[kaiayout]

Tucson Weekly, Nov.3, 2010

Harpist and singer Joanna Newsom—classically trained but a darling of the indie-rock world—constantly challenges herself. The process of reaching beyond her abilities is one of her primary methods for artistic growth.

”That’s true in terms of my music, I guess, but maybe not in the rest of my life,” she says with a chuckle during a recent phone interview from her home in Northern California.

Newsom will return to Tucson to play a concert on Nov. 6 at the Rialto Theatre.

”I used to do this with my harp stuff, and it moved into my vocal stuff, where I would find myself writing something I wasn’t quite capable of performing, and I would have to practice really hard to learn to play it.

”I would write a harp figure at the speed I wanted to play it, for instance, even if I knew I really couldn’t do it yet. So I would play it over and over and over again until I forced myself to learn how. The same goes for my writing for vocals; I expanded the technical stuff to fit the song, past the limits of my abilities.”

Newsom, 28, sings in an airy soprano, in a classic folk style, floating on Celtic- or Appalachian-derived melodies that at first seem dainty but reveal hidden strength and depth on subsequent listens. It is a voice you either love or hate, and one that has been much commented on since her “official” debut album, The Milk-Eyed Mender, was released in 2004.

Since then, Newsom has released two albums—Ys in 2006 and this year’s exquisite three-CD set, Have One on Me—and an EP. Before The Milk-Eyed Mender, she also made and self-released the recordings Walnut Whales and Yarn and Glue. And she has added harp to recordings by fellow artists such as Smog, Vetiver, Vashti Bunyan and The Roots, among others.

Although Newsom has grown increasingly popular with the alternative-rock and independent-music crowds, she has a hard time figuring out which camp she belongs in. “It’s a mystery to me. I can see why people call it rock music—I mean, there are sometimes electric guitars in it—but people also sometimes lump it into folk music, pop, country, everything.

”I would consider it part of the singer-songwriter tradition. Although I don’t like the way that expression is sometimes used, it includes some of my favorite artists, such as Carole King, Roy Harper and Mickey Newbury.”

Newsom’s growing career has attracted devoted listeners who consume and digest everything she releases, meticulously examining every song lyric, musical arrangement and album cover. In fact, a book of academic essays parsing her work, Visions of Joanna Newsom, was published this year.

Newsom says the singing voice is like a muscle that must be exercised regularly. “The ability to use it, to make it stronger, is based on constant exercise. And if you don’t use it for long enough, it can start to atrophy.”

These days, her once-fairy-sprite voice has lost much of the squeaky quality that caused some listeners to liken it to a cross between Kate Bush and Lisa Simpson. It has become slightly deeper and richer, in no small part because Newsom has exercised it like a muscle, especially in 2009, when nodules on her vocal cords threatened to destroy it.

The nodules went away with rest and care, and Newsom avoided surgery, but she changed the manner in which she sings.

”I had to learn to do vocal warm-ups after I had the nodules, and I lost my voice temporarily. I took lessons on how to do vocal exercises, partially to improve my abilities and technique, but also to make sure I was warmed up and didn’t go into singing cold. That has been something that has helped my voice a great deal.”

The process helped Newsom challenge herself during the making of the ambitious Have One on Me. Totaling more than two hours, the music on the album represents three “chapters,” she says. It also is loosely meant to illustrate the 24-hour cycle of early morning, daytime and evening. However, listeners and critics have been more focused on searching it for clues to her love life and investigating themes of home, hearth and land.

She also has been testing herself in terms of composing, she says. Newsom began writing songs on piano rather than her usual instrument, the harp.

”One of my goals for this record was to try to approach the songs in a little different fashion than I did in the past. I worked often on the piano to form the core, building a song skeleton, and then adding the flesh and blood and skin. At this point, you have to decide whether the song stays on the piano, or (goes to) the harp, whether it is a solo arrangement, or what other instruments you want to add.”

On some of the new album’s tunes, Newsom doesn’t even play harp. “Occident,” for instance, is arranged for simply her piano and vocals.

”I wanted to make sure each song had what it needed for the best presentation, the right chord structures and melodies. My abilities are so limited on the piano that I didn’t want to make the songs struggle just so we could have piano on them. But at the same time, you want to test your limits.”

On her current tour, Newsom is accompanied by multi-instrumentalist, composer and arranger Ryan Francesconi, drummer Neal Morgan and trombonist Andrew Strain. She can’t say enough about her band.

