Latest / Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond / Corinne Bailey Rae

Transcript

Corinne Bailey Rae · Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin crim Bailey Ray's an English singer songwriter whose career
0:23
Speaker 1: started with a bang. In two thousand and six, her
0:26
Speaker 1: debut album Talked to UK charts and was certified triple
0:29
Speaker 1: platinum with the help of her first hit single, put
0:31
Speaker 1: Your Records On. A slew of awards and other best
0:34
Speaker 1: New Artists distinctions followed. As she put out subsequent albums,
0:38
Speaker 1: Krin aspired to stretch herself as an artist beyond neo
0:41
Speaker 1: soul pop music's success. In September, krim Bailey Ray released
0:46
Speaker 1: her fourth album, Black Rainbows. It's an album inspired by
0:49
Speaker 1: her time spent exploring Chicago's historic Stony Island Arts Bank,
0:53
Speaker 1: a vast collection of black cultural relics and writing. Krin's
0:57
Speaker 1: new album is in many ways a reaction to the
0:59
Speaker 1: art she consumed in that archive. It's performed in a
1:03
Speaker 1: mix of jazz, rock and the avant garde. On today's episode,
1:07
Speaker 1: I talked to krim Bailey Rays about the years she
1:10
Speaker 1: spent in the Arts Bank archives and the stories that
1:12
Speaker 1: inspired her new work. She also talked about her record
1:16
Speaker 1: label's exhaustive efforts to push her to recreate the success
1:19
Speaker 1: of her first album, and how a Skateboarding magazine helped
1:22
Speaker 1: clarify the look of her new record. This is broken
1:28
Speaker 1: record liner notes for the Digital Age.
1:30
Speaker 2: I'm justin Mitchman.
1:32
Speaker 1: Here's my conversation with Corinne Bailey Ray your record. I
1:37
Speaker 1: listened to it, I guess went for a walk to
1:39
Speaker 1: go get some coffee and listen to it again. Like,
1:42
Speaker 1: it is really surprising how many different sounds are on here.
1:46
Speaker 2: Like I loved that. I never settled into like a
1:49
Speaker 2: groove listening to it.
1:50
Speaker 3: Yeah.
1:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like each with each song, it's like it's
1:54
Speaker 1: kind of growing, evolving, changing.
1:55
Speaker 2: It's it's awesome.
1:56
Speaker 4: It's incredible, Thanks very much.
1:58
Speaker 3: Yeah, I wanted to have all these different styles, but
2:00
Speaker 3: it really came about naturally from responding to the objects,
2:04
Speaker 3: responding to the events. The idea that came seemed to
2:07
Speaker 3: be in a particular style, whether it was, you know,
2:10
Speaker 3: a punk song, or whether it's more aggressive guitars, or
2:12
Speaker 3: whether it's more like a ballad or something more psychedelic.
2:15
Speaker 4: Like it all it all just kind of presenting itself
2:18
Speaker 4: to me like that. But yeah, it is. It bounces
2:22
Speaker 4: you around a lot.
2:24
Speaker 1: What were the first handful of songs that you came
2:27
Speaker 1: up with for the record. I'm just curious how, you know,
2:30
Speaker 1: like how it started and how it evolved sonically.
2:33
Speaker 3: I think the first handful of songs were I wrote
2:37
Speaker 3: some and the residency. I went to the Arts Bank
2:40
Speaker 3: winside encountered the Arts Bank building, you know, Stoney Island
2:44
Speaker 3: Arts Bank in Chicago. You can see pictures of it online.
2:47
Speaker 3: It's the foundation that runs it. It's called the Rebuild Foundation.
2:51
Speaker 3: It's on the South Side of Chicago, which I don't
2:54
Speaker 3: know how much you know about the South Side, but
2:56
Speaker 3: it was a very vibrant, middle class black area in
3:00
Speaker 3: the sixties and then it's just had so much decline
3:03
Speaker 3: and unfunding and now it's really and there's a lot
3:08
Speaker 3: of difficult issues there with housing, mental health, drugs, violence.
3:14
Speaker 3: But there's this one building there on Stoney Island that
3:17
Speaker 3: hasn't been pulled down by the city. This city wanted
3:19
Speaker 3: to pull it down, and Theasta Gates saved it.
3:21
Speaker 4: He bought it for a dollar and saved.
3:24
Speaker 3: And raised four million dollars by selling his own art
3:27
Speaker 3: to make this a building again.
3:29
Speaker 4: So instead of being full of money, it's full of art.
3:31
Speaker 3: It's full of art artifacts, it's full of twenty six
3:34
Speaker 3: thousand books that were submitted to the Johnson Foundation, who
3:39
Speaker 3: did Ebony magazine and Jet Magazine, So all the books exactly,
3:43
Speaker 3: so all the books that were submitted to them over
3:45
Speaker 3: the years for review, as well as the books that
3:48
Speaker 3: John Johnson and the Johnson's collected. And then it has
3:53
Speaker 3: all the Frankie Knuckles records. So it's got this big
3:56
Speaker 3: slice of you know, Chicago house music. And it has
4:00
Speaker 3: all the glass slides from the University of Chicago. So
4:03
Speaker 3: when they digitized their archive, they just gave all this
4:07
Speaker 3: a bank they.
4:07
Speaker 4: Had nowhere to store it all.
4:09
Speaker 3: And it also has all these difficult objects that were
4:12
Speaker 3: pulled out of circulation by a black and Chinese banker
4:15
Speaker 3: called Ed Williams, problematic objects from America's past, you know,
4:20
Speaker 3: the trinkets and the mammy jars and newspaper articles, photographs, cartoons,
4:26
Speaker 3: all of these things that he would find in flea
4:29
Speaker 3: markets and yard sales that he wanted to just buy
4:32
Speaker 3: and putting a box in his house. So nobody else
4:35
Speaker 3: was buying them and putting them in their house and
4:37
Speaker 3: keeping it all going. So he had these boxes and
4:40
Speaker 3: boxes and things, and they became too much even for
4:43
Speaker 3: him to be around sixteen thousand objects, so they are
4:47
Speaker 3: also all in the bank as well. So I went
4:50
Speaker 3: looking around just as a tourist, as someone who's interested
4:53
Speaker 3: in history and black histories and stories and hidden stories
4:57
Speaker 3: and raised stories. And when I left, I just couldn't help.
5:02
Speaker 3: But you know, I was just scribbling a poem here
5:04
Speaker 3: or starting to write a song here, and I spoke
5:06
Speaker 3: to the asktra about it, and he said, you know,
5:08
Speaker 3: you should come be an artist in residence.
5:10
Speaker 4: You know, they have buildings nearby.
5:13
Speaker 3: So we stayed there for two weeks and just really
5:16
Speaker 3: dug into the archives, read loads of books, sol loads
5:19
Speaker 3: of objects, attended loads of events, and then I've just
5:23
Speaker 3: been going back there very regularly all through these years,
5:26
Speaker 3: you know, since twenty seventeen. So I mean the first
5:29
Speaker 3: song I ever wrote about the bank was called you
5:32
Speaker 3: who Walk These Floors in Fear because I had seen
5:34
Speaker 3: a sculpture that was made from the abandoned floorboards from
5:38
Speaker 3: a police station, and the police station have been left
5:42
Speaker 3: for many decades, and these floorboards are from there.
5:46
Speaker 4: And I thought about what they had been witnessed to.
5:48
Speaker 3: You know how often in history it's the witnesses are silent,
5:52
Speaker 3: you know, they're the buildings, they're the windows, they're the trees,
5:56
Speaker 3: the soil, the slave cabin that, you know, the things
5:59
Speaker 3: that can't talk, but they you know, they've seen a truth.
6:02
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's the first thing I wrote.
6:04
Speaker 3: That's kind of on I guess a part two of
6:06
Speaker 3: the record, which I haven't finished.
6:09
Speaker 4: Then I wrote he will follow with his Eyes.
6:11
Speaker 3: And erasure, and then maybe before the Throne of the
6:14
Speaker 3: Invisible God.
6:15
Speaker 4: It just kind of you started from there.
6:18
Speaker 1: He will follow you with his eyes? Is it certainly
6:20
Speaker 1: like a dance element to it, So maybe that's the
6:22
Speaker 1: Frankie Knuckles Chicago house of it all. Well, how did
6:25
Speaker 1: you write that song? Like start off with words? When
6:27
Speaker 1: we had a piano.
6:28
Speaker 4: Guitar with he will follow You with his Eyes?
