Juliana Hatfield

Juliana Hatfield

Photo: David Doobinin

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Juliana Hatfield On Independent Thinking, Living In A Nuance-Free World & Her Unflinching New Album 'Blood'

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The mighty singer/songwriter Juliana Hatfield just wants space to write songs—and making her new album, 'Blood,' entailed hiding out from the thought police
Morgan Enos
GRAMMYs
May 17, 2021 - 4:35 pm

Being a singer/songwriter doesn't just entail coming up with catchy melodies and lyrics. For Juliana Hatfield, who's written songs virtually nonstop for decades, freedom of thought is as crucial to her craft as anything.

Want a digest of Hatfield's thoughts on the matter? Consult her new song, "Mouthful of Blood," from her new album, Blood, which came out May 14. "If I say what I want to say/It might just get me killed," she warns. "There's no freedom in expression." (The song title alludes to what can happen after biting one's tongue.)

"I'm not necessarily on the side everyone thinks I am," Hatfield tells GRAMMY.com over the phone from her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "I'm not registered as a Democrat. I'm not registered as a Republican. I'm registered as an independent. I want the freedom to think independently, but it seems that more and more people are being punished for thinking independently."

Blood is heavy artillery against moral absolutes and a sword against scolds; its wealth of melodic information acts as a Trojan Horse for expressions unvetted by the cancel-culture brigade. Hatfield finds it tough to express the meaning behind "Mouthful of Blood" in particular. "Even when I try to talk about the song and what it's about, I stumble because I can't even talk about it," she says. "It feels dangerous."

But she does articulate her thoughts on the subject of censorship—along with so many other topics, internal and external. GRAMMY.com gave Juliana Hatfield a ring about freedom of expression, mining romantic dysfunction for lyrical gold and the inspiration behind every song on Blood.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Your record gets me excited about guitars again. For me, that excitement comes from how the vocal melodies interlock with the chord changes. Who are your favorite melody writers?

Well, the guy who wrote a lot of Olivia Newton-John's material, John Farrar. He's one—also, Jeff Lynne. I feel like the '70s were a great period for melody-writing. I don't know; I'm just going to keep saying things from the 1970s, because when I was a child then, that's the stuff that got locked into my brain. Also, people like Carole King and James Taylor. Carole King's a master at that kind of thing.

You can list as many people from the '70s as you like!

You know, just all the stuff that was on the radio then. I would listen to the radio and there were all these melodies, and I'd sing along without even paying attention to the lyrical content. The lyrics were just a melody delivery system and all I cared about were the melodies.

So many great melodies! Carly Simon's theme from The Spy Who Loved Me. "Nobody Does It Better." That's a great melody. Also, the theme from Mahogany—Diana Ross. That's a great melody. [quietly sings hook to herself] The melodies just go all over—up and down and all around. Great stuff.

Do you think of melodies in theoretical terms, or is it just your ear?

It's just my ear. I think of music theory in the same way I think of math, and I always hated math. Having to actively use my brain—I don't enjoy that. That's partly why I never listened to lyrics for a long time until I was well into my adulthood. I never paid attention. Because when I have to think about what I'm hearing, it disrupts the listening experience.

But I figured out how to pay attention to what the lyrics are saying because it does matter. I mean, obviously. And I think as I've learned how to be a better listener, I think my lyric-writing has gotten better.

How did "The Shame of Love" come about?

I was figuring out how to use GarageBand and how to record into my laptop as I was making this record. Making this record was my learn-by-doing experience. And I was encountering problems along the way because I hate engineering and I hate computers and I don't like digital technology.

This friend of mine in Connecticut named Jed Davis was walking me through whenever I would encounter a problem with GarageBand. He was helping me get past all the little bumps in the road. I told him I had all kinds of little snippets of chord progressions and riffs that I didn't know what to do with, and he said, "Send me whatever you have and I'll play around with it." So, he ended up putting some stuff together and that helped me finish it. 

"The Shame of Love" started when I sent him a short video of me playing acoustic guitar into my Photobooth camera on my laptop. It was [those] chords [that ended up] at the beginning of "The Shame of Love." He took that very recording and used it as the intro, and then he treated it a little bit in the rest of the verses. He programmed the drums. Another little chord progression riff I had sent him, he built and structured into a chorus.

Then, I was able to write lyrics and melodies over it and add some more guitars and things.

How about "Gorgon"?

"Gorgon," that was more a lot of me doing that one at home. Adding drums at the studio later when the studio opened back up. 

It's a continuation of my thoughts on intimate relationships. I'm not really a believer in that sort of existence. The norm, you know, of being partners with someone intimately over a long period of time. That's always been something that doesn't come naturally to me. It doesn't make sense.

I'm talking about that sort of thing. How what the other person expects and wants are things that I don't feel have anything to do with who I really am. The song twists the idea of a Gorgon, like Medusa, and makes the snakes into the other person's fingers.

It's like being touched when you don't want to be touched. When you're in a relationship, the other person assumes some freedom to reach out and touch you whenever he feels like it, but when you don't always necessarily want to be touched. The unwanted fingers in my hair are like snakes in my hair.

But also, [the song is about] feeling like I'm the person who turns my partners into stone because I'm not what they want me to be. I'm not the nurturing, attentive person that I'm always expected to be.

What can you tell me about "Nightmary"?

That was just about looking around me and being so disappointed with the way people [behave]—the lies and corruption and greed. It's totally exposed. It's all out there in the open. No one's even pretending. The liars aren't pretending they aren't lying. The greedy people aren't pretending they aren't caring only about money. The racists are being racist out in the open.

And how about "Had a Dream"?

It's another song about wanting the bad guys to be punished. I don't name names. It's nonspecific so I can think of whoever I want when I sing that song. Whoever I'm most angry at, I can envision that person as the one being punished in the song.

It's violent imagery, but it's so violent that it's kind of cartoonish. It's pretty over-the-top. [The line] “It was a very American dream” is a reflection of the violence in our culture and our country. That's what the song is about, also: The fact that there are more guns than people in this country.

How about "Splinter"? What can you tell me about that song?

That one's pretty resigned to things being discontented and exploring my own feelings of disappointment in myself. Feeling a little bit trapped, like there's no way out of this existence.

It sounds like you've been taking a lot of mental inventory these days.

Yeah, I have been. I mean, I've always been writing about what I'm thinking and feeling, but I think I'm taking a wider perspective. I'm coming to terms with things, which is probably good.

I have such conflicting things about almost everything. That in itself is an eternal subject for me: Conflict. That's what drives … well, every f**king movie is conflict. It's always going on inside of my head. Most of the time. Unresolvable conflicts.

Considering both sides of the equation seems to be out of vogue these days. We're all expected to take sides in some sort of moral binary.

Yeah, that's what "Mouthful of Blood" is about. How there's no room for any nuance. Also, no one can step out of line at all these days. Everybody has to choose a side and there are all these rules about what you can say or can't say if you're on either side. Even when I try to talk about the song and what it's about, I stumble because I can't even talk about it. It feels dangerous.

You're expected to have a certain set of beliefs depending on what side you're on. But I'm not necessarily on the side everyone thinks I am. I'm not registered as a Democrat. I'm not registered as a Republican. I'm registered as an independent. I want the freedom to think independently, but it seems that more and more people are being punished for thinking independently.

It must be so hard for people starting college today. It must be such a minefield out there in terms of trying to navigate all that stuff. Even some of the stuff we had to listen to when I was in Blake Babies in the early days, driving around in the van on tour.

You know that [Frogs] album, [1989's] It's Only Right and Natural?

Juliana Hatfield

Juliana Hatfield. Photo: David Doobinin

I don't, actually.

It's about gay supremacy. Kind of like joke-folk, but all of us were all so into it. We'd sing along and laugh our asses off. It was this secret cult thing that certain musicians knew about and were mad about. But I feel like nowadays, we couldn't even sing those lyrics out loud. It couldn't come out today. It came out in the '80s on Homestead Records.

Now, it feels so weird even mentioning it. I'll probably get in trouble for even mentioning it. It's a unique piece of work. You should check it out. I don't even know how it would sound, or how it would come across today. The album is kind of a masterpiece. It's like nothing you've ever heard.

Can you talk about "Suck it Up"?