Francesconi plays acoustic and electric guitar, bass, banjo, mandolin, tambura and recorder. “He’s like having eight people to play with,” Newsom said.

”And Neal (Morgan) is the arranger of the drum parts on the record, and he sings, too. He’s an amazing musician in his own right as well. And Andy Strain, when he plays trombone, is able to take all of the horn and wind parts—trumpet and bass clarinet and bassoon—and he’ll play them all on the trombone in the most amazing way.”

[pseusawbappem]

Hey all -

Go here to download a scan of her interview in Mojo magazine. I am reading it now.

Also, this should be the go-to place to post any press. I am posting the ones I know about here...


Interviews of Note

Very early 2002 interview in SFburning
Arthur Magazine 2004
Arthur Magazine 2006 (a MUST read)
NYT Magazine article (2010)
Times UK article (2010)
EW.com interview (2010)
Paper Mag interview
(2008)
TinyMixTapes - 2006

[xanaxnewtrader]

She loves THE LAST UNICORN !? Perfect.

[pseusawbappem]

Of course she does!

[pseusawbappem]

Okay, this isn't a Joanna article at all...but...read this article. Then read the very first comment. WTF.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musi...-hunting-songs

[kaiayout]

[pseusawbappem]

This is an interview! A very rare one from 2004! I heart her.



I'm also going to make an index at the top of this page for links to articles and what not...

[JetePlentuara]

^That was adorable.

[pseusawbappem]

HOLY CRAP SHE IS SO CUTE. She's trying very hard.

[MaigicyuNinia]

yikes. that mustve been awkward having this guy dominate the interview with that odd agenda, and the constant cueing with the mic. I want to stab him, ugh, that voice. *STABS

[pseusawbappem]

Yeah he's really fucking annoying. She was being really sweet and she went along with it, but christ.

[kaiayout]

Her patience is remarkable. Also, she is lovely and has the most expressive face. Thank you for posting this, as much as the interviewer was tiresome, Joanna was brilliant.

[kaiayout]

Been going through the original Joanna thread on @ and came upon this fantastic Pitchfork interview from November 2006

Joanna Newsom is quite the talker. Her interview answers are as extensive and eloquent as the lyrics on her new album, Ys. She speaks in complete sentences with tacit semicolons and correctly nested subordinate clauses. She discusses her music-- why the songs are so long, how Van Dyke Parks and an orchestra became involved, and how she handles replicating the complex instrumentation live-- with precision, intensity, and a confidence that never shades into arrogance.

But there are some things about Newsom that you won't get from this text, like how she tends to whisper "yeah" as you speak if you're saying something she agrees with, and that-- despite how she's frequently presented in the press-- Newsom is no bright plastic oddity. Her 2004 debut, The Milk-Eyed Mender, marked the young harpist as a drastically polarizing artist-- some promptly swooned at her otherworldly presence; many others balked at her bracing voice and penchant for exalted language. Critics implied that Newsom's music was essentially affected and insincere, and the gravity of the charge was compounded by the fact that her sincerity was exactly what the swooning set adored in her.

Newsom returned this year with Ys, an album that will do nothing to allay these criticisms. In an indie culture that rewards well-turned mediocrity and can be suspicious of ambition, the record's long compositions, ornate orchestral arrangements, and antique lyrics are guaranteed to be dismissed as pretentious by many. And they are-- symbolically dense and anachronistically stylized, Newsom's songs expect a lot from the listener. But whether or not the music is pretentious is beside the point. The debate between Newsom admirers and detractors seems to revolve around one question-- does she mean it, or is she selling us snake-oil? I don't claim to have gotten to the bottom of Joanna Newsom in a 45-minute conversation, but she left me with the impression of being an uncommonly graceful and articulate person, not a collection of tics and fancies; a person who, regardless of what she's doing, always means it.

Pitchfork: The Milk-Eyed Mender was a relatively small album, with its minimal arrangements and concise pop structures. Ys, by contrast, is huge. The songs are really long, and only "Cosmia" approaches pop phrasing. Can you talk about how Ys came to be conceptualized and what attracted you to this expanded format?