6:31
Speaker 3: I had seen all this advertising and I'd found a tin.
6:36
Speaker 4: Of a beauty product when I was in Chicago.
6:40
Speaker 3: I'd opened the drawers of the stone in the Ed
6:43
Speaker 3: Williams collection and seen this tin and it had this
6:45
Speaker 3: beautiful illustration on and it was this company called Valmore.
6:48
Speaker 3: So then when I was home, I was doing all
6:49
Speaker 3: this research about Valmore and finding out they were kind
6:53
Speaker 3: of like the Avon of their day. So they would
6:56
Speaker 3: sell these beauty products door to door. The guy who
6:58
Speaker 3: did the art for them, they all had these amazing
7:01
Speaker 3: illustrations online drawings, and it was this black artist called
7:05
Speaker 3: Charles Dawson.
7:06
Speaker 4: So they had very sympathetic drawings.
7:08
Speaker 3: You know that the line was targeted at black men
7:10
Speaker 3: and women, and it was targeted in this really romantic way.
7:14
Speaker 3: Whoever did the marketing was really good. So the perfumes
7:17
Speaker 3: would be called things like follow me boy or look
7:21
Speaker 3: me Over. And then when you'd read something in you know,
7:24
Speaker 3: Ebony or another publication about Valmore, and it would have
7:27
Speaker 3: all the products listed, it would say in a big
7:30
Speaker 3: banner across the top, you know, his.
7:32
Speaker 4: Eyes will follow you across the room.
7:35
Speaker 3: You know, and it would be then it'd be a
7:36
Speaker 3: series of wigs or something that they were selling. So
7:38
Speaker 3: they sold all kinds of things. And I thought about
7:43
Speaker 3: Valmore and just how.
7:45
Speaker 4: Enticing it was. You know.
7:45
Speaker 3: Sometimes I'd read about the hair products and think, I
7:48
Speaker 3: wonder if you could still get this, because it sounded
7:51
Speaker 3: like from the.
7:51
Speaker 4: Description that it did everything.
7:53
Speaker 3: You know, it's like it's nourishes but it's not greasy,
7:56
Speaker 3: and you know it it's a styling product and it's
7:59
Speaker 3: it's a premade and it's and I thought, gosh.
8:02
Speaker 4: They were so good.
8:04
Speaker 3: Their marketing was really good, and obviously it was it
8:07
Speaker 3: was the sympathetic view of black men and women, but
8:10
Speaker 3: it was very much aligned with white beauty. So the
8:14
Speaker 3: beauty they we're aiming at was, you know, lighter skin,
8:16
Speaker 3: straight a hair, all of these things. So I guess
8:19
Speaker 3: with a song, I wanted to present a kind of
8:22
Speaker 3: nineteen fifties dream world where you're really under the spell
8:25
Speaker 3: of this kind of advertising. You know, you can imagine
8:28
Speaker 3: them knocking at the door, and if you're a black woman,
8:31
Speaker 3: you know you're going to be taking the hair straightening
8:33
Speaker 3: cream and you're going to be taking the skin lightning
8:36
Speaker 3: cream and all.
8:37
Speaker 4: Of those things.
8:38
Speaker 3: But halfway through the song, the person who has been
8:41
Speaker 3: very much under the spell of our more, you know,
8:43
Speaker 3: there's this sonic disruption and then they end up saying,
8:47
Speaker 3: you know, I don't want to vanish into a girl
8:49
Speaker 3: that I don't recognize.
8:50
Speaker 4: You know, if you.
8:51
Speaker 3: Want to run to sweet sweet Georgia brown with another
8:54
Speaker 3: kind of skin lightning cream, you know, light light brown
8:57
Speaker 3: is the thing.
8:58
Speaker 4: Not dark.
8:59
Speaker 1: After that line, it's like a break in. It's like
9:01
Speaker 1: a break in the song.
9:02
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a total break and the person everything just
9:05
Speaker 3: falls away and it gets much more contemporary, and it's just,
9:08
Speaker 3: you know, I'll be there with my plum red lipstick
9:11
Speaker 3: when Black Hair King came my Black Skin gleaming. I
9:14
Speaker 3: wanted it to be a sort of a shock and
9:16
Speaker 3: kind of you know, really assertive, and that the person
9:19
Speaker 3: would be sort of back in there, back in their
9:21
Speaker 3: self and away from this really enticing beauty which held
9:25
Speaker 3: many people under its way for a really long time.
9:28
Speaker 1: The repetition of those lines make it really feel like
9:32
Speaker 1: like a cold arm as much as like a refrain.
9:35
Speaker 1: You know, it's just it's beautiful, and like the way
9:36
Speaker 1: it just repeats, repeats, repeats, and the production evolves over
9:39
Speaker 1: that second half of the song, it's like it feels
9:42
Speaker 1: it feels subversive in.
9:43
Speaker 2: A very cool way. Thank you as you're.
9:46
Speaker 1: Writing out the words, you know, at that point the
9:50
Speaker 1: song should move into something else.
9:51
Speaker 3: Yeah, I wanted it to be a shift away from
9:55
Speaker 3: you know, in the beginning, we had vibraphones and guitars
9:58
Speaker 3: and we had strings, and it was all very dreamy
10:01
Speaker 3: as imagining. Like you know, there's probably Californian movies that
10:06
Speaker 3: were shot, you know, where a car would be sort
10:08
Speaker 3: of winding round the roads, wrapping a mountainside and the sunshining.
10:13
Speaker 4: You know, that kind of fifties.
10:14
Speaker 3: Dream world, and you can live in it, but at
10:18
Speaker 3: some point you have to when you break out of it,
10:20
Speaker 3: you realize how all consuming it was. And so yeah,
10:24
Speaker 3: I really wanted to have that repetition back, but I
10:26
Speaker 3: wrote it on guitars, so that would always just be
10:28
Speaker 3: like pulling one string.
10:29
Speaker 4: Plum red lipstick man Blake hit.
10:34
Speaker 3: And then I guess when we did it in the studio,
10:36
Speaker 3: we just you know, we wanted wanted it to evolve, like,
10:39
Speaker 3: didn't don't bring the base straight away and have this
10:41
Speaker 3: more like cosmic sort of weird jazz moments is like
10:46
Speaker 3: is it futuristic? Is it seventies? It's you know what
10:49
Speaker 3: we wanted it to be. We want to be different
10:51
Speaker 3: to what had gone before.
10:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's incredible. It's really cool.
10:56
Speaker 1: And the tone of the beginning does sort of remind
10:58
Speaker 1: me of like, well, like the late fifties, like early
11:01
Speaker 1: sixties almost like a it's akin to like a Frankie
11:04
Speaker 1: Valley production or something. But then yet again, just like
11:06
Speaker 1: everything else on the record, it's like halfway through it's like,
11:09
Speaker 1: oh shit, we're under something else now.
11:10
Speaker 2: You know.
11:11
Speaker 3: I really liked it, and I thought, you know, some
11:12
Speaker 3: people were saying it's close to what your sound has
11:16
Speaker 3: been historically. So I really liked the idea that you
11:18
Speaker 3: might put it on and be like, oh, finally I
11:20
Speaker 3: can just kind of relax.
11:22
Speaker 4: In this, you know.
11:22
Speaker 3: But then you listen to words. What is she saying?
11:24
Speaker 3: She's saying lighter and bright? Why is she's saying longer
11:27
Speaker 3: and straighter? And you know it's kind of you know,
11:29
Speaker 3: I feel like the eye in that song is not
11:31
Speaker 3: really me. It's kind of this I don't know, Shirley
11:34
Speaker 3: Bassie type Earth Kit, you know, delivery everything, you know, everything,
11:39
Speaker 3: you know, I want to when I was being more
11:40
Speaker 3: dramatic than I would normalss sing it, you know, it's
11:42
Speaker 3: trying to sort of be in that world.
11:44
Speaker 1: I'm so happy to hear Shirley Bassie reference like she's
11:47
Speaker 1: incredible and no one talks about her anymore. She's and say,
11:51
Speaker 1: with the earth of Kit, I can just uniquely bizarre
11:53
Speaker 1: but beautiful voice.
11:54
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, I love that.
11:56
Speaker 2: But you know, I didn't want to say that, but
11:58
Speaker 2: that's what was my response.
12:00
Speaker 1: Listening to the albums, when it got to that song,
12:02
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, okay, something that not you know,
12:05
Speaker 1: it's not that like I pigeonhole you in my mind.
