Usually what happens that's problematic is that it's the greatest revelation once you fix it. I started to write a song that made me very weepy—it was a very slow tempo—about how I feel like the natural habitat of boys is a garden. Just watching these little arms peering around these giant leaves and kids running around with tomatoes...there's something about that. The strongest memories I think I'll have of my son are in the garden. So I started to write this really schmaltzy song about it. and it was awful [laughs] because it was just pure corn syrup.
But what'll happen sometimes...I also started the song "As Cool As I Am" (purchase/download) as a ballad. "I will not be afraid of women"...the truth is, I'm not saying it as this defensive, pouting, self-defense. I say it as [though I'm] proud. There's no elegiac quality. Suddenly, the phrase "as cool as I am" came into my head, and I put down: "as cool as I am, I will not be afraid of women." And I thought that song was much more out front and not mournful. So the scenes will stick around for a while and regroup themselves with other rhythms and phrases. That's a really great thing about having done this for a long time. There's a lot of interesting backlog that drifts and re-drifts into other themes. Sometimes it feels really messy, and sometimes it feels really lucky.
What was it like working with Brad Wood? What did he bring to this record?
He was really great. Number one great thing about Brad is that I call him the Professor of Rock. He's very smart about rock music, the way a Latin professor would be smart about Latin. His favorite era is late '70s-early '80s, mostly pop music. So he knows about being spare and edgy at the same time, which is a lot of what he brought to Liz Phair's first two albums. So I wanted that. He's just really clean and he's got a lot of strong things going on. But no mommy issues. Very respectful of every voice in the room. Some guys...I've met their mothers and I understand where it's coming from, but man. They can't deal with women's authority and women's voices, basically. So [Brad] is a modern man. He's a modern man exiled from disco land [laughs]. He's a modern man from the land of really classic punk.
Do you still identify as a folksinger? Do you feel like folk music is happening?
I feel like anybody who's writing things that are important to them [is making folk music]. I really get kind of emotional when I write songs and for that reason I feel like folk music is the strongest moniker. It's important to me, and I think this music is important to not just mine, but [other] individual stories. So that's why I think it's still folk music.
Somebody once said folk music is defined by its audience. It's the way people listen to it, and it's what they show up for at a concert. And maybe I'm flattering myself, but I feel like at every concert somebody describes their interaction with the lyrics in a song in a way that makes me feel like they're really paying attention. They want that to happen, they want to interact with the song, so that's folk music, too.
A friend of mine said, I know the Roches—the Roche sisters, you know—were very folky. But they were actually influenced by the freedom of punk music in the early '80s, as well as classic folk. If you listen to the Roches, they sound like nice Catholic girls gone berserk. So there's a lot of edge and freedom in what they do. I don't know if that’s classic folk, or if that's folk that creates another influence...which I think folk does very well.
Well, it evolves.
Yeah, it evolves and if you're writing with intention and you're listening with intention, then you're communicating with the folks in all of us. You're not just participating in commerce. You're not just helping people forget themselves or feel like crap about themselves. Music can really put people in a community with each other. Although, there are some concerts where you walk out and you say gosh all I know is that that person is really cool and I'm nothing. I wouldn't say that's a useful musical experience—folk or otherwise—but it's certainly not folk.
Just real quick, tell me a little about Amalee and where that character came from for you. What moved you to write those novels?
I was actually invited to write a book and I found myself really interested in trying things...it's not a very magical book. There are no dragons or crystals. [laughs] But, the magic is in the relationships, which is not unlike folk music. It's real, but it hopefully points to the magical elements of reality, which is different from magical realism [laughs].
I was interested in a kid who loves words and learning. [She] gets roped into annoying kiddom by other adults and finds herself unable to find support from grown-ups or her peers, and she ultimately finds support from both. She finds her way through her own world and theirs.
So it's like another big folk song?
Yeah, and it also has...some folk songs take place in real time in a way that helps us live in real time. So it's a bit of a hang-out. The novel's a bit of a hang-out. People are hanging out, talking to each other, and doing stuff. Like, you can write a song about going to a farmer's market, and the revelations that come from these ordinary things. [Amalee] brings out the more interesting things, the more interesting facets of ordinary people. So it's not unlike my music. I really love telling the story because you have so much more room and so many more characters. I really love getting to run around a much bigger space.