"Suck it Up" is more specific to the idea of a creative person—an artist—going to a bank and trying to get a mortgage. This whole society is based on certain things: marriage, cohabitation, capitalism, consumerism, and also including homeownership. People are bred to believe that owning a home is something everyone should aspire to.

But it's not for everyone; that's one thing. If you're the type of person who doesn't have a weekly paycheck, no matter how much money you have, it's going to be difficult for the system to approve you for a big loan like that, because you don't have a steady weekly paycheck. That's exactly what the song is about.

It's kind of like "Mouthful of Blood" in the way that the system doesn't allow for nuance in speech or thought. Also, the financial system doesn't allow for nuance in ways of living. You can't just call and have a conversation. They punch your data into the computer, the algorithm feeds it back in numbers and you either cut the mustard or you don't.

Then, we have "Chunks."

It kind of speaks for itself, doesn't it? 

One thing I realized after I wrote it was that you could see it as a song from a feminine perspective. What it's doing is commenting on the way that men in this culture and other cultures—society in general—want and need and expect women to be friendly and pleasant and polite and quiet and demure. To obey. To follow the rules.

When a woman gets out of line and messes up her hair—screams, expresses anger, even intelligently—there's so much hostility. People try to destroy wild, angry women. That song is kind of describing that—what people want to do to women who step out of line. Any woman who is alive will tell you she's been told to smile. "Why don't you smile? You'd be a lot prettier if you smiled."

And how about "Dead Weight"?

I feel like I'm here, I exist to make music. I feel like I'm not good at anything else. The song "Dead Weight" is about how bad I am at relationships. I can never understand how anyone claiming to love me could love me. That's a completely serious feeling. I mean it. I would question it anytime anyone would claim to love me. I couldn't believe it! And that's what the song is about.

Some people might say it's self-hating, but I think it's really just being honest about who I am. As an artist, the personality traits that make me able to persist with making music are the traits that keep me isolated and alone.

Finally, how does "Torture" fit into the puzzle?

"Torture" is really specific to my hatred of computer life and modern technology in general. 

[While] sending files to Jed Davis or the studio via Dropbox or whatever, on the screen, it would say "Upload will be done in eight minutes." And then 20 minutes later, it would say, "Upload: Two minutes left." Then, two minutes later: "Upload: Three minutes left." 

It's lying to me. The time they're projecting on the screen is a total Kafkaesque gaslighting situation. Total lies being said to you. That's what the song is about: "What the f**k is going on?" It's maddening to me. It's just feeding you lies as truth. 

What I'm trying to do with my life is to always get at the truth and sometimes it's not easy.

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Adam Duritz

Adam Duritz

Photo: Mark Seliger

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Adam Duritz On Counting Crows' New EP 'Butter Miracle, Suite One' & Finally Catching A Break From The Critics

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After years of touring hard and writing very little, Adam Duritz headed to an English farm, cleared his head and wrote the strongest Counting Crows music in decades: 'Butter Miracle, Suite One'
Morgan Enos
GRAMMYs
May 18, 2021 - 1:55 pm

Adam Duritz just made crawfish bread and the responses are bowling him over. In a recent episode of his cooking show—which has all but subsumed Counting Crows' Instagram account—Duritz gave a notoriously finicky New Orleans dish the old college try. The base elements are relatively simple—spices, veggies, crawfish—but to make it come out as anything but a pizza or a calzone is a Sisyphean ordeal. 

"It's near-impossible to recreate," he tells GRAMMY.com over Zoom from his home in New York City. "I'm on the verge of getting it."

The crawfish bread feels metaphorical for the GRAMMY-nominated band themselves. These days, some may not view them as toothsome as Cajun cuisine. But early on, the slightly mystical rock band with an eccentric leader was almost universally acclaimed. ("We couldn't buy a bad review," Duritz says.) But as he admits, a mix of factors—from tabloid drama to radio omnipresence to an increasingly poppy sound—undermined Counting Crows' image. That they had arguably never made a bad album was powerless against a thousand Shrek 2 jokes.

But as Counting Crows' new EP, Butter Miracle, Suite One, out May 21, wafts in, so does the true essence of the band, one unfairly obfuscated by snickers for too long. The suite's four songs—"Tall Grass," "Elevator Boots," "Angel of 14th Street," and "Bobby and the Rat Kings"—are plugged into their bulletproof inspirations, from Big Star to the Small Faces; Duritz is as emotive and poetic and beautifully skewed as ever. 

When the rest of the band kicks into gear, it feels like a self-evident argument for Counting Crows as a great American rock band—one that just made a big circle back to the artistic terrain of 1999's This Desert Life. And, Duritz says, the world is coming back around to them after years of being viewed as—in his words—"a joke." "I think the public must love us because it's been almost 30 years," he concludes. "The average rock career doesn't even exist."

GRAMMY.com caught up with Adam Duritz to discuss the long road to Butter Miracle, Suite One and the sometimes fraught dynamic between his band and the public.

Butter Miracle, Suite One

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

It's commendable that you spent the pandemic not feeling sorry for yourself but flexing a new muscle in your brain.

I get really anxious about that sort of thing. When you write songs and play music, there's a lot of your life where it's not easy. It's not an easy thing to feel like you're really going to do it [for the rest of] your life. There were a lot of years where I was struggling in the clubs where it was like: I don't have a future. 

I got a job, but I'm doing construction or landscaping. I'm washing dishes. Or there's some stretch of time where I don't have a job. It was 10 years in the clubs for me of an uncertain future and not being sure what's happening and feeling like a bum. To this day, coming out of a matinee at a movie theater into the sunlight gives me anxiety because it reminds me of a time where I didn't have much going on.

We took 2019 off. That was our year off of touring. Then, we were going to tour in 2020, and you know what happened. There were points during this year where it just felt like I'm back where I don't have a job. Which freaks me out a little bit. I know it's free-floating anxiety because I do have a job and I'll be fine anyway. But this whole last year and a half definitely made me feel anxious about not working at all.

You know, that app, Cameo? I started doing those because I was like, "I can't sit around and not do anything. I need to earn some money so I feel like I have a job. I've got to do it because it's driving me crazy."

When I listen to "Elevator Boots," I envision this Elton John-like soul that's leaping out of you while, in reality, you're on your couch. Your internal life is Queen-sized.

There was a point when I was writing and recording it where it felt like that. I was so excited about making this suite. Once I started writing it and got the idea for what I could do, I was champing at the bit to get in, record it and put it out. I wanted everyone to hear it.

Then we ran into a pandemic when we were 85% done with the record. In the last couple of days in the studio, we were going to take two weeks off and then bring the other two guitar players in, because they hadn't played on it yet. We were going to finish up their stuff, mix it and be done. 

This was the first week in March. We were sitting there watching the news in the studio [and saying] "Uh, this doesn't look good. At all." Sure enough, right when we hit that break was right when the quarantine came down. It wasn't until July that we finished.

To zoom out, I feel like the story of Butter Miracle, Suite One begins in the years after 2014's Somewhere Under Wonderland. What was going on with the band in that long stretch of time between albums?

Well ... we toured a lot. We were working. There's always a few years after we put out a record, but in that case, we did it for another three or four years, maybe. Up until 2019, because we had been working probably for a decade straight. Which, of course, was bad timing for a vacation. 

I started spending a lot of time over in England. My friend has this farm in the West. It's kind of in the middle of nowhere. There's no one around. Sometimes, my friend was there with his family. Sometimes, my girlfriend was there. But other times, I was alone. It was just me and their dogs and the horses and whatever wildlife there was, which is a s**tload. Miles and miles of hill and dale.

I hadn't wanted to write for a while and I found myself wanting to, so I rented a keyboard in London and got a friend to drive it down one weekend. I started playing it because I was by myself and I started writing. The weird thing about dissociation is that I don't retain things. I actually forget how to play the piano if I don't play all the time. Every time I start a record, I generally have to learn to play the piano again. It's not automatic.

That song ["Tall Grass"] starts out very simple, I think because that was all I could play at the time. And it opens up into a much more melodic thing, but when I finished it and played the whole song through, seeing how it felt, I was just vamping at the end, playing those two chords back and forth and singing, "I don't know why/I don't know why."