12:06
Speaker 1: But by the time I got that song, I was like, oh,
12:08
Speaker 1: this feels like for MEI terrain.
12:11
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it was.
12:12
Speaker 3: And that's you know, writing it in this sort of
12:14
Speaker 3: buzz and over a guitar style. It's like, you know,
12:17
Speaker 3: I write a lot of songs from there, so yeah.
12:21
Speaker 2: I love that.
12:21
Speaker 1: There's like it's not like you rap on it, but
12:23
Speaker 1: there's some tracks like New York Transit Queen really where
12:26
Speaker 1: it sounds almost like similar to the way ESG like
12:30
Speaker 1: kind of like it was like they weren't rapping, but
12:32
Speaker 1: they were like aggressively talking on the track, but also rhythmically.
12:36
Speaker 2: It was like, that's very cool.
12:38
Speaker 4: It's a really cool reference because I did find.
12:40
Speaker 3: That the ESG record amongst Frankie Knichols stuff as well,
12:43
Speaker 3: you know, Frankie Nickles archive. Wow.
12:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's like.
12:46
Speaker 3: This band is so cool. I don't know enough about them,
12:49
Speaker 3: you know, I don't know enough about them, but yeah,
12:52
Speaker 3: I really want to use my voice in all these
12:54
Speaker 3: different ways on the record. I mean, I think all
12:56
Speaker 3: it was a side project, so I didn't feel any
12:59
Speaker 3: sort of beholding to the music that I've done before,
13:01
Speaker 3: and I thought, it doesn't matter if it's really different
13:04
Speaker 3: to what I've done. In fact, it should be really
13:07
Speaker 3: different to what I've done, because it's it's.
13:09
Speaker 4: A side project. It's not me.
13:10
Speaker 3: It's like you know, I was calling it for it
13:12
Speaker 3: was like the Chicago Project was for ages. It was
13:14
Speaker 3: just that, and firstly it was going to be an
13:16
Speaker 3: EP and then it turned into more but it Yeah,
13:20
Speaker 3: it was only really towards the end of it that
13:22
Speaker 3: I thought, oh, I really should claim this as my own.
13:24
Speaker 3: It has been my obsession for the last seven years
13:27
Speaker 3: and I want it to beat my record now.
13:29
Speaker 4: It's only really when I saw my name on it.
13:31
Speaker 3: You know, we worked in this brilliant graph artist called
13:34
Speaker 3: Manu Shribley, his art designer, and I'd seen his writing
13:38
Speaker 3: on a skateboard magazine.
13:40
Speaker 4: And then just kept calling him like please, please, can
13:43
Speaker 4: you do that? It just has to be you?
13:45
Speaker 3: And but I realized I hadn't told him, don't put
13:48
Speaker 3: my name on, so I told him, you know his
13:50
Speaker 3: photos and it's called Black Rainbows. But I hadn't quite explained, Oh,
13:54
Speaker 3: it's not really my project, it's a side. So when
13:56
Speaker 3: I saw my name written down, forgot to tell him
13:59
Speaker 3: not to put it on. But then when I saw
14:01
Speaker 3: it in the way, just even the way he'd written,
14:03
Speaker 3: it made me reimagine myself. It was really weird, but
14:08
Speaker 3: just something about the waste and that script just been
14:10
Speaker 3: free from all the different fonts that I feel like
14:15
Speaker 3: I've tried as sort of logos of my own name,
14:17
Speaker 3: and then suddenly there was just this free writing, and
14:20
Speaker 3: I thought, yeah, I really like I like how that looks.
14:22
Speaker 4: I like how that is.
14:23
Speaker 2: Do you typically look through skate magazines or is that?
14:27
Speaker 4: It was just it was a real fluke. It was
14:29
Speaker 4: just the way they had it presented.
14:30
Speaker 3: I think I've probably got it here that when I
14:32
Speaker 3: saw so, it's like, who's this elegant sort of black
14:36
Speaker 3: teenager on the front and then this writing. I mean,
14:40
Speaker 3: so I couldn't even work out when it was cool
14:42
Speaker 3: at the time. I think that's renaissance issue. But the
14:48
Speaker 3: magazine's called Numbered, But I really really like magazine shopping,
14:54
Speaker 3: and there's this there's a shop called Colours May Fay
14:57
Speaker 3: and leads that I go to.
14:59
Speaker 4: But there's also this.
15:00
Speaker 3: Store that's it has like a car heart downstairs and
15:04
Speaker 3: loads of skating, but it's got magazines upstairs, and it's
15:06
Speaker 3: everything from punk z means, you know, like rad you know,
15:13
Speaker 3: trans by, Queer publications, and and then.
15:18
Speaker 4: Just art house stuff and fashion stuff, and.
15:20
Speaker 3: So I always think magazines are really special. I mean,
15:23
Speaker 3: I know you can get loads of loads online now,
15:25
Speaker 3: but just seeing how someone's put all the work into
15:28
Speaker 3: it and putting it together, and you know, it costs
15:30
Speaker 3: money to make all these shoots, so I think like
15:32
Speaker 3: you can pay your seven pounds or twelve pounds or
15:34
Speaker 3: whatever it is. And I'm still really analogued. I love
15:37
Speaker 3: coming home from town. There's just like ten magazines and
15:41
Speaker 3: then you get to see like, oh who was the
15:43
Speaker 3: art director, who was the you know, so I really
15:45
Speaker 3: like to do that, and I like to read in
15:47
Speaker 3: the bath, you know. So it's just you can't really
15:49
Speaker 3: do that with your phone, just you end up destroying
15:51
Speaker 3: your phone.
15:52
Speaker 4: I've done it before, I have, I have I do.
15:54
Speaker 4: Why did I do that? Yeah?
15:56
Speaker 2: Way less fun?
15:57
Speaker 4: Yeah?
15:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I feel like at some point people
15:59
Speaker 1: will realize, just like with Vinyl, you know, it's that
16:02
Speaker 1: it's like it's much more fun. You could scroll Instagram
16:05
Speaker 1: or TikTok or Twitter or whatever, but it's way less fun.
16:08
Speaker 3: It's fun, but also there's a limit to it, which
16:11
Speaker 3: is good, where you know, you never get to the
16:13
Speaker 3: back page of the Internet, and so your brain is
16:16
Speaker 3: I've got this completest thing sometimes when I'm on Instagram
16:19
Speaker 3: and then I'll look up and hours have gone past,
16:22
Speaker 3: and i think I'm trying to just get to the end,
16:24
Speaker 3: and the rule will be no end, whereas with a magazine,
16:27
Speaker 3: you know, when you've done the whole thing, you.
16:29
Speaker 1: Know, you know, yeah, it's kind of it's nice. It's
16:32
Speaker 1: kind of like a sad thing because you've got to
16:33
Speaker 1: wait for the get healthy.
16:35
Speaker 4: It's healthy.
16:37
Speaker 3: Now go and eat some food or like go outside
16:39
Speaker 3: for a work. You know, that's dead eyed scrolling thing
16:43
Speaker 3: that you can get to it like just before you
16:45
Speaker 3: go to bed.
16:45
Speaker 4: It's so bad, you know, really try not to do it. Now.
16:50
Speaker 1: We're going to pause for a quick break and then
16:52
Speaker 1: come back with more of my conversation with Krein Bailey Ray.
17:00
Speaker 1: We're back with Karin Bailey Ray. So you really you
17:03
Speaker 1: weren't thinking of it as a side project. Just as
17:05
Speaker 1: a way to trick yourself into being a bit more
17:10
Speaker 1: outside of your comfort zone and music making. You were
17:13
Speaker 1: legitimately thinking about this as something that would not have
17:16
Speaker 1: your name on it.
17:17
Speaker 3: It wouldn't have my name on it, and then I thought, oh,
17:19
Speaker 3: I'd like, you know, people could be pleasantly surprised if
17:22
Speaker 3: they found out that it was me. But I was
17:23
Speaker 3: really I think because as soon as I thought of
17:26
Speaker 3: it as a side project, then I just felt completely free.
17:30
Speaker 3: I'm not doing it for a label, and it doesn't
17:33
Speaker 3: have to have radio songs. It doesn't have to have
17:35
Speaker 3: three minute songs. They don't have to be catchy, they
17:37
Speaker 3: don't have a tradition, have to have a traditional form,
17:40
Speaker 3: you know, like some of them don't have a second verse,
17:43
Speaker 3: or some of them have no choruses, or some of
17:45
Speaker 3: them have eight verses, or whatever it is.