Joanna Newsom: It wasn't so much as conceptualized as fumbled toward instinctively. I don't really even consider it a concept album, even if it does have some unifying aesthetic choices that make it really different from the first record. It's the product of a series of very small decisions, as opposed to sitting down like, "I want to do this record with long songs and huge orchestral presences." Basically I wanted to undertake the task of writing songs about a particular year of my life. Not the task of telling that story in a linear way, or in any way that would make the story explicitly knowable to a listener, but rather, to tell the story to myself. I was starting to see a lot of connections, and I wanted to make them more substantial to myself, or at least explore them. Writing these songs was a way to organize my brain and organize these events and how they had affected me. There were four very big things that happened in my life in this particular year, and so four of the songs are about these things. The fifth song, "Only Skin", was an effort to talk about the connections between the events.

Pitchfork: Is it fair to say that the songs are longer because you needed a lot of space to examine these events?

JN: Absolutely. As soon as I knew that this is what I wanted to do, I recognized that it would be extremely awkward and vulgar to try and fit them into shorter forms. I'm not a huge proponent of the long song in general; I think they are often justified, but in general I believe economy is a tenet that's worth upholding in songwriting. It's important to say what you need to say as accurately and truly as possible, but with as few words as possible as well. In the case of this record, I did think I was doing that, but it didn't seem possible to tell the story in any fewer words than the amount I ended up with, or in any other form than the one I ended up with.

Pitchfork: And this was due to the magnitude of the events you were engaging with?

JN: I think so. And the magnitude of the individual events, and the larger structure ordered themselves for this record-- the particular form and the song lengths, and the presence of an orchestra. It hadn't really occurred to me until I was about halfway through writing these songs that it would be necessary for an orchestra to be involved. I'm not sure why I thought that; I have theories, but it was just an intuitive decision. It seemed necessary. Two of the songs, "Sawdust and Diamonds" and "Cosmia", were written before I had come to this realization, and the other songs had bits and pieces written but hadn't been completed yet. So "Monkey and Bear", "Only Skin", and "Emily" were all written with me keeping in mind there would be an orchestra involved at some point. In the case of "Sawdust and Diamonds", I wasn't ever able to make orchestral arrangements work. Van Dyke [Parks] came up with several drafts and lots of ideas, but it never worked gracefully, so I ended up deciding it was fine because it wasn't written with an orchestra in mind, unlike those other three I mentioned.

Pitchfork: Were you composing string arrangements for the album yourself before you hooked up with Mr. Parks, or did you just know it would have them?

JN: I just knew I needed to have them. I think it would be a stretch to say I composed string parts, although I did have [the songs] timed with certain parts in mind. I can't claim to have scored anything. I was, however, planning on doing so originally. The more I thought about it, I realized that as long as I had a good working relationship with a collaborator in which I had complete creative control, and as long as that arranger was a very good one, I could more capably make the sound I wanted to make than if I was writing the stuff myself. In other words, a collaborator could make it sound more like quote unquote "my music" than I could myself, because I didn't have the musical vocabulary within the realm of orchestration to make the sounds I needed to make. I had very rudimentary training in orchestration.

Pitchfork: Did you find all these qualities in Mr. Parks, such as the ability to take dictation and help you realize your vision?

JN: Yeah, what I found in him was a constantly expressed desire to help me make the record I wanted to make. I think he could have chosen to be more adamant about creating a Van Dyke Parks record, but that wasn't his desire. He generated his initial drafts based on a big pile of notes that I gave him; this sort of manifesto about how I wanted the record to sound and the mood I wanted it to have. While it's not important to me that the audience explicitly understand what the record is "about," I did think it was important that the collaborator understand that explicitly. We needed to have a cohesive vision.

So I started by giving him that manifesto, then a more detailed series of notes as well, going line by line through the songs. "When this lyric is being sung, I want this happening musically," and then I would describe something, usually pretty abstract and non-technical, sometimes in more concrete musical terms. But usually I would just describe the mood, coloration, and instruments I wanted involved. It took seven months of him writing up drafts and sending them to me, then me sending them back with pages of notes; it still took all of that before we were finished, because so many of the guidelines I gave him in the beginning included phrases that were, in retrospect, completely subjective. There's a thousand different ways for something to sound "sinister". That's the most nebulous instruction in the world.

Pitchfork: Was this an interesting part of the process for you, giving him these ambiguous notes and seeing them manifest as something entirely different from what you'd envisioned?