I switched to those two chords and it felt good there. I sang this line off the top of my head [croons] "Bobby was a kid from 'round the town." I said, "Oh, that's great. That's a whole different feel. That's not an extension of this song. That's a different song. I should work on that." I started, and then it occurred to me: "I can write a series of songs where the end of one is the beginning of the next. They can be different songs, but they can flow just like that."

When I finished that song, I did it again. I got really caught up in how cool that could—that idea of a four-song suite, or a series of four-song suites. I got really excited and inspired. Really inspired. It was the first time I wanted to create like that in a little while.

Was writing tricky for you in the preceding years?

Not tricky. I just didn't really feel like doing it. It wasn't that it was hard; I just didn't want to. I love the creative process. It's hard, but it's satisfying. Making records is even harder and even more satisfying. All of it I really love. It's not always the same when you put it out.

Everything up to that point is just you. You and your band. You and your group of people you always work with. It's nothing but your desire to create. When you put it out in the world, there's all this other stuff that comes back. A lot of other people's takes on it. Their criticism of it. Their insinuations to the negative about what it's about. This idea that you're pulling the wool over people's eyes. The weird relationship between artists and critics can sometimes be so antagonistic.

And there's a lot of s**t that goes with it that I don't like as much when it involves the rest of the world. I like making it, but I don't necessarily always like sharing it. At times in my life, the concept of writing and making art and putting it out there has seemed like the route to all my dreams coming true, and other times, it seems like just asking for trouble.

But also, I think music has been so central and important in my life that I didn't think other things were important at all. Happiness didn't seem at all central like leaving a mark did. But I think in recent years, I also got more into getting my life together. Being happier, maybe. Just learning to live a little more rewarding life than just killing myself to create.

Adam Duritz

Adam Duritz performing in 1993. Photo: Steve Eichner/WireImage​

How would you describe the dynamic between Counting Crows and the public?

It comes and it goes. There were times when we were everyone's idea of the bright new thing. We were great and everybody thought we were great. We couldn't buy a bad review. And there were years when I think we were completely dismissed and thought of as sort of a joke.

Then it comes back, and people seem to think you're good again and respected again. But you've got to learn that other people's take on you can only be so important. It's so variable. You can have a front row at a concert and it's all you can see, and they don't give a s**t. They're just f**king around and talking to each other and they're bored. But does that mean you should be pissed off and not play a good show? Because there are 10,000 people behind them you can't see. You don't want to be dependent on that front row ... You start to learn after a while that it's not worth investing too much in everybody's response.

It's really important that you be inspired and play great and that you want to be there and that you give it your all. You really need to be good for everybody. You can't see everybody. You don't know if they love you or don't love you. It's only so important how everybody takes it, but it does get to be a downer at times. But I think the public must love us because it's been almost 30 years, and the average rock career doesn't exist. The average rock career never even happens. It's a very, very, very tiny percentage of people that get signed, an even smaller percentage that actually put a record out. 

My view is that you guys are a great American rock band, full stop. Maybe the only true artistic successor to Van Morrison. But you said there was a point where people may have viewed the band as a joke. Why do you think that was?

Because you annoy the s**t out of people when you're really successful. On the very simplest level, having massive success on the radio means they will play you every hour. And that will annoy the f**k out of people! 

After a while, it's like, "I don't want to hear the same s**t in my car every day." They're not trying to sustain your career. It's the radio's business to play what people want to hear so they get advertising dollars. So, yeah. Too much success doesn't really breed more of it all the time.

The other thing is that music's different from other art forms. It's like our personal cool. [points to Love's Forever Changes album art on his T-shirt] We literally wear it on our shirts. It's the soundtrack to all our memories and moments in our lives.

It's really important to how we feel about ourselves. It's natural to love discovering something and feel like it's yours. You're one of the few who understands something. It's a whole other matter a year later when you have to share that band you love with that a**hole at the water cooler who loves the worst f***ing s**t! He's always playing something you hate, and now he likes your band, too.

At that point, it's not as appetizing to you. That's just human nature. Success breeds some backlash. Very few bands go through life without it. Someone like R.E.M., who has six indie records, that builds that slowly—that's like Teflon. Radiohead. Nobody's really sitting around thinking they're just boring and s***ty. We might not want to buy the record because we think it's too Radiohead, but we're not dismissing them.

There were years where we just didn't have reviews of live shows or records. They were like, "Here's Adam whining again while he's f***ing famous chicks." That just became the narrative. Then it kind of cleans itself up and rehabilitates itself ... Nobody goes 30 years and stays beloved. It's impossible.

I think you guys belong to a class of artists everyone's made up their minds about before actually listening. Randy Newman. Jethro Tull. Steely Dan. The Eagles. But when I sense that there's prejudice toward an artist for no good reason, that makes me love and defend them.

I read a lot of articles from people who like our band that begin, "Bear with me. I think Counting Crows is brilliant. I know, I know. But let me explain." They're apologizing at times. This lets me know that at least, at some point, someone told them [we weren't] cool. 

I think that goes around. There was a long period of time where people had made their minds up about us. I don't know how that is now. I can't tell. I certainly read a lot more open-minded reviews and responses to things. There were years when we couldn't get that. We get a lot of writers putting a lot of thought into what they think about us. Whether they like us or don't like us, or they think it's a good or bad record, it's not about some tabloid thing. It's about the music. That's come around for us in a lot of ways, which is a relief.

It seems like the time on the farm has given you a lot of peace and perspective. I imagine you as Van Morrison on the cover of Veedon Fleece with the two Irish wolfhounds.

Yeah. It was a Greater Swiss Mountain Dog and a Rottweiler!

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Paula Cole

Paula Cole

Photo: Ebru Yildiz

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Paula Cole On Bringing Attention To Black Music, The American Experience As Patchwork & Her New Album 'American Quilt'

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When Paula Cole finished an album of jazz ballads, the itch to explore American tradition remained unscratched. Now, she's back with 'American Quilt,' a mélange of folk standards and an original, "Hidden in Plain Sight," premiering on GRAMMY.com
Morgan Enos
GRAMMYs
May 20, 2021 - 11:54 am

Can an artist of one race pay homage to the art of another? On one side of the debate is disrespectful appropriation—on another, racial essentialism. On her new album of songs—many of them important to Black communities—from the 20th-century pantheon, American Quilt, Paula Cole walks the middle course with dignity and respect.

Among its mélange of Americana staples, like "Shenandoah" and "Wayfaring Stranger," American Quilt, which arrives May 21, does contain one original—"Hidden in Plain Sight (I Dream)," which premieres exclusively below via GRAMMY.com. That song illuminates the role of quilts as coded guides for fleeing slaves during the Underground Railroad. As a white woman, Cole is fully aware that she's not the representative for this subject. But unlike politicians, artists can swim between these boundaries at will.

"I just felt that even though it's not necessarily my story to tell, being a white person, it's important that we remember," the GRAMMY winner and seven-time nominee most famous for 1996's smash hit "I Don't Want to Wait" tells GRAMMY.com. "I created the song to reflect that because there isn't very much out there, and a lot of people don't know about them. They're mind-bogglingly ingenious." That last description could just as easily apply to Bessie Smith, Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis and John Coltrane—Black innovators that Cole highlights on American Quilt and enthusiastically praises through the course of the interview.

GRAMMY.com caught up with Cole over the phone from Massachusetts about her all-over-the-place cultural roots, what compelled her to make this patchwork of American tunes and why music can help bridge the gaps between races and cultures.

Paula Cole

Paula Cole. Photo: Ebru Yildiz

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Nice to meet you, Paula. Where are you located?

At the moment, I'm in Rockport, Massachusetts. I'm visiting my parents quickly, so I'm conducting the interview from my childhood home, which is pretty interesting for me.

How does that feel?

It feels great. I love my parents so much. I had decided to move back to the North Shore of Massachusetts to raise my daughter nearer, so she could know them and the generations would be unified. That was more important to me than other things, like living in an industry city.

Is your childhood bedroom just how you remember it?

[laughs] No, it's different now. They changed it. We grew up in a Georgian house that was built in the 1600s. We're talking about a colonial New England house. George as in King George, you know? It's very small and poky and yet beautiful and historic.