17:48
Speaker 4: I just wanted to make and I wanted it to be.
17:50
Speaker 3: Kind of messy, and I felt all the time really
17:53
Speaker 3: excited that.
17:55
Speaker 4: You know.
17:56
Speaker 3: I think before I would have had a song like
17:59
Speaker 3: before the Throne of the Invisible God. And then thought, Okay,
18:02
Speaker 3: what else can it do? Maybe I should put in
18:05
Speaker 3: a middle eight, or maybe I should now have got
18:06
Speaker 3: to get it smaller, and I've got.
18:07
Speaker 4: To get it shorter. Could the beat did it? You know?
18:10
Speaker 2: And I just where does that come from?
18:12
Speaker 4: In you?
18:12
Speaker 3: I think it's just for years of being a label,
18:15
Speaker 3: you know, where you're interacting with people. I mean, when
18:18
Speaker 3: I did my first album, it wasn't without any A
18:21
Speaker 3: and R at all, because we had this really good
18:23
Speaker 3: DJ called Gary Davis who would sort of I was
18:26
Speaker 3: working in a production company with him, so but pretty
18:30
Speaker 3: much we did it amongst ourselves. It was me and
18:32
Speaker 3: Steve Chrisanthau underneath this art shop in a place, a
18:36
Speaker 3: sort of place out of town near Leeds in Yorkshire.
18:40
Speaker 3: And then we could take it to the labels and
18:42
Speaker 3: say here we are, it's whatever, it's twelve songs.
18:46
Speaker 4: Do you like it? Do you not like it? Some
18:48
Speaker 4: of them loved it, some of them.
18:49
Speaker 3: Didn't get it, And then we interviewed and then we
18:52
Speaker 3: found our home at EMI.
18:53
Speaker 4: At that time.
18:54
Speaker 1: Well then it sounds like it was sort of you
18:56
Speaker 1: more than the label, right, because it's like I mean,
18:58
Speaker 1: the first album is very tight sort of part not
19:02
Speaker 1: in the vacuous sense, but it's a very tight songwriting.
19:06
Speaker 2: It is.
19:06
Speaker 3: It's a more sort of pop record and I think,
19:10
Speaker 3: but yeah, definitely Gary was an influence on that. It
19:12
Speaker 3: was more like I wrote tons of songs and they
19:15
Speaker 3: were the songs that people were saying, Oh, it should
19:17
Speaker 3: be this one, it should be that one. You know,
19:18
Speaker 3: I had a manager at the time I was young.
19:21
Speaker 3: I was like, oh, yeah, this one, not that one,
19:23
Speaker 3: this one, not that one. I'd already written like a
19:26
Speaker 3: style when I was in my band, and of course
19:28
Speaker 3: I did want to connect with people, you know, I
19:32
Speaker 3: wanted to make it work.
19:34
Speaker 4: I wanted people to hear.
19:35
Speaker 2: It, you know, wanted to be received.
19:38
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I wanted it to be received.
19:40
Speaker 3: As you know, I had my English literature degree, but
19:43
Speaker 3: I was working in a cafe and working in a
19:45
Speaker 3: jewelry counter and you know, going down to London when
19:48
Speaker 3: I could to write these songs with people, and I
19:50
Speaker 3: really wanted to sort of make it, you know, I
19:53
Speaker 3: wanted music to.
19:54
Speaker 4: Be the thing that I did. So I did work.
19:56
Speaker 3: I worked really having that record, and it went through
19:58
Speaker 3: a lot of people's hands in terms of maybe my
20:01
Speaker 3: manager saying yes or no, or Gary Davis saying yes
20:05
Speaker 3: or no, and then obviously various labels eventually saying yes
20:08
Speaker 3: but I think from then on because it was so popular,
20:12
Speaker 3: and then felt a real pressure with you know, certainly
20:15
Speaker 3: my third album to try and somehow recreate what I
20:19
Speaker 3: had already done. But I knew I didn't want to
20:22
Speaker 3: because it didn't feel creatively.
20:24
Speaker 4: Good to do so.
20:26
Speaker 3: But yeah, I'd had so many meetings where I'd be
20:29
Speaker 3: really excited about a song, you know, we'd work on it,
20:31
Speaker 3: and we'd send it down to whoever was the A
20:35
Speaker 3: and R or the label at the time.
20:37
Speaker 4: We'd be just like, oh, I'm waiting to hear back.
20:39
Speaker 4: I wonder what they'd think, and then you'd get a
20:42
Speaker 4: sort of response.
20:43
Speaker 3: It'd be like, yeah, it's good, it doesn't sound like
20:48
Speaker 3: the first single. It was always this thing about what's
20:50
Speaker 3: the first single?
20:51
Speaker 4: You know, the first single.
20:52
Speaker 3: Has to smash the doors down, the first single has
20:55
Speaker 3: to be so catchy, the first single has to be
20:57
Speaker 3: a radio friendly, the first single.
20:59
Speaker 4: Has to be this. It's unique, it's different, it's you.
21:02
Speaker 3: You know, people are basically saying, oh, it needs to
21:05
Speaker 3: be what put your records on did. But of course
21:08
Speaker 3: that was such a different moment, and it was kind
21:10
Speaker 3: of felt like an accident to me. It was just
21:12
Speaker 3: like this is a weird song, a little song that
21:14
Speaker 3: I love and it wasn't like anything else, but it
21:17
Speaker 3: was just accidental that it was successful. So then I always,
21:22
Speaker 3: you know, i'd always feel that pressure and I'd put
21:25
Speaker 3: what I thought was a good offering forward and the
21:28
Speaker 3: response was always like not quite like are you crazy?
21:33
Speaker 4: This isn't it?
21:34
Speaker 3: But not that far off it, you know, just kind
21:36
Speaker 3: of like a bit of sideways look. And then it'd
21:38
Speaker 3: be you know, I wrote like a stand my own.
21:41
Speaker 4: When I was, you know, a teenager.
21:44
Speaker 3: But there would be a sort of like, oh, maybe
21:46
Speaker 3: we could pay you with this person or that person.
21:49
Speaker 3: So we ended up doing lots of co writing, which
21:51
Speaker 3: is always weird where it's like, Hi, we don't know
21:53
Speaker 3: each other, we've got five hours, let's make a smash hit.
21:58
Speaker 3: But the person would always be like a giant in music,
22:01
Speaker 3: you know, so then it's even more intimidating. You're like,
22:03
Speaker 3: if this isn't working out, it's me, not them, and
22:06
Speaker 3: so I just think it kind of it sort of
22:08
Speaker 3: crushed my comforce a lot, and it kind of dinted
22:12
Speaker 3: my my radar or my instinct for what was right
22:16
Speaker 3: for me.
22:17
Speaker 4: I guess, you know, so I.
22:18
Speaker 2: Just keep trying that starting with the second record.
22:20
Speaker 3: I mean, the second record was different because it was
22:23
Speaker 3: kind of a reaction to my first album. So I
22:26
Speaker 3: wanted to play more guitars and have it more indie
22:28
Speaker 3: because my first record was so much more of a
22:30
Speaker 3: pop soul record.
22:31
Speaker 2: It felt like an evolution.
22:32
Speaker 1: It felt related to your first record, but it felt
22:34
Speaker 1: like a step forward.
22:36
Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks, and I loved it. And yeah, I guess
22:38
Speaker 3: I had got more into jazz and into Saul, but
22:40
Speaker 3: I also had all my indie stuff. But I think
22:42
Speaker 3: in terms of politically at the label, I had gone
22:45
Speaker 3: through a big loss at that time. You know, my
22:48
Speaker 3: first husband had died really unexpectedly, and so everyone at
22:52
Speaker 3: the label was very kind and understanding and no one
22:54
Speaker 3: pushed me at that time. So I felt like the
22:58
Speaker 3: first record, I got to do what I want. The
22:59
Speaker 3: second record, I'd kind of got to do what I
23:01
Speaker 3: want because nobody wanted to upset me or they just
23:06
Speaker 3: were happy I was making something and genuine They were
23:09
Speaker 3: good people, you know, they you know, they cared a
23:12
Speaker 3: lot for me. My one a and that person who
23:14
Speaker 3: I still in love, he's a friend. He came up
23:16
Speaker 3: to see me like every two weeks with Fancy Cakes
23:19
Speaker 3: from London and we just sat and talked about nothing
23:21
Speaker 3: and it was a really beautiful time actually, And then
23:24
Speaker 3: he occasionally played me like, hey, there's this Bonker's Lady
23:28
Speaker 3: Garga and Beyonce song, or have you seen this, or
23:30
Speaker 3: like you were trying to tell me what's happening in
23:32
Speaker 3: the world, because I was very much in my own bubble.