JN: At times, it was interesting. At times, I was worried, because I wasn't sure it was going to end up sounding the way I needed it to sound. But he always proceeded in such good faith that I usually had an almost non-reaction: "Well, that's not it yet, let me choose a word that more clearly expresses what I want this to sound like." It certainly wasn't like, "Let's just see what happens and I'll accept it," because for me, the subject matter and the story made this whole process kind of sacred. I know that sounds pompous; I don't mean that it should be sacred to anybody else.

Pitchfork: Were you intimidated at all? Van Dyke Parks is this iconic figure, and you're giving him dictation.

JN: Mostly not, because he chose not to be intimidating. I think he could've been. He did make it clear that he didn't want me to settle just because he's so great. Of course the first draft he sent me was genius; it was brilliant-- it had his mark and compositional voice all over it. It would've been so easy to fall in love with those parts because of how great he is and how much I love his sound. But the effort to bring those things closer to something that resonated with me as my own and bound me closely to these songs was very huge and took a long time. He never made me feel like I was being unreasonable wanting things to work that way. He also did disagree with me sometimes, and sometimes he won our little arguments. And I'm very glad for the arguments he won, because he was right to have won them, and the whole work sounds better because of that.

For example, I did not want electric bass on this record. He argued for it because we had enough tracks and it wouldn't contaminate anything, and we could just take it out off the mix if we didn't want it. So I said, "Fine, fine, we'll do it; it'll be cheesy, but we'll do it." He had Leland Sklar come in and play bass, and it was incredible how architectural those parts were, and how they substantiated the chord changes. In a weird way, even though we're talking about an electric bass, somehow it managed to make the songs sound more like the original forms, when I wrote them with just harp and voice. These orchestral arrangements are sometimes esoteric, sometimes not; they move in all sorts of directions from very romantic to very angular and dissonant, but throughout it the electric bass wound up being very important. We used it sparingly in the mix; all thanks to Jim O'Rourke, very deliberately choosing, note by note, each place where it would be useful to have this bass. There are a number of other things like that, that Van Dyke argued for and I conceded, and I'm very glad he won those arguments. But he only did that when he felt really adamant about something, and most of the time when I wanted something changed he would go back to the drawing board.

Pitchfork: You spoke earlier about the importance of concision, in terms of not losing the message in the medium. There was a feature in Paste that implied that the songs on The Milk-Eyed Mender were originally much longer, perhaps more similar to the new ones but got whittled down for the record. Is that true?

JN: Some of them, definitely. That was mostly a product of the fact that I was in school studying composition when I wrote most of those songs on The Milk-Eyed Mender, and I was still in the habit of writing longer instrumental pieces. When I first started writing songs with singing in them, I was still stuck in that form, and it was really good for me to force myself to shorten and distill these songs. For that record I really needed to go through the process of learning to write shorter songs; for this record I needed to work within a longer form, and I'm not exactly sure what either of those things imply about the work I'll do in the future.

Pitchfork: You tread a pretty thin line between pop and classical composition. How do you personally reconcile them? Are they even that far apart?

JN: I guess I shouldn't say that I've struggled to reconcile them, because for years I didn't understand that what I was doing was slightly different than what I thought I was doing. Since I was about 13 or 14 years old, what I wanted more than anything was to be a composer, and I spent all my time playing harp and writing music. If you ask any of my friends who knew me back then, they remember coming over and finding me playing harp in the family room every spare minute, and writing music. I was really obsessed with that as my life's goal. But even though that was what I spent all my time doing, I didn't truly understand what it means to go to school, study composition, and be a composer. I hadn't really plotted out that life in my mind. All I knew is that the name for writing music is composition, and one who writes music is a composer, so I had to go to school to be a composer.

I ended up going to Mills College to study it, because a lot of composers I really liked had gone there or taught there or had some sort of affiliation with that school. The second I got there, I realized that what I was doing was completely separate from the dialogue taking place in that school at that time, and I think that is when I started struggling to reconcile where my music fit in. Not that it needs to fit in, but what should I even call it? Should I call them songs now, or can I still call them compositions? My music generally retains an interest in melody and harmony and some sort of meter-- it might be a polymeter, but some sort of meter that repeats for more than one bar. But a lot of these ideas that I was interested in seemed to be considered passé, like they were unworthy of discussion and unworthy of listening. I wouldn't necessarily say that would be true of the professors at that school, but the climate was dictated by what the students were interested in, and most of them were writing incredibly dissonant music on their laptop computers and didn't play instruments [or] know how to write notation. It was a whole different thing than what I thought it would be, and it might have been smarter to go to a less experimental composition school, where I would have gotten neo-classical training in composition.