What compelled you to see the American experience as a patchwork quilt?

It was accidental. The music informed the process. Having recorded 31 jazz standards in five days for my Balladsalbum—I should requalify that. They weren't all jazz standards. "God's Gonna Cut You Down" was actually recorded in 2016 in the Ballads sessions.

I was so pent-up as a lover of these standards that we recorded so much music. I released a double album, Ballads, and yet all these wonderful tracks were remaining and I had to shape them up. But I wanted to honor my roots and my roots are so diverse. Genetically, I'm so mixed, and musically, I'm so mixed.

I grew up with a father who was a professional bass player on weekends when I was a small child. He could play Duke Ellington songs on the piano and then folk songs on the guitar or harmonica and upright bass. We listened to country music records and everything. There was no classification or boxing-in of genre. It was meant to be self-made and fun. 

Non-musicians were the ones who classified the music, and they usually did so by gender and race and age. Which still happens to this day, based on algorithms through platforms on which we listen to music. We're classifying and dividing music for all the wrong reasons. And here I am, a mixture. I'm such a mixture. Loving all music. It's a patchwork.

My mom's a visual artist. She's a quilter, too. It just came to me that it was a quilt. That's when I needed to go back into the studio, and I recorded some more folksy Americana songs which reflect all of who I am. That's when I had the "A-ha!" moment that it's a quilt.

I needed to represent the sad parts of history and the honest part of our history. We wouldn't be who we are without the African experience. Slave quilts were these ingenious creations helping slaves flee to the Underground Railroad, to find the clues in the quilts.

The more I researched slave quilts, the more I realized that people didn't know about them. There isn't very much out there about them. Certainly, there was no music, no song I could sing to reflect them, even though there are Christian spirituals that double as protest songs, like "Steal Away." There wasn't anything about the quilts, so I wrote something into that vacancy to reflect a more full and diverse experience of America and our history.

We are a patchwork. We're all part of this diverse culture. Whether our music comes from Scotland or Africa or the cities or the mountains, it's all this American melting pot. That's our strength. [The album] coalesced intuitively. I didn't go about trying to make a concept album. It made itself.

Tell me more about "Hidden in Plain Sight."

That's the one original song I wrote for the album. "Hidden in Plain Sight" is all about the quilts. It's the cautionary tale and the advice from the quilter to the traveler. Each verse of "Hidden in Plain Sight" is a quilting square.

For instance, flying geese is a quilting square. It's a pattern used in quilts to this day. Flying geese in the context of slave quilts meant "Follow geese in spring. They lead north." Or a bear trail, which is a quilting pattern, means to the follower, "Follow the tracks of animals. They take you to water. They take you to safe places to hide."

So on and so forth. Each verse is advice to the traveler from the slave quilt. I created the song to reflect that because there isn't very much out there, and a lot of people don't know about them. They're mind-bogglingly ingenious. I just felt that even though it's not necessarily my story to tell, being a white person, it's important that we remember.

I'd like to explore your connections with all these traditional songs, too.

Sure. Sometimes, it's just because I like them!

That's as good an answer as any! That being said, what attracted you to "You Don't Know What Love Is"?

Oh, that's mostly my love for John Coltrane. I listened to so much from his Ballads album and I really feel the band channeled Coltrane on that recording. The form is the same. How it moves into double-time for the solo. The piano player, Consuelo Candelaria, just branches out so beautifully in her jazz solo. Then, we bring it back down to this very moody, almost spiritual, solemn feeling.

I just wanted to honor him. He was such a gentle giant and spiritual being.

He could play the hell out of a ballad, too.

[chuckles] Yeah. He's a hero to so many.

Paula Cole

Paula Cole performing at Lilith Fair in 1997. Photo: Bob Berg/Getty Images

How about "Wayfaring Stranger"?

See, I'm bowing to the masters here. I'm bowing to Coltrane and I'm bowing to Emmylou Harris, who I think is one of the great American voices. We shouldn't forget her. We should be talking about Emmylou Harris more. I learned "Wayfaring Stranger" from her Roses in the Snow album.

Emmylou is very dear to me. We sang on each other's sets when we were both at Lilith Fair. When I was taking my hiatus from the music business—totally disenchanted with the music business, hating the music business and wanting to leave the music business—it was Emmylou who told me in a very motherly way, "You can't. It just happened too fast."

For me, she said I'm lucky. That I've had a nice, long plateau of a career. It's true; that's the healthier way. That's the way of the proverbial tortoise, and she helped me see that. I love her so much for giving me the right spiritual advice when I wanted to leave the music business. 

I'm honoring that traditional song. Life being hard for early settlers. Life being hard and thinking about death as a place that can be beautiful, where you meet your loved ones again. People would sing these songs to console themselves, to pass time. 

And they span hundreds of years! It's so amazing! But I'm also honoring Emmylou Harris because I associate that song with her.

What made you want to quit the biz once and for all?

Like she said, it happened too fast for me. I'm very much a live performer and a catalog, legacy artist. That's how I see myself. I don't see myself as a hit-pop-song artist. My hits were so huge and there was so much attention. I was terribly introverted, so I didn't deal with it very well, and I just felt I was overexposed. I wasn't being known for what I actually was.

I wanted to have a reset and have my personal life back. I wanted to have a child and I wanted to live a sincere life and make great art. So, I just needed to shed an ill-fitting skin. It ended up, then, that I wasn't going to leave the business. I was just going to reinvent myself, reset and embark upon a more authentic second career.

How does "God's Gonna Cut You Down" speak to you?

I heard that from Odetta and from Johnny Cash. I don't have much to say about it other than it's a traditional song and it's a morality tale. It's nice to have a morality tale right now, especially told from a woman's point of view.

And how about "Shenandoah"?

It lives somewhere in our collective unconscious, right? That one's really profound because it has a lot of American history in it. From fur traders heading west to the Oneida tribal chief. These lonely fur traders going up and down the St. Louis River. Very often, they would marry Native American women and blend with tribes. And, again, people are singing these songs to keep themselves company, going up and down rivers and across oceans. So, the song lives on in an oral history, preserving this culture. The singer is singing to the Oneida chieftain about loving his daughter and wanting to marry her.

I love the melody. It's so haunting and so beautiful. I was kind of possessed by it. I made this very long arrangement that includes the journey of the song. It goes across the ocean in clipper ships to the U.K. by including the pennywhistle, coming back to American soil, and by including the voices of the gospel churches.

That's Darcel Wilson singing with me and also Peter Eldridge. They're both such brilliant artists in their own rights. When Darcel sings at the end, I'm completely transfixed and the hair stands up on my arms. It is so moving to me what she does in her performance. She takes over from the lead singer. It feels prescient. The Black voice taking over the white voice.

What can you tell me about "Black Mountain Blues"?

"Black Mountain Blues," I heard from worshipping at the altar of Bessie Smith. I love her lyrics. Bessie Smith was Janis Joplin's favorite singer and also Billie Holiday's favorite singer. Bessie Smith is so influential to modern music. I don't think we quite understand that.

I like it because it's strong. It's not so much a woe-is-me blues; it's a fierce blues. It's a power-of-woman blues. I'm honoring those masters, like Janis and Bessie. 

Have you read Angela Davis's book Blues Legacies and Black Feminism?

I have it on my shelf and I've poked around in it! I haven't read it cover-to-cover. But, yes, I know what you mean. The feminism in [the music of] Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday and Ma Rainey.

"Good Morning Heartache." What's your connection to that one?

That's in the book of standards. I literally have a book of standards on my piano that I go to as a place to grow, learn and relax. I always have. I love that song. 

I just wanted it to sound spooky. I produced it in a way that was mournful and spooky. I layered my clarinets, and my clarinet is like my Alfred Hitchcock cameo appearance. I put it on every album I make, somewhere. I put an underwater reverb on it and it gave it a real mood to evoke that sadness.

"Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out" is also Bessie, right?

Absolutely; that's where I learned it. Bessie. The queen. The Empress of the Blues.

What's the title mean to you?

When you're down and out, nobody gives you a break. Nobody wants to hear from you. Most people are fairweather friends. Fairweather fans. Fairweather business. Fairweather everybody. It's when you're down and out that you know the truth in people. That's why she says "Nobody can use you when you're down and out," because people are going to act truthfully when you're down and out.

