving your body. The melody for the chorus came to me in a dream and I realized that it fit perfectly with the verse chord structure that I’d been fooling around with Alec Spiegelman. Mick Flannery and I had a great time writing the lyrics and the rest of the melody together. We imagined we were out at the club and what that’s like, chasing and being chased flirtatiously. When it came time to record it, I knew that I wanted the incredible J. Hoard to take the lead vocals. His voice and energy fit the song perfectly. Singing with him in the studio was a real highlight of the whole year for me.”

Hoard was equally complimentary when it came to Egge and her ability. “Ana Egge is a genius songwriter,” he notes, “’Want Your Attention’” is another tune that showcases her endless skill in lyricism and melody. I am honored to feature on this bouncy, playful, and downright cute song. ‘Want Your Attention’ will make heads bop and toes tap! Perfect song to include in the end of summer — a beach/pool party soundtrack.”

We tend to agree. At a time when everyone is seeking some adventure and compelled to make a connection, “Want Your Attention” begs notice all on its own.

LISTEN HERE

BEAUTIFULLY MELODIC AND LYRICALLY INCISIVE, ANA EGGE’S TRIUMPH, BETWEEN US, ARRIVES SEPTEMBER 17th ON STORYSOUND RECORDS

The acclaimed singer-songwriter’s new album features collaborations with Producer Lorenzo Wolff and Irish artist Mick Flannery

When conceiving Between Us, Ana Egge knew she wanted to do something new and different for her 12th album. The process started early in the pandemic, when she began collaborating online with Irish singer-songwriter Mick Flannery, whose path she had crossed at festivals over the years. They would FaceTime regularly for two-hour songwriting sessions. “It was so fun, and the writing happened so easily — it was almost eerie,” Egge admits. “Almost every time we’d meet up, we would write a whole song.” Nine of Between Us’ 11 songs came from these virtual sessions. They wrote so many songs, in fact, that Flannery, himself an award-winning musician, is doing his own album including some of their collaborations.

Egge also added another new element to her songwriting when she started a dream journal after realizing so many songs and melodies were appearing in her dreams. When she would become aware of dreaming about a song, she would wake herself up and hum the song idea into her phone. Her dreams, she reveals, were the genesis for many of the album’s tunes.

Searching for a producer with a fresh sonic direction to bring these brilliant, thought-provoking songs to life, Egge met with Lorenzo Wolff after being fascinated by his work on the recent Judee Sill tribute Down Where the Valleys Are Low. They quickly found a common wavelength on how to approach her music. “She was interested in making a big, messy record that reinforced the message of this beautiful collection of songs,” Wolff explains. “I was able to make sonic choices in a very deliberate way to reinforce what she was already saying so eloquently in the songs. And since Ana has such adventurous ears, she would not only be accepting of this landscape, but push the arrangements into even more ambitious territory.”

While Egge has long written insightfully about relationships, the stressful, ominous feelings caused by the pandemic and social unrest led her to take a “let’s get to the truth — let’s do that right now” attitude with her songwriting. On tracks like “Sorry,” “You Hurt Me,” “We Let the Devil,” and “Heartbroken Kind,” she delves into the complexities of troubled relationships — no one is free of blame; everyone has the ability to take some accountability for their actions — as well as the ways “to have some type of bridge between the space between us.”

 “Lie, Lie, Lie” and “We Lay Roses” were so personal to Egge that she felt compelled to include them on Between Us. “Lie, Lie, Lie,” the one song she wrote solo, addresses the frequently impossible attempt to make a loved one break out of his judgmental intolerances and hateful behavior. Egge wrote “We Lay Roses” with Grammy-winner Gary Nicholson as a eulogy for her nephew; she hopes it can help people in grief “who are looking for a song about honoring someone and letting them go.”

The idea of accountability also factored into selecting musicians for the album. Aware of how few people of color she had worked with in the past, and how few she has encountered in the acoustic music scene, Egge prioritized diversity among the musicians she worked with on this record. “It’s up to me to work for an equitable, inclusive community as much as I can in my life and career,” Egge states. “I can be one of the people trying to make a difference; even though that might be small, it’s still in the direction that I want the world to be moving in.”