After a few years I left the music program and went to study creative writing instead, which in a way I'm really grateful for, because I think that sense of alienation drove me to feel like I could go even further in the direction I'd been embarrassed of previously-- an obsession with melody rather than a rejection of it; an analysis of every interval that separates every note that follows in succession.

Pitchfork: How did Drag City react when you told them what you wanted to do with Ys?

JN: I think they felt pretty good. I didn't tell them much about it until it was time to actually start organizing the recording sessions. They're incredibly supportive of anything and everything. When I mentioned that I wanted to try and work with Van Dyke, [Drag City owner] Dan Koretzky said, "Well, I think that's going to be difficult, but we'll definitely talk to him." I think they understood to a greater extent than I did that it was a big deal to ask Van Dyke to do this. I didn't really know about most of the work he did; I was in love with his record Song Cycle and that's it. So I was intimidated because of the quality of his work and how much I respected him, but [not because] he was this hugely appreciated and obsessed-over person. He kindly chose to not unburden me of my ignorance of what a big deal it was to ask him, and agreed to meet with me in Los Angeles. I played my harp for him and his wife in a hotel room there-- the five songs that would end up being the songs off this record-- and he agreed that he would do it and make it financially possible to work with him.

I think under his normal fee it would have been impossible to make a record with him on Drag City. Of course, Drag City has a very accurate reputation for being economical, and not spending a lot of money on advertising or putting a big push behind their bands with marketing campaigns, but they'll spend money on things if they believe in it.

Pitchfork: When you play these songs live, are you using a limited orchestra, or replicating them more simply?

JN: I started performing them solo, which I still like to do sometimes. But what I'm doing on this tour is incredibly fun; I'm working with a band. They're not an orchestra or even a chamber group. There's a Bulgarian tambura player named Ryan Francesconi and an accordion player named Dan Cantrell-- those two went through Van Dyke's score and transcribed his orchestral parts into parts that are playable on their respective instruments, which is seriously interesting and rad to hear. Dan condensed like five different string parts and he's just ripping them on his accordion, which is just insane. Ryan is doing a lot of those parts too-- the cimbaloms and woodwinds and brass parts. So they're holding down the orchestral parts, and then I have a banjo and guitar player named Kevin Barker, who's fantastic, and I have a wonderful drummer who's singing harmonies as well, and my friend Katie is singing harmonies and playing glockenspiel. I'm getting really attached to this particular form at the moment and am hoping that I can perform with this group as much as possible. Then, in London, in January, I'm doing some orchestral shows. I'm going to see how that goes and if it's possible to do more of those afterwards then I will. But for now I have just four orchestral shows planned, one of which is with the London Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican, which is really exciting and cool.

Pitchfork: A lot of music fans, including myself, don't know very much about your instrument, the harp-- you don't find them sitting in every third living room, like guitars-- much less the Lyon & Healy style 11 pedal harp. Can you tell our readers about the instrument?

JN: I pretty much always play Lyon & Healy harps because they're consistent in their dimensions; they're also really good harps. So if I have to rent a harp when I go to a particular city, I know the strings will be spaced the way they are on my harp, and I won't find myself unable to play the way I normally do. Many Chicago people know Lyon & Healy as the harp factory on Lake St. [and Ogden Ave.] in Chicago. [The harp] has seven pedals (the key is changed on the harp by pressing a pedal) and it's diatonically arranged. The harp that I played on the record is not my own; it belongs to the woman who played harp on Song Cycle. I really like to imbue every little thing with connections; the continuity makes me feel better about the finished work, so that's why I did that.

Pitchfork: Let's talk about Ys and its themes a bit more. There's an old Breton folktale where Ys is a sunken city very similar to Atlantis. The sea figures prominently on the album but there's nothing too overt about a sunken city. Did you draw the title from another source, or is it used more loosely, to allude to the mythological spaces the album inhabits?

JN: [The title] was the last thing that I chose, after all the songs and the cover art were finished. So none of the songs directly allude to that myth. But the main themes that emerge out of that myth are really close to the themes on the record-- mortality, decadence, an excess of water, isolation, rebirth. The myth is also significant to me because of the way that I encountered it, which relates to one of the huge events the record is about.