What a weird part of human nature.

I know! When you're high and mighty and on your high horse and successful, everyone is obsequious. Everyone is trying to get your business and placate you and lie and be two-faced and be sweet and ingratiate so they can be associated with you. When you're nobody, they couldn't care less.

You're back to jazz with "Bye Bye Blackbird." Obviously, Miles had such a beautiful version.

Miles taught me so much about space and being a bandleader. Honoring the rhythm section to be part of your sound. I wanted to vocally improvise on something simple and keep it very sparse and honor Miles, too. And then, "What a Wonderful World." We think of Louis Armstrong, and he was a genius. I don't like to use that word, but there are a few in the world, and he was one. When you listen to all of his recordings, his vocal improvisations, his ears are just astounding. He unified Black and white audiences. He's a beautiful example of someone who was positive and loving and unified people. This song was written specifically for him, so it appeals to Black and white audiences.

Somehow, in my life, that has become part of my mission. To talk about race and to mix genres.

James Brandon Lewis On Evoking George Washington Carver Through Sound, The Wisdom Of Nature & His New Album 'Jesup Wagon'

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Nancy Wilson

Nancy Wilson

Photo: Jeremy Danger

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Nancy Wilson On Her New Album, 'You & Me,' Missing The "Angels" Of Rock & The Future Of Heart

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Nancy Wilson's upcoming album 'You & Me' is partly a reflection on her personal relationships—both with the living and those who have passed. Its single "The Inbetween," premiering exclusively via GRAMMY.com, is all about the liminal spaces of existence
Morgan Enos
GRAMMYs
Apr 28, 2021 - 7:20 am

Nancy Wilson was thumbing through some notes when she found a poem written by her son, Curtis. Perceptive and probing, it seemed to sum up our politically malignant era—and what was spiritually absent at the core of it.

"[He] wrote this poem for a class assignment," the Heart co-founder tells GRAMMY.com over the phone from her Sonoma County home. "I thought it was really clever. The words were so clever and so whimsical. He was like, 'Black and white, wrong and right.'" Feeling the words reflected tribalism and partisanship, Wilson flipped those dualities into a song, "The Inbetween." But instead of being portentous or doomy, the track is radiant and rocking.

"Putting it in a context of something more fun—a funny take on it all—takes it away from being so heavy and dark," Wilson adds. "It kind of sheds new light on a situation. It's a contrast from the heavy times we've had to live through and puts it in a different tonality."

"The Inbetween," which exclusively premieres above via GRAMMY.com, is the latest single from Wilson's upcoming album, You & Me, which drops May 7 via Carry On Music. Really, Wilson is preoccupied with in-betweens throughout the album—the spaces between life and death, dreams and memories, good relationships and poisonous ones. It's also her first solo album ever, despite making music with her sister, Ann Wilson, in Heart for nearly a half-century.

The sisters have had an up-and-down relationship over the last few years, and the pandemic gave Wilson space to define herself both within and without "the vortex that’s Heart." And while the door is open for the band to go out again in 2022, Wilson is cherishing the time to reflect and recalibrate—and You & Me is the heartfelt product of this period of self-examination.

GRAMMY.com gave Nancy Wilson a ring to discuss You & Me track by track, why it took her five decades to make a solo album and the future of Heart.

This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.

Over the decades, what was the biggest obstacle to putting out a solo album, whether internal or external?

Well, I think I would call it the vortex that's Heart. There's a vortex of the work ethic of Heart for the last almost 50 years, just to be honest. I hate to even date it. But it's been a mind-bending job to do every year for the touring of it and the album after album—mainly, the touring of it all. You know, everywhere with electricity, we've played there.

It's an interesting dichotomy with the pandemic stopping the hurtling, you know. Heart's been hurtling through space for nearly 50 years. It's an interesting contrast to that to have to be shut in and be at home and stop the momentum and reconvene with your personal soul and self, in order to be able to know what to do musically and creatively with that time I had in my hands like everybody has had.

It's really a blessing, you know? It's been a blessing outside of the larger curse of it all to be able to reconvene with your communication with your own self.

Who were you thinking of when you came up with the album title—and first track—You & Me?

That's dedicated to my mom, who left us quite a while ago now. She's still in my skin, in my DNA. So it's kind of a gravity-free zone where I can talk to her in that song. I think the word "gravity," in and of itself, kind of keeps the song from walking that too-precious kind of a line. [laughs]

I think the personal, confessional kind of thing about this album—it's almost too sweet. It walks a line that's almost too sweet, but I think in another way, you could say that it's more of a revolutionary act to be that open and that honest. Walking the line of sweetness can be more of a rock attitude than hiding out behind your feelings. I'm sort of burying a lot of my feelings in this album.

And, you know, tongue-in-cheek stuff too, but the honesty of it is kind of a rebellious act on a certain level.

It seems like you're preoccupied with that line where sweetness could tip over into treacle. You're consciously trying to stay on the right side of that.

Yeah, exactly. It's almost, like, not supposed to happen. You're not supposed to do that. It's against the rules to be that honest, to bare your soul like that. I guess if that's an issue, then I don't know what is. [chuckles]

Tell me about your relationship with your mom.

She was a steel magnolia. I got a lot of her strength along the way. A military family, right? Marine corps, all those travels we had growing up were a strengthening kind of thing. We became really tight-knit as a family because we were always moving. Early touring experience, actually! [laughs]

She was the mom and my dad because our dad was off fighting wars. It's a total tribute to that strength of her character and her nurturing, strong, amazing … She was an amazing woman. When I sometimes dream of her, I feel like I got to see her again and I get to talk to her again. It's a zero-gravity space, and that's what the song is all about.

Can you describe the last dream where she showed up?

Yeah, sure. She took a lot of Super 8 home movies, and that's incorporated into the video [for "You & Me"] quite a bit. I took a lot of them too. She taught how to edit film and stuff, with the little editing machine. We used to make films in our family.

So, I used a lot of that footage in the actual video for the song and she appears in the video for the song. When I dreamt of her last, it was just her wonderful face. Her spirit. I felt like I had a conversation with her and the words were not even clear. It was just being together and the aspect of her spirit being there.

My collaborator, Sue Ennis, who's worked with us for years and years for Heart songs, had a song for her mom called "Follow Me." And I'd written a song for my mom called "You and Me and Gravity." I loved this music that Sue had. We both kind of have a mom thing. We've talked about our parents and we grew up together, so we had all those connective tissue things in our hearts about our moms.

So, we kind of collaborated on the ultimate mom song to try to reach into the ether and touch base with that. We morphed two songs into one. It's a hybrid mom song [laughs].

Tell me about "The Rising."

Well, luckily enough, a few years ago, we got to go to New York, when we used to be able to go anywhere, and we got to see "Springsteen on Broadway" live.

When I saw that show, it completely blew my mind. It changed my world around because I've always loved Springsteen and his amazing writing. Growing up with Springsteen on the radio, for instance, he'd be sort of behind this big wall of sound with this rock and roll accent where you could hardly understand the lyrics. 

Then, seeing him live, completely by himself, stripped-down, those songs and those lyrics—it completely altered my perception of Bruce Springsteen. He's an insanely great writer. Those words are so depth-y. Later, after having seen that, I watched it a million times on the show you can watch on television. Then he did Western Stars, his other album that got me through the whole last Heart tour. It was life-saving stuff for me.

So then, when I started to do this album, I was like, "I should do this because of the pandemic. I should do 'The Rising' because it was written initially for 9/11." Now, we're having 9/11 every day, so that's why I thought it would be aspirational and helpful for people to have an inspired message like that to help them through this insane ordeal we're living through.

Do you know Bruce? Did you say hi to him after the show?

I didn't say hi that night, but I do know him. His people told our people that he really liked my version of 'The Rising'! That made my day—my whole year, actually—to know that he thought it was cool.

Tell me about "I'll Find You."

Sue had actually started that song with Ben Smith, the drummer. My Seattle folks. They had this song that is, like, a "friend who's going to be there for you" kind of song. The support system that you've always dreamed of having. That's what the song talks about.

I've always been that person where I'm there for my people, you know? I show up. It's a really simple way of saying that you're going to be there for somebody that needs you. And that's a big deal! I mean, that's a huge thing to be able to do for anyone.