23:35
Speaker 3: So in a way, I think by the third record
23:39
Speaker 3: there was a lot of pressure because maybe they had
23:42
Speaker 3: wanted to do more with the second record, but they
23:44
Speaker 3: couldn't because I was in this delicate place. So the
23:47
Speaker 3: third record was like, right, we've really got to make
23:49
Speaker 3: this count, you know. And that was the rhetoric around me.
23:52
Speaker 3: He's like, yeah, really, this is the one, you know,
23:55
Speaker 3: just don't throw it away, that kind of feeling like,
23:59
Speaker 3: you know, it's because of that. I just felt this
24:01
Speaker 3: immense pressure and I feel like I wrote three albums
24:04
Speaker 3: where I could have written one for that.
24:07
Speaker 4: And it was just what about this?
24:09
Speaker 3: What?
24:09
Speaker 4: But this not the first single? Don't really hear it.
24:14
Speaker 4: I don't really get that one.
24:15
Speaker 3: And then after a while I didn't need to go
24:18
Speaker 3: to present it to them. I could just hear the
24:20
Speaker 3: voice in my head saying, don't bother finishing that. It's
24:23
Speaker 3: not an international megasmash, you know, and I was like, yeah,
24:27
Speaker 3: it's really rough. I sort of look back on that
24:29
Speaker 3: time and feel really sorry for the me that was
24:32
Speaker 3: that person, and I look at The Heart Speaks and
24:34
Speaker 3: Whispers and think, well, I'm really glad. I'm glad that
24:36
Speaker 3: I got as much done as I did, and I'm
24:38
Speaker 3: glad that there are some good songs that record. But
24:41
Speaker 3: it was really hard to work from an instinctive place.
24:45
Speaker 3: Even though the record was about following your instincts, you know,
24:48
Speaker 3: it's called The Heartspeaks and Whispers, but those whispers were
24:51
Speaker 3: very easily sort of drowned out by other people and
24:54
Speaker 3: by myself probably, you know. So with this record, I
24:57
Speaker 3: knew I wasn't at a label. I didn't think it
25:00
Speaker 3: would take as long as it did. But I am
25:02
Speaker 3: just going to do something completely different to anything I've
25:05
Speaker 3: done before, Like I'm not going to feel those pressures.
25:08
Speaker 4: I'm not gonna think about radio.
25:10
Speaker 3: I'm not going to think about what I've done before
25:11
Speaker 3: because it's not even my name. And because of that,
25:14
Speaker 3: there was just this torrent of creativity and not just
25:17
Speaker 3: that because I was working within this archive. The labor
25:22
Speaker 3: was like sitting reading a bunch of Ebony magazines, you know,
25:26
Speaker 3: or like going to an amazing exhibition in New York's
25:29
Speaker 3: All of a Nation, or going flying to Milan to
25:32
Speaker 3: see Betty Sarr's retrospective, you know, at the Prada Foundation.
25:35
Speaker 2: Yeah.
25:36
Speaker 4: I didn't think of its work, and it wasn't work.
25:38
Speaker 3: That was me just just sort of following my news.
25:42
Speaker 3: But all of those rich things that are all fed
25:44
Speaker 3: into the record. So it was really fun to do.
25:47
Speaker 3: And the right way to do stuff, I guess, is
25:50
Speaker 3: just to wait until you're really excited and then just let.
25:53
Speaker 4: It fly out.
25:54
Speaker 2: How did you end up in Chicago that first trip
25:56
Speaker 2: where you visited.
25:57
Speaker 4: I was on tour. I was on tour with the
25:59
Speaker 4: Heart Speaks and Whispers.
26:00
Speaker 3: So we had done you know, we had probably done
26:03
Speaker 3: New York and done you know, Connecticut or somewhere, and
26:06
Speaker 3: then we'd flown into Chicago.
26:08
Speaker 4: And I remember saying to one.
26:09
Speaker 3: Of my managers, I'm really annoyed because I really wanted
26:11
Speaker 3: to meet this brilliant artist, the Asta Gates, and I
26:14
Speaker 3: didn't tell you, and now he won't be able to
26:16
Speaker 3: come to this show, like I was really fatalistic, and
26:19
Speaker 3: she somehow managed to find him that day and he
26:21
Speaker 3: did come to the show. I didn't know, and when
26:24
Speaker 3: I was getting changed, she shouted me, She's like, don't
26:26
Speaker 3: get change, come out someone to meet you. And I
26:29
Speaker 3: was so excited to see him.
26:31
Speaker 4: I didn't know he was going to be there.
26:32
Speaker 3: I'd seen photos of him, so I knew it was him,
26:35
Speaker 3: and I was just buzzing to talk to him and
26:37
Speaker 3: be like, you know, you've saved this building from demolition,
26:40
Speaker 3: that's what you do. That's part of your art practice.
26:42
Speaker 3: And New Europe into ceramics, and I love ceramics. And
26:46
Speaker 3: you know, he has this background in the Black Church
26:50
Speaker 3: and he has this band called the Monks of Black
26:52
Speaker 3: Monks at Mississippi, and so he's got this music part
26:55
Speaker 3: of what he does as well. And he's lectures at
26:57
Speaker 3: the university and he's super brainy, and so I just
27:01
Speaker 3: was like really excited meet to meet another creative person.
27:05
Speaker 3: And because it's art, you know, there's no rivalry. I mean,
27:09
Speaker 3: there'd be no rivalry between the two of us. Yes,
27:11
Speaker 3: there is literally internationally known, you know, artist whose works
27:16
Speaker 3: sell for you know, millions, But it was really good
27:20
Speaker 3: to just have a scene that you know, he had
27:23
Speaker 3: nothing really to the music industry, and I of course
27:25
Speaker 3: had nothing to the art world, and so it was
27:28
Speaker 3: just kind of meet and getting to know each other
27:30
Speaker 3: as friends.
27:31
Speaker 1: That's so cool that it's like it all came together
27:33
Speaker 1: that it inspired this sort of next like a rediscovery
27:36
Speaker 1: of yourself too. While we're talking about the first record,
27:38
Speaker 1: I really liked the first record. I think it's really good,
27:41
Speaker 1: but it always seemed like I remember reading interviews from
27:45
Speaker 1: me at the time that it seemed like your influences
27:47
Speaker 1: were a bit deeper than that record conveyed, you know,
27:50
Speaker 1: or more varied in that record conveyed. Not that and
27:52
Speaker 1: it's a really great happen I mean, it's like a
27:54
Speaker 1: really well done album, but it always did strike me
27:57
Speaker 1: that it's like, oh, there's something else going on though,
27:59
Speaker 1: and there's some undercurrents that aren't being expressed.
28:01
Speaker 2: You know.
28:01
Speaker 3: I'm really glad you could you could see that feel that,
28:04
Speaker 3: and that's how I felt at the time.
28:05
Speaker 4: It was a funny mixture of feeling.
28:08
Speaker 3: I feel really scepted because people have taken this thing
28:11
Speaker 3: that I made it my hometown, I played on my
28:14
Speaker 3: guitar and I wrote and then here it is in
28:16
Speaker 3: the world. But also it felt like I was somehow
28:20
Speaker 3: keeping us part of myself secret or hiding a part
28:24
Speaker 3: of myself. And maybe that is that that part, you know,
28:27
Speaker 3: it's like the music that didn't necessarily come straight out
28:31
Speaker 3: of black cultures, or the music that I'd grown up
28:34
Speaker 3: listening to, you know, like the indie music. I mean,
28:37
Speaker 3: I know black rock has a black origin as well,
28:39
Speaker 3: but I didn't get to show the part of me
28:42
Speaker 3: that loves electric guitar and loves indie music and this
28:46
Speaker 3: complex simplicity of a band like Nirvana, you know, the
28:49
Speaker 3: simple direct nature of that kind of music and or
28:53
Speaker 3: weird you know, Buke or Triemus or you know those.
28:57
Speaker 3: I felt like in the first record, I didn't get
28:59
Speaker 3: to show the whole thing. I just felt like I've
29:02
Speaker 3: got more and different things to say, and I you know,
29:05
Speaker 3: I just want to keep feeling that that there's more
29:08
Speaker 3: to say. Else why would you you know, why would
29:11
Speaker 3: you bother saying it?
29:12
Speaker 2: Yeah.