I also liked the power of the word itself. I liked how violent and cryptic it felt; it's such a daunting word to encounter. I like how it contrasted this finely rendered, carefully composed front cover-- the painting is information-dense, formal, and stylized; it looks the way something looks when a painter spends a year on it, which is what Benjamin [Vierling] did. So it has all this detail and carefulness to it, which was really important to me and relates very closely to the record. But I also felt like it needed some sort of ballast, or balance, next to it, to reflect the other elements of the record; its innate violence. I wanted a word that was like throwing a brick at the visual on the front cover; I liked that whenever someone looked at that cover they also had to encounter this short, weird word.

Pitchfork: So the ostensible resonance between your choice of "Ys" and the flooding of New Orleans and Indonesia is a coincidence?

JN: I wouldn't necessarily say that; those things probably did factor into my choice even if they weren't the central reasoning behind it. But I do feel that the image of the flood in general resonated more with me; I was coding a lot of my experience in terms of excess of water, and it was something that was seeping into my consciousness from all around at the time when I was writing some of these things.

Pitchfork: The cover seems like a good symbolic digest of the album's themes. There's a moth, which can symbolize transformation; a sickle, which can stand for depletion and renewal; an open window standing for entrapment and release, framing a bird, which, according to folklore, symbolizes bad luck or death when it lands in a window. So the album seems very taken up with binary, metaphysical transformations. Can you talk about the literary or musical traditions from which you derived this very classical interpretation of art, which seems to privilege the beauty of natural cycles over man-made beauty, and which seeks to root human experience in these cycles?

JN: I don't necessarily see the elements that I invoke on the cover and in the songs as being in binary opposition. I know certain binary tensions emerge between these elements, but a lot of times they're more like archetypal elements; these free-standing, huge forces. Mortality, standing alone, as a thing; as opposed to, "Over here's life; over here's death. Here's bad luck, but here's blessing and redemption. Here's water; here's fire." Certainly those things come up again and again in the songs, but it's not intentional, and probably has more to do with the fact that those things emerge in real life, without any effort on our part whatsoever, than they are derived from any classical tradition. I think classicism in general might reflect more closely the natural order of human life, while postmodernism is somehow removed from the natural order, more cerebral and sterile, removed from real life on some level. So what seems like classicism in some of these songs might be just what I view as an accurate reflection of real life on this planet.

Pitchfork: You don't perceive postmodernism as mirroring the disruption wrought by technology on these natural cycles-- effectively, a reflection of modern life, however unnatural it may be?

JN: I wouldn't necessarily argue against that; of course I rely on a lot of postmodern forms myself within the narrative of these songs. I can't call them linear narratives, and I can't call them chronological in a traditional, classical sense; I'm sure there's plenty of stuff I borrow more from William Faulkner than William Shakespeare. I just find it funny that at this point, we see a collection of highly charged, highly potent symbols as referring back to a classical aesthetic, because to me they seem deeply connected to the pedestrian actuality of real life.

Pitchfork: The song "Emily" is very taken up with astronomy and astrology, both literally and figuratively-- a mud cloud is "mica-spangled"; a far butte lit by a flare and ship sailing toward the morning both invoke lodestars; Emily's a "beam of sun," and so on. It seems like Emily has a very scientific grasp of the cosmos-- "she taught me the names of the stars overhead"-- while the narrator has a more mythological sensibility: she knew "only the Pleiades." How important is this tension between science and magic to the album, and how does it relate to its cycles of escape and return?

JN: Like every other song on this record, "Emily" is deeply biographical. The Emily in the song is my sister, who's an astrophysicist; the narrator is myself, who is not an astrophysicist. Emily is the wanderer; she lives in Argentina and sometimes New Zealand. I'm not a wanderer, which is funny because I'm on tour half the time. I'm a home, hearth and family kind of person. It's difficult for me to make too many intelligent comments about what you brought up because the song really is a very personal reaction to real life. Joanna speaks about four huge events that happened in her life that led to the songs on Ys. Has she disclosed what they are?

[pseusawbappem]

Only one - her best friend passed away. She doesn't say how or when, only that it happened, and she was on the road near a cornfield when she got the call (thus the lines in Cosmia). The rest she keeps to herself.

I kind of like it that way.

[kaiayout]

Thanks for the info. I kind of like that too.