Can you describe a recent situation in which you were able to be that for somebody?

[laughs] Well, if you live long enough, that happens frequently. If you are that person for your other people, it's not an easy role to play to show up for somebody that needs help. A lot of people don't have that skill, you know? A lot of people are not equipped with the emotional wherewithal to be there for anybody else but themselves. So, that's what that song is all about.

How about "Daughter"?

"Daughter" is a Pearl Jam song. I had actually recorded it earlier before I got into doing the album. I'd done that in Austin with an amazing producer, David Rice, for a film, actually, which was made in South Africa. It's a true story about human trafficking in South Africa.

This guy, Simon Swart, who made the film—it's about to come out, actually—he wanted to see if there was a song I could do for the film. And so I decided that "Daughter" would be a really cool idea, because there's a lyric in the song that says, "She holds the hand that holds her down." That was really telling about what it is to be a girl. The movie's called I Am All Girls and it's about to come out.

Anyway, that's the backstory on that thing. And for [Simon & Garfunkel's] "The Boxer," that's something I've been singing with Heart for the last tour. I've been singing that song all my life, basically. It's a really amazing song. Somebody told me that the chorus part—the "Lie-la-lie"—was initially a placeholder, but he kept it in the song like that because the verses are so wordy. It sort of opens up and he kept it that way from the initial demo of it.

I got Sammy Hagar to sing with me on that because he's a buddy. He's a rock god. He's funny as hell and he's a really good guy. I said, "Why don't you do something with me on my album here? I want to bring in some people that I love!" He said, "Yeah, OK! What have you got?" So, I said I've got this big rock song called "Get Ready to Rock," which is not on the album, actually. It's elsewhere now.

Anyway, long story short, he said, "Nah, that's too predictable. I don't want to be so predictable, to be the Red Rocker on a song about rock." So I said, "What about 'The Boxer'?" He said, "I love that song! I used to be a boxer!" So having him on that song was really special for me, because he brings such an attitude with him. There's only one of him in the world. That's him.

And then the Cranberries cover ["Dreams"]—me and Jeff, my hubby, were just driving around in Sonoma County. We heard it on the radio and he said, "You've got to get Liv Warfield to sing this with you!" She was my singer in my other band right before this, Roadcase Royale. I said, "OK! Let's just do that! I think that can be done easily enough!" And so we did that, and it turned out really fun and cool. Easy.

Nancy Wilson

Photo: Jeremy Danger

How about "Party at the Angel Ballroom"?

I kind of heard myself saying something one night. I was like, "Wow, we've lost another angel of rock and roll." One of the angels that passed away recently, like Chris Cornell, Tom Petty, and now, Eddie Van Halen. It's kind of like, "Well, they're going to be having some big party up there at the angel ballroom." And it's like, "Hey, that's a good idea for a song!"

So I got Taylor Hawkins, who's another amazing friend, and Duff McKagan. I went and sang some stuff for Taylor for his last album, called Get the Money. Really good album. I said, "Well, I'm going to make a solo album now, so do you have any cool jams laying around, dude?" He's like [affects masculine voice] "Yeah, rad, man! I've got some cool jams kicking around, dude!"

He sent me this jam that they had. It was a completely long-winded jam that needed a lot of structuring. I structured it very differently from the original. And I had these words, so I put it together and it just became a fun sort of lark of a song. It's kind of a dark topic, but [you can] make it kind of a funny moment.

Sort of like the song "The Inbetween." That started with a poem that one of my boys wrote. I have two twin boys that are both 21 now. One boy, Curtis, wrote this poem for a class assignment—a poetry-writing assignment, I guess. I thought it was really clever. The words were so clever and so whimsical. He was like, "Black and white, wrong and right." 

Now, after this horrendous political era we just tried to live through with all the bully-pulpit stuff we've had to deal with, I was scrolling through my notes and I found that again. I thought, "This is really relevant for our times that we're living through politically." But putting it in the context of something more fun—a funny take on it all—takes it away from being so heavy and dark.

It kind of sheds new light on a situation. It's a contrast from the heavy times we've had to live through and puts it in a different tonality.

Sounds like Curtis is pretty wise and perceptive. What do you learn from your boys?

You learn everything from your kids. Everything. Being a parent is not an easy thing to do. It's one of the bigger challenges you could ever face. Because when you love somebody that much and you're trying to help them survive through their own childhood. Because you care. Because you love somebody even more than your own life, your own self.

It's bigger than you are and you're responsible for it. The best thing you could ever possibly try to do is keep them alive long enough to figure it out for themselves.

How about "Walk Away"?

That's a story about a toxic relationship that you have to get out of. You have to face the truth of how you've enabled yourself to be hurt and you've enabled the relationship to go bad. It's kind of self-examination of "OK, I have to be brave enough to get this out of my life and take responsibility for what my part in it was." 

It's kind of complex, but it's definitely a truth that we've all had to face at some point in our own relationship lives. There are some unhealthy things sometimes that leave behind.

Were you thinking of any particular relationship or was it a composite of relationships throughout your life?

[Laughs] Well, I'm not going to admit exactly what that's all about. There's been more than one! So, it's a conglomerate of various situations I've found myself in that I had to get out of and get over.

Nancy Wilson

Photo: Jeremy Danger

How about "The Dragon"?

"The Dragon" is something I wrote back in the '90s. After the '80s, we went home to Seattle. That was a time when all the Seattle bands were exploding. I thought, "Oh, no! They're going to hate us because we're '80s dinosaurs!" But they were really sweet on us and we got pretty close with those guys.

At the time, our friends from Alice in Chains … Layne Staley was still walking around and talking. But he was definitely on a course that everyone could see. It was going to go badly. He was going to self-destruct. We all saw that coming. He was a sweet soul, you know? It was hard to see that inevitable demise. He was letting himself go down that dark ladder.

So, that's when I wrote that song. He was still alive, but everyone could see that. That's what that song was about. It's sort of a cautionary tale, but it's also a very heavy message because I don't think he had a chance against that dragon. It was just a sad story in advance of the sadder story.

That's been around for a long time. It never was destined to be a Heart song, although we tried to do that song a few times, in a few ways. It was on the Roadcase Royale album, which is called First Things First. That was a nice version of it. Somebody from the record company—my main guy, Tom Lipsky, from Carry On Music—said, "You've gotta do 'The Dragon' on your album!"

So, it was back by popular demand. I think this is the best version of that song yet. So far.

That's cool you knew Layne. I personally declare Dirt to be the most powerful album ever written about addiction.

Oh, for sure. Right? I love that band. I was so close with Jerry [Cantrell], Mike [Starr] and Sean [Kinney]—and William [DuVall], now. Mike Inez was actually in Heart for a while after Layne disappeared. He was our bass player for five years, I think. Michael Inez is one of the funniest humans on the planet, for Christ's sake. A seriously funny person. Maybe the funniest person I've ever met in my life.

How about "We Meet Again"?

That's kind of a take-off on Paul Simon. I cut my teeth on Paul Simon's stuff when I was nine, 10, 11 and 12. Early on in my playing life, as an acoustic guitar player. I'm actually glad I didn't get sued by Paul Simon because that basic guitar part in the song was a cue in Jerry Maguire, which was based on a Paul Simon-type fingerstyle part.

I kind of took that and ran with it and put lyrics to it, because I already had written it. I had already put that part together for the movie. If there's anyone to plagiarize besides Paul Simon, I suppose I could plagiarize myself [laughs]. That's the first thing I wrote for this album and I was just trying to touch base with my earlier self—my college-girl self with the poetry that I used to explore before I was in Heart.

Is Paul Simon the greatest living songwriter?

He's definitely in the top three, in my estimation. There's Joni Mitchell, there's Paul Simon, and of course, you have to include Bob Dylan in there. Maybe the Beatles. Those are the four pillars of greatness, I think, in music.

What about the last tune, "4 Edward"?

I wanted a tribute to Eddie [Van Halen]. When he passed away, I was really sad, of course. I was very moved to try to pay tribute to him in some way. 