The players Egge and Wolff assembled were all people she had never played with before (except for backing vocalist J. Hoard) and they brought eclectic musical backgrounds to the music. Corey Fonville, who told Wolff that “no one ever calls me to play on this kind of stuff,” drums in the jams and jazz group Butcher Brown. Bassist Michael Isvara Montgomery and guitarist/steel guitarist Jonny Lam are part of the African psych-funk outfit Sinkane. Egge had seen flautist Anh Phung performing in a bluegrass band. New Orleans-schooled keyboardist Jon Cowherd has a long association with Brian Blades (Joshua Redman, Daniel Lanois, Joni Mitchell), while the horn players’ credits range from Ricky Martin to Rhiannon Giddens.

“All the players are so incredible,” Egge says. “Friendships have begun and I love how the album turned out!” Wolff (who also plays on the album) and Egge gave the musicians a lot of free reign. “It was really fun to hear the sounds that they came up with.” The percussion/drum-like sound on “You Hurt Me,” for instance, was actually played by Anh Phung on the flute. And the whimsical sound effects in the groove-heavy “Want Your Attention” were created by Egge’s seven-year-old daughter singing through a $19 echo microphone.

Egge acknowledges Between Us won’t help those trying to categorize her music; however, the album does connect to her prior work. Synths and horns, for example, also were used on White Tiger and Is It the Kiss, although acoustic instruments are less prominent on Between Us. Egge remembers how much she has always loved Emmylou Harris’ Wrecking Ball and that groundbreaking album (which also features Cowherd’s frequent collaborator Blades on drums) provides some genre-splitting context for Between Us. “Synthesizers were one of the first things I heard, along with Willie Nelson and Bob Marley,” Egge elaborates. “It’s all totally natural and part of the air that I breathe just as much as pedal steel is. Even though some people might not call it organic, it really is to me.”

Egge burst onto the music scene with her debut album, 1997’s River Under the Road, which All Music noted “signaled the arrival of a unique songwriting perspective and moving new voice.” She was named “Best Singer Songwriter” and “Best Folk Artist” the following year at the Austin Music Awards. Since then, Egge has consistently garnered praise for her music, and has worked with producers Steve Earle, Joel Plaskett, Alec Spiegelman, and Stewart Lerman and appears on albums by The Stray Birds and The Sentimentals. No Depression hailed her 2017 release, White Tiger, as “nothing less than a balm for the soul” and Folk Alley proclaimed that 2019’s Is It the Kiss brought “great, honest songs to the collective consciousness.”

In the first months of 2021, Ana released a virtual two-sided single, “This Time,” which Rufus Wainwright described as “beautiful” and Anais Mitchell called “Perfect!!! Incredible,” and “The Ship,” which, in the words of American Songwriter, “speaks quietly but defiantly of a simmering revolution brewing in the world today, reconciled only by an understanding that working together achieves a harmonious goal.”

Egge is justifiably proud of Between Us. “It was an amazing experience to work through all of those roadblocks and still come through with something so immensely beautiful,” she shares. “I really love the record so much.” Egge also loves that she has tour plans again. She’ll be hitting the road with Iris DeMent from September through December.

 February 2, 2021  Hannah Means Shannon

The name “Judee Sill” is very evocative, even if you’ve only heard of her in passing conversations or references, but approaching her early 70s released music more directly only adds to the mysterious sense that she evades any simplistic images we may conjure of her. For those who have delved into her biography, they are aware that she was a remarkable composer and performer, but had a mass of contradictions at work in her life, including a difficult upbringing and the drug addiction that eventually ended her life far too soon. Those struggles stand in contrast and relationship to her ethereal and groundbreaking music, created at a time when a “woman with a guitar” was not allowed well-rounded expression in her work.

Musician and Producer Lorenzo Wolff set to work to create a tribute album to Judee Sill that is, in some ways, as unusual as Judee herself, and will arrive from StorySound Records on March 12th, 2021. Creating new arrangements and interpretations for seven of her songs, each brought to life by a different vocalist, has revealed a full spectrum of genres and possibilities latent in Sill’s own compositions. These surprising and exciting directions shed new light on Sill’s own multi-faceted nature during a time when, thankfully, her work is receiving increased attention. Today, Americana Highwaysis delighted to debut the second single featuring vocals by Grace McLean, “Crayon Angels,” from Down Where The Valleys Are Low: Another Otherworld for Judee Sill, as well as the striking video for the song created by experimental filmmaker Lewis Klahr. Lorenzo Wolff also spoke candidly with us about Judee Sill’s life and work, as well as the inspiration behind this new approach to “Crayon Angels,” below.

Americana Highways: I was aware of the medieval associations with Judee Sill’s work, but when I looked and listened more closely, I was really amazed by what I could hear in terms of lyrics and in terms of musical traditions, like Gregorian chant and Plain song. And that seems to especially apply to “Crayon Angels” and this new version on the tribute album.