I found that Pitchfork interview from '06 utterly fascinating, reading about the work that went into the arrangements and Van Dyke Parks' contributions. She is very intelligent.

[JetePlentuara]

Only one - her best friend passed away. She doesn't say how or when, only that it happened, and she was on the road near a cornfield when she got the call (thus the lines in Cosmia). The rest she keeps to herself.

I kind of like it that way.

That even makes it more heart-breaking.

She is very intelligent. And yes, she sure is.

[kSmica]

OMG. If she worked with Dolly I would just die.

[Rufio]

OMG. If she worked with Nicki Minaj I would just die.


i'm not even being sarcastic, bb. i'd LOVE to see/hear that collab!

[kaiayout]

Thanks for posting that

I love this:
"I’m always terrified I’ll never write anything good again. It’s a constant state. In other news, I’m hoping to go to cooking school … and work on my posture."

[kaiayout]

Great American Songwriter interview



Joanna Newsom stunned everyone with her third album, Have One On Me, which is simultaneously her most accessible work, and, at two hours long, her most challenging. We chatted with one of rock music’s most creative minds to find out what makes her tick.

You’ve said there’s a loose theme to Have One On Me. If you could describe the story being told in a sentence, what would it be?

It would be the title of the record, in the imperative mood.

Most of the songs are over five minutes long, and the longest is 11 minutes. Do you worry that some fans might not have patience or time to make it through the whole thing?

Yeah, I do worry about that. I guess you have to be in the right mood to get into it. And certain folks never get in that mood.

What’s a song you’re particularly proud of on the album, and why?

“Does Not Suffice,” I think. And “On A Good Day.” Simplicity is sometimes hardest for me.

Which songs came first on the record? Were they all written post-Ys?

I started “Kingfisher” sometime between when I recorded “Ys” and when the album came out. And I remember writing the instrumental part to “Have One On Me” on a big old beautiful grand piano in the Sear Sound studio, in New York, while Jim O’Rourke was observing his monastic session of solitary “Ys” mixing, and I was waiting to be let back in the room.

Do you typically write songs on the harp?

For this album, for the first time ever, I decided to write the bulk of the songs on the piano. I’m not a very good piano player, and so I thought it would be an interesting exercise, to write songs on an instrument that absolved me of any obligation to do something interesting with my hands. I wanted to focus on the bones of the songs – the melodies and chords. Sometimes, with the harp, I can get carried away thinking about instrumental arrangements before the songs even know what they are, which ends up producing sort of frenetic, abstract work, with the fussiness of a premature infancy. I wanted these songs to be measured and solid, pitched low and heavy. Then, once they were sketched out, I switched back to the harp, to fill in the instrumental details.

When did you start writing songs? What were they like? Were they more “conventional,” less, or the same?

I was a little kid when I first started writing songs. So the songs were kid songs, in the beginning. I wrote a lot about weather patterns and animals. Then there was a long dry spell, between about age ten and age seventeen, when I didn’t write songs with words and singing anymore; I only wrote instrumental songs. On the back end of that period, in my late teens, the instrumentals sorta resembled my second record, “Ys,” except, as I said, that they didn’t have any singing at that point.

Are there any particular words you love, or hate?

I’ve always loved “derelict,” for its accidental diversity and poeticism of meaning, in adjectival and noun form.

You’ve said for Ys, you pored over every syllable before it was finished.

Well, I was in a mathematical frame of mind, I think. Not real math, but intuitive math – a kind of idle, self-soothing impulse, like making sure all three Dixie cups have the same number of dry pinto beans in them. That impulse didn’t govern the meanings of the songs, or the spirit of the record, but somehow I needed it – I needed that syntactic hyper-vigilance, to act as a mill through which all those songs had to pass in order for the record to find itself.

You prefer not to discuss your lyrics too much, instead letting your audience draw their own conclusions. Why is that? Wouldn’t it be interesting for them to know the stories behind the songs?

Maybe less interesting than you’d think.

Is your lyric and music writing style “automatic”?

I think it’s automatic, but not fixed. It changes over time, as I change. Like any creative impulse, it’s a product both of the essential self and of the changing environment.

Do you write the lyrics separately from the music?

These last few years, I’ve found that I write lyrics based on the music, prompted by it. But when I first started writing the songs for the first album, I would begin with lyrics, and then try to set them to music.

You’ve said you’re an insomniac. Do you write or make music a lot during those early morning hours?