When we used to be in the same place together in the '80s—we did some shows with those guys—he told me he thought I was a really great guitar player on the acoustic. I was like, "How can you say that? You're the best guitar player on the planet! Why don't you play more acoustic yourself?" He said, "Well, I don't really have an acoustic guitar." Then, I promptly gave him one: "OK, you have one now."

The next morning, at the crack of dawn, he called my hotel room and played me this amazing instrumental on the acoustic I gave him. It was just one of the most beautiful things I'd ever heard. Just an exciting, inspirational moment, although he'd probably been up all night partying. So I thought I would return the favor and make him a piece of instrumental music on the acoustic guitar.

That's what I did. I put a little piece of the song "Jump" in there. I tried to approximate what I vaguely remembered from what he played me that morning.

I know things have been kind of hot and cold with your main project over the last few years. How would you describe your personal and creative relationship with Ann today?

Well, that's a loaded question. I think we're fine. We both kind of welcomed the break from each other and from Heart in a certain way. 

I think there's a certain blessing inside the larger curse of the whole shutdown we've been living through. Personally, I feel like it's been a relief and a chance to reorganize who I am, thinking of who I am inside the larger picture of Heart and who I am outside of Heart altogether. 

There's a lesson in this shutdown for me, and part of it is to remember who I am without defining myself as somebody in Heart. Which is a beautiful reckoning, I think. 

There's an offer for Heart to go out in 2022. I think that would be awesome to do that. I would want to do that. But having been outside of the world of it and the pressure of it and the framework of it for this long now has been very freeing. I feel I've gained a lot of momentum as a person because of it.

Peter Frampton On Whether He'll Perform Live Again, Hanging With George Harrison & David Bowie And New Album 'Frampton Forgets the Words'

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Pat Monahan

Pat Monahan in 2002

Photo: Martin Philbey/Redferns/Getty Images

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Train's Pat Monahan Revisits Every Song On 'Drops Of Jupiter' 20 Years Later: "I'm A Lot Happier Than I Was Back Then"

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Pat Monahan wrote Train's most successful album, 2001's 'Drops of Jupiter,' in a whirlwind of sudden fame and destabilizing grief. Now, he looks back on it with two decades' worth of hindsight
Morgan Enos
GRAMMYs
Mar 26, 2021 - 6:34 am

What do the Rolling Stones' session pianist Chuck Leavell and Leonard Cohen's string orchestrator Paul Buckmaster have in common? They both appeared on Train's "Drops of Jupiter." 

While the song may conjure the Y2K adult-contemporary boom more than those vintage artists, the two studio veterans' presence speaks volumes. No matter which way your tastes flicker, "Drops of Jupiter" is a classy tune. Not that Train singer, Pat Monahan, was thinking about that at the time. A married father in his late twenties touring the world on their early hit "Meet Virginia," Monahan felt destabilized by sudden fame, struggling to square his his tour life with his home life.

Sure, he might have commanded a stage in front of adoring fans, but that didn't mean much while crying on a payphone near the venue afterward. Why? At the time, his mother was terminally ill—and her eventual passing is what inspired "Drops of Jupiter," released on their album of the same name 20 years ago on March 27, 2001. In the hit song, Monahan wonders where his mother might be: "But tell me, did you sail across the sun?/ Did you make it to the Milky Way/ To see the lights all faded/ And that heaven is overrated? " he asks.

"I wrote that song in 15 minutes," Monahan tells GRAMMY.com over Zoom. "I fell asleep and woke up and it was like my mom tapped on the shoulder, and she was like, 'Let's go. I've got it for you. Let's go write this.' And it was a story about her telling me what the afterlife was."

While Monahan admits the title track—which was nominated for Record Of The Year and Best Rock Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocal at the 2002 GRAMMY Awards show— "consumed" the album, other tunes like "I Wish You Would," "Hopeless" and "Something More" provide further breadcrumbs as to his state of mind.

As for the rest of the album? Monahan, now the only sole founding member in the band, mostly stands by it, even if he admits he was miserable at the time. GRAMMY.com spoke with Monahan about memories behind every song on Drops of Jupiter, how Leavell and Buckmaster got involved, and why he's happy never to return to this well of sorrow.

Does it feel like Drops of Jupiter came out two decades ago?

I never really think about that, but yeah. I suppose it does. A lot has happened in 20 years. I'm a lot happier than I was back then. I think that whole album is based on a lot of sadness and questions and really not having faith in the future, but now, it's a different life that I live. So, it's pretty cool to look back at that.

What was going on in your emotional life at the time?

Well, I was in a bad relationship, and I was traveling so much and I had children. It was after the first album that had "Meet Virginia" on it. It was still a time [when] there was no real money. We sold a million albums but it didn't mean that I was living in any type of luxury at all. The only thing I was able to do at that point was to pay off my credit card debt. 

We were traveling the U.S. and Canada. We may have even gone to Australia with it, but we never really went to Europe or anything. There wasn't a big push in Europe for "Meet Virginia," so writing the second record was, I would say, more pressure than I've ever felt in my life. 

We knew [we needed to write] some type of song that people would care about or the chances of making another record were going to be slim.

Tell me about "She's On Fire."

"She's On Fire" was a fantasy. There were moments on that first tour that I met a lot of people, and I was seeing so many beautiful faces and meeting boys and girls and everything you could think of. But I was married, so there was no anything I could do about any kind of attraction I might have had. So, I had to write songs instead. "She's On Fire," I think, was a fantasy of, like, "Man. This is the magic of what a relationship should feel like."

We thought that was an obvious first single. We just thought that was the coolest song ever. When we listen now, it's obvious that it's not. But nobody else thought it was a first single, and we were really surprised. So everything obvious in my career is never the single. I should never judge what a single sounds like because it's the weird ones that make it to the forefront of radio and peoples' brains.

What about it struck you guys as the obvious first single?

It had tempo. We thought [sings hook] "She's on fiiiiiire!" would appeal to whether you liked pop radio or country radio or whatever. That sat there in a great American way. Americana, I should say.

I'm looking at the chart position. It did respectably.

It did OK. Not like we imagined. And I think it came from the fact that "Drops of Jupiter" was so big that it still had some momentum, even though the second single was supposed to be a song called "Something More." But it got dumped because of 9/11. We shot a music video for it [where] I was climbing up a sky-rise building and 9/11 happened and everything changed.

So, we went to "She's On Fire," but it was years—It seemed like two years after "Drops of Jupiter." Sometimes, a song can be so big that it can consume the entire album, and that's kind of what happened.

Tell me about "I Wish You Would."

That was more about a fantasy of what I had always hoped to go home to. Being on the road for months and months and months and coming home, my fantasy was to come home to someone who was as excited to see me come home as I was excited to be home. That kind of thing. That's what that song's about.

That entire album is either me apologizing for shit or hoping for things, and it continued into the next album, with "Calling All Angels." That was the end of that period for me.

From what you've described regarding the first few tunes, it seems like there was a tension between home life and tour life.

Of course! I mean, I was 28, 29. My son was born when I was 23, and I was sober. I had been sober for a long time because I knew what it was going to take for a guy from Erie, Pennsylvania, to try to be successful to be in a potentially dangerous industry. Everyone around me was partying and having multiple fun relationships and I was just working.

Now, we get to the big one. Obviously, a product of grief. A really personal one and also the biggest hit.

Yep. You know, somebody asked me the other day about that, because I had lost my mother that year and we were writing and it was hard to be inspired by anything when a boy loses his mom. It was very tragic. 

But somebody asked me, "How do you feel that potentially the biggest song of your career means so much to you?" I was like, "Wow, I've never really thought about that." It wasn't a fluke. It wasn't like, "Oh yeah, we just came up with [mimics guitar riff] 'Doo-dow-now-now!' or whatever." It's a really heartfelt moment for me, so I guess I should be more appreciative. I've never really thought about that.

I wrote that song in 15 minutes, man. I fell asleep and woke up and it was like my mom tapped on the shoulder, and she was like, "Let's go. I've got it for you. Let's go write this." And it was a story about her telling me what the afterlife was. "I can swim through the planets if I want to. I can do whatever I want."

One thing about "Drops of Jupiter" that a lot of people don't talk about is that it had two veterans on it—Paul Buckmaster and Chuck Leavell.