29:13
Speaker 1: One thing that was cool about the first record that
29:14
Speaker 1: stood out because it didn't feel like that was a
29:16
Speaker 1: time when it was like there was a lot of
29:18
Speaker 1: kind of milk toast acoustic music, not to I mean,
29:22
Speaker 1: I don't want to name anyone, but your music felt
29:25
Speaker 1: particularly a little deeper, and I think it because it
29:27
Speaker 1: connected to you that I was thinking about it. Like
29:30
Speaker 1: in the States, I guess we have Bill Withers, but
29:32
Speaker 1: beyond Bill Withers, there wasn't a strong tradition of like
29:37
Speaker 1: the soulful singer songwriter, even though there was great songwriters
29:41
Speaker 1: in soul music, whereas in the UK Linda Lewis or Labysiffari, like,
29:47
Speaker 1: there's these people who could like play guitar acoustically and
29:52
Speaker 1: make records that were essentially soul records. And it kind
29:55
Speaker 1: of felt like that was similar to what you were doing,
29:57
Speaker 1: and that kind of resonated with me. At least, you know,
30:00
Speaker 1: there's like this really great songwriting that it's soulful, but
30:04
Speaker 1: it's just presented in this way that is unique at
30:07
Speaker 1: least I think feel like in the States, you know,
30:09
Speaker 1: someone puts the guitar out.
30:10
Speaker 2: Here, it gets immediately it's a little saccering, you know.
30:13
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I'm so glad you said that.
30:15
Speaker 3: And I mean Bill Withers is i mean, obviously a
30:18
Speaker 3: god in everyone's world, but he is, you know, right
30:21
Speaker 3: at the top of the tree. And I've watched that documentary.
30:24
Speaker 3: I don't know if you saw it a few years ago.
30:25
Speaker 3: It came out still Bill.
30:26
Speaker 2: You know, it was that's one of my favorites.
30:29
Speaker 4: It's such that's such a good album.
30:30
Speaker 3: But you know the documentary that came out when he
30:33
Speaker 3: was still alive, and he was talking about this period
30:35
Speaker 3: of his life where people were saying kind of trying
30:39
Speaker 3: to convince him to change his style. You know, he
30:42
Speaker 3: said there was people at the record label and he
30:44
Speaker 3: called them the black Spurts, and he'd say like, you know,
30:47
Speaker 3: he's like, you need to get above that stool and
30:49
Speaker 3: you need to get two dancers and the gold Lammy
30:52
Speaker 3: shirt and just start. You know, maybe disco was coming
30:54
Speaker 3: in and his kind of homely, folksy, you know style. Yeah,
31:01
Speaker 3: it just it was somehow not seen as commercial enough.
31:04
Speaker 3: But also there was an undertone to like, it's not
31:07
Speaker 3: black enough, it's not black.
31:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's always what struck me about being black in
31:15
Speaker 1: the UK.
31:15
Speaker 2: From Afar.
31:15
Speaker 1: I've only been to London once, but from Afar it's
31:18
Speaker 1: always seemed as if y'all had a little more freedom
31:21
Speaker 1: over there to express layers of yourself, you know, whereas
31:27
Speaker 1: here what's black is very you know, put on the
31:30
Speaker 1: the whatever, the l and you.
31:32
Speaker 3: Know, so interesting with African American culture because obviously black music,
31:38
Speaker 3: Black American music is kind of like the the pinnacle
31:43
Speaker 3: to me of like creative arts. Partly it comes out
31:47
Speaker 3: of that segregation and separatism, So I know what you mean.
31:51
Speaker 4: It's like it's a.
31:52
Speaker 3: Very specific blackness, which is very specifically not whiteness. And
31:57
Speaker 3: in the UK it's more messy and hybrid because we
32:02
Speaker 3: didn't have legalized segregation. You know, you had the black
32:07
Speaker 3: African people working plantations, but they were in the Caribbean
32:12
Speaker 3: and that was separate from England, even though they were
32:14
Speaker 3: owned by English.
32:16
Speaker 4: White people Scottish and culture.
32:19
Speaker 3: Yeah, but then when the Caribbeans came, they, I guess
32:22
Speaker 3: had already been in a hybrid culture where they were
32:26
Speaker 3: black majority islands, but there were lots of white people there,
32:29
Speaker 3: and you know, they're influencing each other and then sort
32:33
Speaker 3: of coming in but also being influenced by American imports,
32:36
Speaker 3: you know, vinyl imports, and you know, think of like
32:38
Speaker 3: a Bob Marley and how much he's obviously into Curtis
32:41
Speaker 3: Mayfield and all those harmonies.
32:43
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, but he's st.
32:44
Speaker 4: Also doing his own thing with it.
32:47
Speaker 3: So I always think like Caribbean music's sort of hybridized anyway,
32:52
Speaker 3: and then then you get this thing in blackness where
32:56
Speaker 3: the people are black, Like, you know, my dad's family
32:59
Speaker 3: came from the Caribbean, but they also thought of themselves
33:01
Speaker 3: as British because the Caribbeans were they were a British colony,
33:06
Speaker 3: so they already had their British passport. So it's really
33:09
Speaker 3: it's a different it's a really different scene Black Britishness.
33:12
Speaker 4: But I know what you mean. I think it's less defined.
33:15
Speaker 4: It's less strengthened.
33:17
Speaker 3: By institutions and the Black universities and the NAACP and
33:22
Speaker 3: the Black Church, and they're all the things that make
33:26
Speaker 3: Black American music so great. But I also think the
33:30
Speaker 3: sort of the hybrid messy thing of the UK means
33:35
Speaker 3: that I feel like people feel blackness is less defined.
33:38
Speaker 3: It's not like someone's drawn a chuck circle around you
33:42
Speaker 3: and if you step out of it, you're not authentic
33:44
Speaker 3: or you know, your blackness is in question. And then
33:47
Speaker 3: of course mine's further complicated because my mum is white,
33:50
Speaker 3: My dad's black, so it's like it's that as well.
33:53
Speaker 3: So I always used to, you know, be playing and think,
33:56
Speaker 3: is this Do.
33:57
Speaker 4: I like this because I am not black?
34:01
Speaker 3: Do I like this because I'm And then I would
34:03
Speaker 3: find loads of my black friends would also be feeling
34:07
Speaker 3: or being accused of not being black enough, you know,
34:10
Speaker 3: so you realize that it's a construct.
34:12
Speaker 4: And then you know, even to this.
34:14
Speaker 3: Day, you know, black girlfriends will be like, I'm going
34:17
Speaker 3: to the carnival West Indian Carnivals, so like I need
34:19
Speaker 3: these kind of earrings and this kind of clothes to
34:22
Speaker 3: almost present as black. So it's that thing has really
34:27
Speaker 3: done a number on all of us where we we
34:30
Speaker 3: limit ourselves because we think that there's a certain expectation
34:36
Speaker 3: of blackness. And that was another reason why the record's
34:38
Speaker 3: called Black Rainbows, because I really wanted to push out
34:41
Speaker 3: to say like, oh yeah, this is a punk track,
34:45
Speaker 3: but you know, I'm wearing a Bad Brains T shirt
34:47
Speaker 3: in the video because of Bad Brains is this amazing
34:50
Speaker 3: black punk band. And you know this, this dissenting music
34:54
Speaker 3: has also has a black thread and black origins, and
34:59
Speaker 3: they've been kind of written out, not Bad Brains specifically,
35:02
Speaker 3: but those those black and scar kind of origins of punk,
35:08
Speaker 3: sometimes not acting knowledge, you know.
35:10
Speaker 1: Well, you know, recently, a Bob Seger song came on
35:13
Speaker 1: the radio for me and I was like, oh fuck.
35:14
Speaker 1: I was like, no one, I just never listened to
35:16
Speaker 1: Bob Siegret, Like something from one of his first records
35:18
Speaker 1: came on. I was like, damn, why did no one
35:19
Speaker 1: tell me how great this is? So I started listening,
35:22
Speaker 1: and I kind of got a little obsessed with like
35:24
Speaker 1: hard rock music or like the begin the origins of
35:27
Speaker 1: hard rock, like you know, late sixties through the seventies,
35:31
Speaker 1: And so I started making like a playlist, like kind
35:32
Speaker 1: of like what was the stuff that made hard rock
35:35
Speaker 1: hard rock? And what I realized was listening is a
35:37
Speaker 1: lot of it came from Well, there's a lot that
35:40
Speaker 1: came from London.