I like to think I do. But the hours have a degrading effect on the mind as they roll along. I do better work early in the evening, before I get too loopy.

Have One On Me is two hours long and three sides. Did you have a clear picture that that’s how you wanted it to be before you started making it?

No, I didn’t. Not in the beginning. I think I was more than halfway done writing the material, before I started to see its natural form.

How long do you estimate you spent writing the songs for the album?

It’s got to have been at least three years. Going on four.

Were they easier to write than the songs on your previous albums?

I remember them as being the hardest, by far. But maybe I say that every time.

It’s fascinating how you went over the songs with the arrangers bar by bar in creating the tracks. Can you talk about what the arrangers brought to the table?

They contributed more than I’ll ever be able to repay them for, or convey in any interview. Ryan Francesconi is a brilliant musician and composer, and this record wouldn’t have happened without him. Same goes for Neal Morgan. It’s true that the arrangements on the album were the product of conversation—sustained, sometimes weeks-(or months)-long conversation—between us three.

On the other hand, as I think Ryan has mentioned in interviews before, the ideal scenario for all of us was when he or Neal would present an arrangement to me and I would have no comments whatsoever. There were a number of times that happened, when Ryan or Neal’s initial read on the song was so perceptive and sensitive, and so much a faithful product of our initial discussions of the theme and spirit of that song, that I would have nothing to amend, edit, add or subtract. In that sense, it is a bit misleading for me to have said that we went through all the songs “bar by bar”.

Certain songs were presented to me by Ryan in an almost identical form to how they appear on the album. It was thrilling to work with a dear friend who understood this record so well, and understands me so well. There were many, many things that didn’t need to be said. The same goes for Neal’s drum and vocal arrangements. Those dudes are both miraculous musicians and writers. Their commitment to helping me make the record I wanted to make was an immeasurable gift.

In the song “You And Me Bess”, you sing: “I hope Mother Nature has not overheard! Though she doles out hurt like a puking bird”. What a cool image. Do you remember coming up with it?

I don’t remember, no. I generally only ever remember coming up with the most belabored images, the ones I’m the least proud of. The rest tend to just shuck into existence along the way, as a natural byproduct of the story I’m trying to tell.

The album has received a lot of critical praise. Do you read your reviews?

Well, I tend to not. Sometimes my mom or dad sends me something that I read. I have moments of weakness, but generally I abide by the belief that it’s better to not read them.

Did the time when you lost your voice inspire you to make music at all?

Not directly, I’d say. But I was sure ready to get back to it. I was scared I might not ever be able to sing again. That fear was always on the edge of my mind during the months of not speaking or singing. So certainly I was grateful to get back to it, when I found that I physically could.

Who are some authors and poets you love? Are there any that have had a direct influence on your writing?

The type of writing that excites and inspires me does tend to change every year or two. These last few years I’ve read a lot of Hemingway, Walker Percy, John Updike, a little Doris Lessing, and some of the less famous books by William Faulkner.

Do you ever feel writers block?

Yes, and I don’t know how to beat it, either. Tough luck all around.

Random question: have you ever listened to Jethro Tull’s Thick As A Brick? Are you a fan?

Oh yes, I am a fan. Jim O’Rourke first played me that record, in a tiny bar in Japan. 75% of the best records I know were introduced to me by him.

You licensed “Sprout and the Bean” to Victoria’s Secret for use in a TV commercial. What is your stance on licensing music for commercials? Were you happy with its use?

Well, my stance is different than it used to be, that’s for sure. It’s starting to feel like I ought to say yes to the occasional commercial, in order to continue making music for a living. Maybe that’ll change, at some point, as our society figures out a new way to compensate musicians for work, to make up for the fact that folks aren’t buying many records anymore. But at the moment, I have to subsidize my income by doing odd stuff, like that commercial. I should say, though, I didn’t mind that particular one, too much, because they didn’t use my voice. For some reason the exclusion of vocals protected the song slightly, for me.

What singers have inspired your vocal style?

Well, I do think Roy Harper has!

Do you have any musical goals you haven’t explored yet?

There’s some music theory stuff that I wish I were better at. And, someday, I’d like to revisit the trickier classical repertoire that I’d begun amassing in my late teens and early twenties, which I then sort of dropped, along the way. I couldn’t concentrate on too many musical ideas at once. But I’d love to go back to it.