Kim Ruehl: Good morning, Danielle. How are you doing today? How’s the weather down there (in South Carolina)?
Danielle Howle: It’s nice. It’s real windy. But it’s blowing all the pollen away. We have lots of pollen.
KR: Well that’s good. It’s gorgeous out here in Seattle … why don’t we start out talking about the new album and how you came to record that.
DH: Well, Mark Bryan (Hootie and the Blowfish) and I had always wanted to make a record together, and it finally came up where we were both available to do it at the same time.
KR: So is that where the title (Thank You, Mark) came from? For Mark Bryan?
DH: Yeah, I was thanking him for doing it. He put a lot into it, and he worked super mega-hard on it. He taught me a lot of things and brought a lot of things out of me that I didn’t know needed bringing out.
KR: Do you have a favorite song on the record?
DH: I really like the song “This Kind of Light.” I like it ‘cause I think the music Mark played on it really sounds like light … like beautiful light from the sky. That was the cool thing about working with him. I mean, I hear the really tiny sounds … but, like, on “Fields of Cotton” we wanted the sounds of cotton; so he had me play on a cotton pillow.
The thing about this record was that we recorded the vocals on a porch in front of the intracoastal waterway, which is like a marsh – well, there’s the marsh and then there’s the water beyond it – and the water was real still and flat, so it just acted like a giant reverb tank. Mark is really good at [finding] ways to record sounds from things that don’t make sounds, you know.
KR: There’s a lot of old time R&B and jazz on the record, and some country swing … is that the sort of stuff you were listening to while making it? Or do you try to just not listen to other people’s music and just make your own when you’re recording?
DH: I wasn’t really listening to a lot of music like that. That’s just what was happening to me at the time, and I just let [the songs] come out how they wanted to. I try to not worry too much about [types of music] I’ve done before, and to surround myself with creative people – you know, with Kill Rock Stars and Daemon Records, SubPop (record companies) – people who are interested in what I’ve got to do and what I’ve got to say, so that I don’t have to try to appeal to any type of human being. I can just play, and they can worry about [getting the music out there]. Because the music business is a nice thing, but I think it was also created to torture artists.
But that’s also why I love the downloads and stuff, that people can go onto iTunes, and they can just download some songs that are the kind of music they like, and then they can make their own CDs.
KR: Do you think downloadable music has opened up the industry more for independent artists, even though we all know people are getting music for free … but do you think that’s a good thing?
DH: I think it is. What pleases me more about the Internet is being able to interface with people, you know, being able to talk to them. I feel like I’m being educated by fans [because they’ll recommend other artists to check out] … in this downloadable culture, though, I just hope people will always understand and respect the art form first … but also [see the music] as a means for people to live, too. I love getting some free music as much as anyone else, but [as long as people think] it might be a good thing to pay for something every now and then, or something like that. As long as that’s out there, things will kind of work themselves out. See, I’m an optimist.
KR: Are you on MySpace (indie musicians' networking Web site)?
DH: Yeah, and I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of [that]. And a lot of inspiration, too. I thought I’d just go on there and get some friends and listen to other people’s music, but it’s gotten way bigger than that … but it’s helping me as an artist to be inspired sometimes. [There’s no other way] I would have heard of this band from Michigan, or this one from somewhere else, but I hear about them on myspace.
(On page 2: Danielle talks about how she feels about folk music, Del McCoury, Tim O'Brien, and the bands she plays with.)