35:40
Speaker 2: There's a lot that came from Detroit.
35:42
Speaker 4: Yeah, and a.
35:43
Speaker 1: Lot that came from la but a lot of it
35:44
Speaker 1: was out of Detroit, and a lot of it was
35:47
Speaker 1: white guys trying to be soulful, trying.
35:50
Speaker 3: To do R and B.
35:51
Speaker 4: Yeah.
35:51
Speaker 3: Yes, I mean you could say that's the start of
35:54
Speaker 3: the Beatles, right, It's fascinating.
35:56
Speaker 4: Yeah, I know exactly what you mean.
35:58
Speaker 3: And there was a big scene in the UK, kind
35:59
Speaker 3: of northern soul scene, which was definitely you know, young
36:03
Speaker 3: white bands hearing American imports and wanting to you know,
36:08
Speaker 3: do them or you think of you know, sort of
36:11
Speaker 3: Patty Smith, you know, singing quoting a Motown song or
36:14
Speaker 3: you know Tainted Love, you know, being.
36:16
Speaker 4: Readne by Mark Harmon.
36:18
Speaker 3: There was there was many incidents and as we were
36:20
Speaker 3: saying earlier, you know the Beetles ourselves picking all these
36:23
Speaker 3: like little Richard songs to cover and it's like yeah, yeah, exactly,
36:30
Speaker 3: yeah yeah, and they all really.
36:32
Speaker 4: Acknowledged, you know, oh we love Muddy Waters.
36:34
Speaker 3: But you know, at the time, the irony of it
36:38
Speaker 3: was that it kind of took white English young kids
36:44
Speaker 3: appreciating black R and B to kind of sell it.
36:47
Speaker 4: Black white America. You know. They took it as it's
36:50
Speaker 4: the Britis, it's the British invasion.
36:52
Speaker 3: It's as like you guys should just change the radio
36:55
Speaker 3: channel occasionally, twist and show. You know, it's like listen
36:59
Speaker 3: to the Ising Brothers that listened to Chuck Burial, isn't it,
37:02
Speaker 3: you know, But for some reason it filtered through that
37:06
Speaker 3: connected with them for all the different complications to reasons
37:11
Speaker 3: right to be that way. Yeah, But I mean that
37:13
Speaker 3: relationship between the bouncing back and forth between some of
37:16
Speaker 3: the UK and the US is something that I'm really
37:19
Speaker 3: you know into and following those threads, you know.
37:23
Speaker 4: I love the music history.
37:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's fascinating into your point about like those
37:27
Speaker 1: blues and soul imports that like kind of would find
37:30
Speaker 1: a home in the UK, that there was really not
37:33
Speaker 1: much of a home for them in the US. That's
37:35
Speaker 1: another thing about the UK that I've always envied from
37:38
Speaker 1: afar as it's like it's always in a place for
37:40
Speaker 1: black people to go to feel except you know, the
37:43
Speaker 1: classic stories like Hendrick's going there, or just other various
37:45
Speaker 1: places in Europe where you know, jazz musicians are just
37:48
Speaker 1: going because it's like or Tina Turner just moving to
37:50
Speaker 1: Sweden because it's like this is way better, you know, yeah,
37:53
Speaker 1: or Switzerland or Sweden were one of those.
37:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, just people escaping the particular type of American racism,
37:59
Speaker 3: which one that comes out of that long standing segregation
38:03
Speaker 3: and just the amount of brainwashing around you know, we
38:08
Speaker 3: are different, inherently different people's you know, all of that
38:13
Speaker 3: racial constructs that's so powerful in America. I think it
38:16
Speaker 3: is nice for but people to come to Europe. I'm
38:19
Speaker 3: not saying it's not a land without racing, but it's different,
38:22
Speaker 3: different flavor. But even just the difference really makes you
38:26
Speaker 3: realize how subjective and constructed the whole thing is.
38:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're going to take one last quick break and
38:33
Speaker 1: then come back with more from a conversation with Karinn
38:36
Speaker 1: Bailey Ray. We're back with the rest of my conversation
38:42
Speaker 1: with Karinn Bailey Ray. Let's talk about Peach Velvet Sky. Yeah,
38:47
Speaker 1: you used to work in the jazz club, correct.
38:49
Speaker 4: Yes, I used to work in the jazz club. So
38:51
Speaker 4: when I was at university, I worked in this jazz.
38:53
Speaker 3: And soul club called the Underground. And first I was
38:55
Speaker 3: collecting the coats to hang up, and then I was
38:58
Speaker 3: working behind the bar, which was the really good job
39:00
Speaker 3: because the bar was opposite the stage, so as you
39:03
Speaker 3: were working, you could just be watching all these incredible
39:06
Speaker 3: jazz musicians come through and and brilliant bands, you know,
39:10
Speaker 3: remember Royers playing there on time or like cast Latina
39:14
Speaker 3: All Stars, you know, like lots of like they would
39:16
Speaker 3: always get Cuba musicians and Terry Callier. You know, you
39:20
Speaker 3: could just kind of watch and learn as well as
39:22
Speaker 3: lots of you know, people from there.
39:24
Speaker 1: There's another beautiful, yes, soulful, yeah, singer songwriter, just I
39:28
Speaker 1: got it out of control.
39:29
Speaker 3: You know, yeah, Terry Callier, Yeah, yeah, so beautiful, and
39:33
Speaker 3: that's sensitivity. I think of John Lucian as well, you know.
39:37
Speaker 3: But Peach Felt the Sky I had written because I
39:40
Speaker 3: saw lots of copies of this one book in the
39:43
Speaker 3: Arts bank, and it was a book that I had
39:45
Speaker 3: read as a teenager, as a book that been sent
39:47
Speaker 3: to me by my American aunts.
39:50
Speaker 4: My dad's got four sisters.
39:52
Speaker 3: Everybody came here from Saint Kitts, and then two of
39:55
Speaker 3: them moved to New Jersey when they were in their
39:58
Speaker 3: early twenties, and so they were my American aunts, and
40:00
Speaker 3: they would send me, you know, books or stuff, clotheschool
40:04
Speaker 3: aid sometimes.
40:06
Speaker 4: Or like Barett's from my hair.
40:08
Speaker 3: But they my aunt Joyce sent me this book and
40:11
Speaker 3: it was called Incidents in the Life of a Slave
40:13
Speaker 3: Girl as part of a six six Narratives early African
40:17
Speaker 3: American narratives.
40:19
Speaker 4: And I read it and I was just so struck.
40:21
Speaker 3: By this woman's story that she had grown up on
40:24
Speaker 3: this plantation in eighteen thirteen. You know, she grew up
40:28
Speaker 3: under the authority of her parents, and then as she
40:30
Speaker 3: got a little bit older, she realized she was in
40:32
Speaker 3: this institution, you know, from which there was no escape.
40:36
Speaker 3: There was an authority above her parents that she couldn't
40:39
Speaker 3: you know, violate at all. And then later on in
40:43
Speaker 3: her life, the ownership of her change so that she
40:46
Speaker 3: had this master, this new master, who was also the
40:51
Speaker 3: local doctor. But he developed this obsession with her, and
40:55
Speaker 3: he believed himself to be in love with her, so
40:58
Speaker 3: he would be always trying to pursue her and you know,
41:02
Speaker 3: sort of sexually aggress her. And Harriet Jacobs ended up
41:08
Speaker 3: having two childs children in her teens, with a local man,
41:13
Speaker 3: a white man who her grandmother had put her in
41:17
Speaker 3: touch with to see if he could help her. And
41:19
Speaker 3: he obviously, however, I don't know the exact situation of
41:22
Speaker 3: their relationship, and even how she writes it, it seems
41:26
Speaker 3: as though this is a you know, a love relationship.
41:29
Speaker 3: But they have two children together, and this incenses this
41:33
Speaker 3: doctor even more, you know, this master, and he he's violent.
41:37
Speaker 3: At one point, he's very violent with one of the children.
41:39
Speaker 3: He throws the boy against the wall and he's in
41:41
Speaker 3: a coma for days, and she realizes she has to
41:43
Speaker 3: get away, and she realizes shees she has to get
41:44
Speaker 3: her children away. So she makes it seem as though
41:48
Speaker 3: she's fled to the north, but in fact, she's hiding
41:52
Speaker 3: out in the crawl space above her three grandmother's storehouse
41:56
Speaker 3: on the plantation. You know, it's not big enough to
41:59
Speaker 3: stand up in, but she can crawl, and you know,
42:01
Speaker 3: her grandmother can let her out.