Lorenzo Wolff: “Crayon Angels,” specifically, has samples from these secret female rites. The Margaret Berry contribution is “keening,” something that Scottish women do, traditionally at funerals. The other sample that is in the middle of the song is an old African American song that women sang to their daughters. It’s called “No Room in the Inn,” so there are these two parallel, secret female rites that I felt lucky to get to contemplate. Judee has always felt so occult, and the secrets are so close to the surface in a way that gives me a way into those things and connecting with them, as an outsider.

AH: It’s definitely the kind of music where you listen to it, and you wonder if you are interpreting it “correctly” in some official sense, or not. You’re aware that you should go with your personal reaction, but at the same time, you wonder, “Am I really turning the key on this?”

LW: Yes, for sure. For me, that’s what kept me listening to her music again and again. Upon first hearing Judee Sill’s music, for me, it felt like psychedelia. I didn’t really listen hard enough to the lyrics and it felt like traditional 70s, out-there, California music, but the more you listen to it, the more detailed and almost confessional it is.

AH: In terms of making this album, I heard that you were attempting to separate the mythology from the woman. That suggests that there is a strong mythology about Judee. How would describe that myth?

LW: There are probably at least a couple of different versions of how people interact with Judee Sill. There are rabid fans, firstly, who know everything about her, and she’s kind of a cult figure. They know everything about her life and experience, and her music feels like an escape or another world that she’s built for herself to them. When you know her backstory, you can hear that her music doesn’t seem to have a lot of the dirt and the horror that a lot of her life seems to include, based on reading biographies.

Then, there are people who listen to it, and to them it seems kind of like occult Carly Simon. If you don’t know her story, it’s easy to have that experience of her music of traditional instruments presented in a neoclassical way, which she made into a beautiful thing. And hearing it that way is great, too. But for me, I think the more that I learned about her and listened to the music, the more I felt that there was something deeper about the way in which she was presenting this “other world”. It was both autobiographical and something that avoided what her life was actually like. When you talk about turning the key to a song, you never know what someone is thinking. She died very young and didn’t do a lot of interviews, but in the interviews that exist, she is not soft-spoken, sweet, or gentle, but often the music is. My interpretation, on this album, is what would the Judee of interviews be like making a record, versus the Judee that exists on the wax? It’s a sort of true biography through her own songs.

AH: That’s a really cool way of thinking about it. What did you feel like you needed to do to be able to approach this project? Or were you already steeped in her life and music?

LW: I’d been a fan of hers for a long time. I’d been listening to her music for about ten years and I’d always loved it. I’d send the record Heartfood to people, if I really liked them. It was something I was letting them in on, something we’d share together. As opposed to a playlist, I’d send it to people I cared about to see what they thought about it. But I found that I had a very different interpretation of her music than other people I knew. Initially, it was just a production experiment for me. I did the song, “Down Where The Valleys Are Low.” I wanted to see if the songs could handle more aggression or a bigger, more bombastic feel. And it worked so well that I started doing more songs, and also going deeper into her way of thinking, her life story, and my interpretation of where those two things collided in her art.

AH: That touches on a question I wanted to ask you: What was it about the songs that made you think that they could handle this reinterpretation without losing their identity? I do think these new songs preserve the core of the original songs very well.

LW: I think that when, in 1971 and 1973, when these two records came out, there was a pretty small range of roles that a woman who wrote songs could inhabit. Siouxsie Siou hadn’t come out yet, though Mahalia Jackson was plenty aggressive. But for white women with acoustic guitars, there wasn’t really an outlet for that. Judee’s music feels like it was right on the edge of that to me. Even though it’s acoustic guitars, sweet harmonies, and Bach chord changes, it feels like Proto-Punk to me in the way that she delivers it, or at least Proto-Big Star. It feels like it’s right on the edge of an explosion, so my experiment was to see if I could light the fuse a little bit.

AH: I’m so glad that you said that, because I felt, listening both to her music, and then to this album, that you were posing the question: What would have happened if she had continued into the 1980s?

LW: Yes, and there are any number of things, including her own addiction and the people around her, who kept her from doing that. She didn’t ever have an easy road, it seems. But who knows what would have happened. Maybe Blackheart would have picked her up, or Eyeball. Then she would have had an Emo Screamo resurgence in the early aughts. It is inspiring to me, though, that when I talk to people about this project, many more people know who she is now than did ten years ago. Early on in my fandom, when I’d send the record to people, no one would have heard of her. And now, though she’s not a household name, if you’re someone who digs in crates, you’ve come across Judee Sill or someone has recommended her to you.