Chuck Leavell, man. He made that song as magical as it could have been because he gave it that bounce. [mimics piano-and-drums groove] I think he played it three times and we were like, "That's good. You're good. Thank you!" He's that special?

Was that the label's push, to get a pro on there?

No, actually. That was Brendan O'Brien. We recorded that record in Atlanta, and we did not have "Drops of Jupiter." I wasn't a Pearl Jam fan, but there's a song called "Better Man" that was on the radio, so I asked if I could look into that producer, and it was Brendan O'Brien.

When I asked if I could get Brendan O'Brien, they laughed at me: "Dude, you're not a big enough band." He was about to record the Limp Bizkit album, and something happened where it was postponed or whatever and Fred Durst backed out, or something. So, Brendan, all of a sudden, was open and he took the project.

Chuck Leavell is also a Georgian, and he owns a tree farm in Georgia. He called Chuck because Chuck was an hour away and he came and did it, and it was that easy.

How about Paul Buckmaster? His string arrangement is gorgeous.

That was actually [music executive] Donnie Ienner's idea. When we didn't have a single, we also had an agreement in the band that we weren't to write outside the band. Which really put shackles on us, but we weren't aware of it at the time. You protect things that you end up breaking.

I was being asked to meet Donnie Ienner in New York, and he was about to say, "You have to write outside the band. It's time." Because we didn't have the hit he wanted. It was two days before that meeting when I dreamt "Drops of Jupiter."

So, I went to New York to have that meeting with him and I had a demo of it in my pocket. That's when I played it for him. At the time, Almost Famous was the biggest movie in the country and Elton John's songs were all over it. So as soon as Donnie heard the song, he was like, "Paul Buckmaster has to do the strings." He was so fired up about this whole thing.

Before I knew I would be doing this interview, I learned Leavell and Buckmaster were involved from a Rick Beato deconstruction on YouTube. Have you seen that?

Yeah, I have. It's pretty interesting!

Did it teach you anything about your own song, in a way?

You know what it taught me? Humans will overthink anything! Why did he throw that ball that way? Well, I'll tell you why! Because in fifth grade, he met a girl called Sheila! Who knows what anything is, you know?

The next tune is "It's About You."

That was an attempt to write a hit song. This is what you get stuck doing sometimes. 

Let's say you're making a sad album. Today would be different than it was when I was trying to become something. Today, you could go make a sad album and then 15 minutes later go make a different album. And you have a computer, so you can make three albums in a week, or whatever.

But when you have one chance to make an album and it potentially costs a couple of hundred thousand dollars, you start to want to feed the machine that's going to feed you. That was a song that we thought, "Man, it's got tempo and this cool drum bit and whatever."

We played it for years live and people seemed to like it because we needed that type of song, but it didn't make a huge impression on people.

I'm a songwriter myself, and I think we all have material that feels like juvenilia. It's not us anymore. Can you still inhabit the self that made this album?

Of course. It's like looking at—I wouldn't say a lesser me, but a part of me that needed to do this to be better at certain things.

My manager and I talked the other day and he was like, "Man, we're listening to these songs you wrote that didn't make the album. There's a handful of them. Your melodies are so much more complex and thought-through and better." When I think of "It's About You," I just think of [mimics goofy cadence]. There's no melody there. It's just a guy trying to rap who can't.

It's funny in some regard, but in another way, I needed to be a young guy trying to figure stuff out.

How about "Hopeless"?

That was a pretty important song to me.

Tell me about it.

When I was [touring], "Hopeless" was, like, I was hopeless. I felt hopeless all the time. It's a wild trip. The importance of love in a human body, that need for love and affection and somebody to look at you with love, is so necessary. I was writing songs just like, "Man, I'm writing as a voyeur. I'm writing somebody else's life, but it's just like a reflection of my own."

How about "Respect"?

That was a very particular song about a guy that I went to grade school who I and my friends didn't treat properly. We're friends today and I love him a lot. He's a wonderful guy. But I have a lot of regret about a certain couple of years of my young childhood life.

Not beating people up or anything. It wasn't like that. But it was "bully" enough that it excluded him. And that exclusion made us, the others, feel closer. That's what happens when kids are not kind. I really regretted that and still do, and that's what that song is about. Everybody needs respect, and now I know that, so I'm sorry.

How did he react to the song?

You know, he's such the kind of fella—he's a bodybuilder and could beat me up 1,000 times a day if he wanted. 

His lesson during that wasn't to hold a grudge, thankfully. His lesson was "I've just got to get through this," and he did. And he became a big, tough, strong guy so he wouldn't have to deal with guys like me and other people anymore. We all learned what we were supposed to, I suppose.

"Let It Roll."

That was the biggest song about my mom. That was the heartbreaking "I'm lost now." I was on tour during the "Meet Virginia" days with no cellphone, no Internet, no connection to anybody. 

The way I found out my mother was terminally ill was [through] my sister. [She] said, "Hey, so-and-so's coming to your concert tonight." She came and left me a card and the card said, "Your mom's really sick. You need to call her." 

So after the show, I went outside the venue to a payphone and just cried on the phone with my mom for an hour, with her telling me that she was going to be sick for what we hoped was going to be a long time, but it wasn't. She was gone quickly, but that's what that song is about: "I don't know how to let this thing roll, but I've just got to remember you'll be in me forever."

That's so rough, dude.

It's so f**king hardcore, dude. You don't want to have that moment ever.

"Something More."

It wasn't the magic that "Drops of Jupiter" was, but we thought it at the time. That was my speaking out against the life I was living: "I'll get through this and I'll be something more." You think you're something more right now, that you're above this, but it's going to flip.

It was at a weird time because as I said before, we were trying to write only within the band. Our drummer at the time, his name is Scott. He wasn't writing anything, so I was like, "Dude, learn how to write. We all have to write within this project. Go do it." 

So he got the keyboard and wrote the [mimics vamp] because he was a novice writer. He was writing whatever he felt in those weird minor keys and stuff. Nobody else was really writing that, so it became a fun little project to jump-start somebody's writing style.

Before we hit the last three songs, tell me what it was like to be frightened and on tour and newly famous during that boom for the music industry. I guess it was a boom, right? In the early 2000s? That high of being on stage versus sobbing on the payphone with your mom, that's such a crash to Earth.

It never really felt like a boom. It just never did. Because there's a thing that happened where "Meet Virginia," it was an underground [success]. When people find a new band, it's like ownership. I found them, I turned you on to them, you like them because of me—it's ownership. A feeling of "I just found my jam."

"Drops of Jupiter" was so big on pop radio that we almost had to transition from real fans to now pop fans. And pop fans are fickle. They deteriorate. They move on to the next thing. So, it wasn't a boom. It was a transition, and we had to figure out how to get used to it. 

Like, did we just lose all the people we gained by touring for three years with a little old song that's like a cool car? And now we're in a Bentley and they're like, 'You've changed'? We had to figure out how to navigate that.

We've got four minutes left. "Whipping Boy."

Yeah, that was me just being me. We were listening to records that were, like, Sparklehorse. At the time, Whiskeytown, when Ryan Adams just started that project, and his guitar tone. We were trying to emulate some of those vibes. That was the darker side of what we loved musically.

How about "Getaway"? 

That was my jam at the time because I got to play the vibraphone on it. It just felt "jazz" to me, and I grew up listening to jazz. That was a song kind of about my parents' relationship.

Lastly, we've got "Mississippi."

That was the sleeper. That was everybody's favorite song on the album.

Whoa.

It was "vibe." You know, nowadays—and I think it's really cool; I like where music's at—we listen to vibes. Instead of "Hey, check out this album," it's more of a playlist of things that have whatever in common. That was our vibe song. I'd like to make a record of vibe songs like "Mississippi" someday.

I've got one last question. Where did the muse—or whatever you want to call it—lead you from Drops of Jupiter?

Well, it went from "Somebody please come and help me" to finding real love. True love from somebody I'm supposed to be with. 

So then, when I wrote "Hey, Soul Sister" and "If It's Love" and the happier songs, this was also a transition because people were like, "Well, that's not the same sad guy that I remember, so I'm not sure if this is for me." And I'm like, "Well, that's good because I'm going to stay here. I don't want to go back to that other thing! Your joy is coming from real misery from me, and I've got to move on, too."

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