AH: When you approached the different vocalists who worked on this album, were they already in the know about Judee Sill, or did you get to watch their first encounters with the music?

LW: For “Crayon Angels,” Grace McLean is such a scholar of all things that relate to femininity and the occult, that Judee Sill had long ago come across her desk. But there were other people who had never heard of her and others who had heard of her but never interacted with her music. The side men seemed to know her stuff more, like Jeremy Gustin, the drummer. There were a number of singers who I approached about this project, and often the big Judee Sill fans were horrified by the idea. I can see how they might find it offensive because things like “Crayon Angels” are such a departure. But the music so completely holds up to it and thrives in the rougher treatment.

AH: It should have occurred to me that big fans might be upset, but actually it didn’t. It seems like this new album could be two things: A route to discovery for those who haven’t encountered Judee’s music before, or something interesting to think about for big fans. It highlights her role as a composer and also her significance in music history to make this new album.

LW: I’m excited to have those conversations with people, though. As I was going through the project, I had crises of faith, wondering why I should exert my viewpoint on this woman who I don’t know, but the more I interacted with it, and the more I worked on it, the more encouragement I felt. The more research I did on Judee Sill, the more there seemed to be a Star Wars-style projection in the room, like Obi-Wan, saying, “Go fuck yourself, but this is okay.” I tried to listen to my idea of who she was while I was making it, to make sure that I wasn’t forcing her songs and her visions into something unnatural.

AH: I hear you on that. It seems to me that she was very open to combining traditions and sounds in unusual ways, and that gives a kind of thematic resonance to combining the elements of these existing songs in new ways, too. That’s just my take.

LW: Absolutely. Even ideologically, the lyrics have all these different faiths and perspectives, and that’s why you can’t call Judee Sill’s music Christian music or praise songs. Because in the music, the Devil is kind of sexy, and there are Eastern philosophies as well as out-there 60s occult stuff. She’s such a polyglot thematically, as well as musically. It seems like she had huge ears and a really open mind about so many things.

AH: How did you choose these seven songs to reinterpret?

LW: I did maybe five or six others that I didn’t end up releasing, which exist in various stages of completion, but it seems like these seven were the most complicated, thematically. There was more room for interpretation in these seven songs, which made it feel like she had laid the blueprint for exploring other worlds in these songs. There are other hit songs that people love, like “Loping Along Through The Cosmos,” but it doesn’t seem as broad in its range of interpretations. Likewise, “Enchanted Sky Machine.” Also, when you’re collaborating with singers, you want to leave a certain range of possibilities for them to experience and explore for themselves.

AH: To return to “Crayon Angels,” I can definitely see how the original song has a lullaby feel, and in the new interpretation, I hear that Proto-Punk feel we were talking about earlier. The video both emphasizes that Proto-Punk potential, I feel, and also reminds us that this song originated in the 70s, too. It’s an interesting duality.

LW: Lewis Klahr, who directed the video, asked before he started working on it if it was okay to take it in a 70s direction, or whether I wanted it to be more modern. I left it up to him because I am such a fan of his work, and I figured that anything he could interpret would either be more interesting or a different perspective on the song from what I already had. It was really nice to be surprised by what he made. He used photos from a bus stop in the 70s in California that he had clipped out and had in his studio, sitting there for years. The juxtaposition is very cool to me, with the retro-looking video and the slightly more modern-sounding song.

AH: It suggests so much in terms of different avenues to approach the song. The advertising imagery and the darker suggestions work well together. Often the photos and ads from that period look so pretty and clean-cut, but we know that human life is not usually like that. Especially with someone like Judee, we know there were other elements in her life. The video is a great tightwire act of not giving too much away about Judee’s life, while also suggesting that things may not be what they seem.

LW: There are some little easter eggs in the video, too, for those who know about Judee’s life. If you see the woman in the car with the revolver, you may think, “Maybe that’s related to her robbing liquor stores.” I think Lewis got pretty deep in his research of Judee and presented images that are not at all accidental when they seem to relate to her life. One element I hadn’t thought of, which Lewis included, was the idea of Vietnam Vets returning home during this time and feeling disillusioned. It was Lewis’ interpretation of one of the possible meanings of that song, and it’s really cool to see that coming out in the video.

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