42:02
Speaker 4: To the store, has to move around. Obviously, she's feeding her.
42:05
Speaker 3: And she waits until the coast is clear, and she
42:09
Speaker 3: until he's expended a lot of effort and money and
42:13
Speaker 3: time looking for him. Enough so she stays in this
42:16
Speaker 3: crawl space for seven years. And while she's there, she
42:20
Speaker 3: bores this hole in the side of the buildings, a
42:22
Speaker 3: wooden building, like this tiny hole, so that people can't
42:25
Speaker 3: see him, but she can see out. So she can
42:27
Speaker 3: look out and see see her children playing because her
42:30
Speaker 3: grandmother brings her children nearby, or she can hear you know,
42:34
Speaker 3: passing comments, you know, things that might be pertaining to
42:37
Speaker 3: her freedom. You know, she's got enough light to sew
42:41
Speaker 3: buy And I just when I saw it in the autsbag,
42:44
Speaker 3: I reread it because I thought, what's this like now
42:46
Speaker 3: to read as an adult, to read as a woman,
42:48
Speaker 3: to read as a mother, And it was just, you know,
42:52
Speaker 3: it's so much a story of waiting and patience and resilience,
42:56
Speaker 3: and just think of someone's mental fortitude to be able
43:00
Speaker 3: to make a prison for yourself in effect, so that
43:04
Speaker 3: when you do eventually escape, you're safe and you can.
43:08
Speaker 3: You know, she send for her children, and she does.
43:11
Speaker 3: She ends up setting up a school with her daughter
43:13
Speaker 3: for children leaving slavery in eighteen sixty five. And I
43:18
Speaker 3: was really drawn to this story. In one time, I
43:20
Speaker 3: was trying to get to sleep and I thought about
43:24
Speaker 3: this loophole that Harriet Jacobs had. You know what the
43:27
Speaker 3: sky looked like from her loophole, You know what the sunset.
43:31
Speaker 4: Looked like, and how wide and vast it seems when
43:34
Speaker 4: she eventually found her freedom.
43:36
Speaker 2: Wow, it's beautiful. And the chords on the song are beautiful.
43:39
Speaker 1: I don't know how it developed into like that sort
43:42
Speaker 1: of what kind of rapturous, gorgeous song that it became,
43:45
Speaker 1: but it's like all the elements of that are just beautiful,
43:48
Speaker 1: and that it's sort of in terms of production value,
43:52
Speaker 1: the least sort of adventurous, but it's but it's like
43:54
Speaker 1: all the musically, it's it's all there. But it fits
43:57
Speaker 1: in between these two songs that are just sort of
44:00
Speaker 1: you're like, how does it fit? That's the whole kind
44:02
Speaker 1: of thing about this record to me, it's like, how
44:03
Speaker 1: the fuck does this song?
44:05
Speaker 2: This song? But it's beautiful.
44:06
Speaker 3: It's always make the track older, like it's so one
44:09
Speaker 3: thing would be a palette cleanse for the other.
44:11
Speaker 4: So just when it was sort of too you know, overwhelming.
44:15
Speaker 3: Then I do something beautiful and then but then I
44:17
Speaker 3: want to do something you know, I just wanted.
44:19
Speaker 4: To keep I don't know, just keep changing the mood,
44:23
Speaker 4: I guess.
44:24
Speaker 3: But yeah, with Peach Veelmetsky, I wrote that on guitar,
44:26
Speaker 3: but it was much more of a simple, you know.
44:28
Speaker 4: Folk song.
44:29
Speaker 3: And then when I worked with Steve Brown, who worked
44:32
Speaker 3: for a long time him also married to he has
44:35
Speaker 3: a really really good ear and he's he's a jazz musician,
44:38
Speaker 3: so I guess the song kind of developed this extra
44:42
Speaker 3: rich nurse and the more much more complex harmony because
44:47
Speaker 3: of what he was sort of putting in, And so
44:49
Speaker 3: we would just rehearse it together and I'd say, come on,
44:50
Speaker 3: and needs record it, and he say, it's not you know,
44:52
Speaker 3: we haven't got it yet. We don't want to record
44:54
Speaker 3: it until it's like we're doing it on stage, and
44:57
Speaker 3: that's how we ended up doing it. So it felt
44:59
Speaker 3: risky to me because I normally like to sort of
45:01
Speaker 3: track things as you go along and then almost say
45:03
Speaker 3: well this, you know, it worked and it's down now.
45:07
Speaker 4: So we were just putting lots of rehearsals that I can.
45:10
Speaker 1: I'm glad you did because your vocal performance and that
45:12
Speaker 1: is phenomenal. It's like, really, god, damn you know, I mean,
45:17
Speaker 1: that's a tough vocal performances.
45:18
Speaker 2: Thank you you really, Nail.
45:20
Speaker 3: I really feel with these stories there's so much bigger
45:22
Speaker 3: than my own personal story. You know, when you think
45:25
Speaker 3: of Harriet Jacob and surviving this this sexual aggression, and
45:28
Speaker 3: then you know her parents die and she's a slave girl,
45:33
Speaker 3: and then she's a teenage parent to this man who
45:37
Speaker 3: he says he's gonna free her children, but he hasn't,
45:40
Speaker 3: he hasn't done it yet, and he goes on to
45:43
Speaker 3: be his prominent politician, and then and then she she's
45:45
Speaker 3: constantly got this man. And then how to how to
45:48
Speaker 3: escape it and thinking of doing it, and then there's
45:50
Speaker 3: that's seven years. I can't get round that sort of
45:54
Speaker 3: you know, she could just scream out in the middle
45:57
Speaker 3: of the night and it would completely blow a cover.
46:00
Speaker 3: It's like, how does she hold on and hold back
46:03
Speaker 3: and kind of slow herself down for that amount of time,
46:08
Speaker 3: but then gett into this very active you know, getting
46:11
Speaker 3: on a boat going north.
46:12
Speaker 4: I just think of what's kind of gone on in
46:15
Speaker 4: her mind.
46:15
Speaker 3: You know, she's so to me, the thing of mental
46:19
Speaker 3: health was I was really sort of thinking of in
46:21
Speaker 3: the song, and you know, are they only points where
46:23
Speaker 3: she just becomes.
46:24
Speaker 4: Sort of maddened? And it's slightly cracked by just that.
46:28
Speaker 3: You know, eventually while she's in there, they try and
46:30
Speaker 3: get home by putting her children in prison.
46:33
Speaker 4: You know, your mother's so unfeeling.
46:35
Speaker 3: How can she not come from the north when she
46:37
Speaker 3: knows you're in prison and she just is holding this line.
46:41
Speaker 3: It's this huge gamble that she takes. And I'm really
46:44
Speaker 3: fascinated by her. She lived in her eighties Harriet Jacobs.
46:47
Speaker 1: But you mentioned earlier there's sort of other songs that
46:50
Speaker 1: you've written for this project that you planned to put
46:52
Speaker 1: out in some way, shape or form. How far along
46:55
Speaker 1: with that are you.
46:56
Speaker 3: I think at one point I was working at twenty
46:58
Speaker 3: on twenty songs all at the same time, and I thought,
47:01
Speaker 3: this is just crazy because none of them are going
47:03
Speaker 3: to get finished because I know what I'm like, and
47:05
Speaker 3: I was just take too long. So yeah, so then
47:08
Speaker 3: I just thought, right, just focus on these ten because
47:10
Speaker 3: they're close to being finished, and leave the other ten
47:13
Speaker 3: for now. So yeah, I guess I'll go back to
47:15
Speaker 3: them and revisit them. But I mean they all came
47:18
Speaker 3: around about at the same time as the rest of
47:21
Speaker 3: the song say.
47:22
Speaker 1: It would be beautiful, they're another project related to it.
47:26
Speaker 1: And it's great to hear you talk about this stuff,
47:27
Speaker 1: you know, it's like it's refreshing to hear someone who's
47:31
Speaker 1: connected to the world through art and the way that
47:33
Speaker 1: you are on this record.
47:34
Speaker 4: Thank you very much.
47:35
Speaker 3: Yeah, it has really been an obsession. And I say that,
47:38
Speaker 3: you know, there's so much in there. There's so much
47:40
Speaker 3: in that bank. You know, there's twenty six thousand books
47:43
Speaker 3: and all those stories and all those You could just
47:45
Speaker 3: look at a newspaper article or someone staring out for
47:48
Speaker 3: a photo or find you know, a little stitch, handmade
47:52
Speaker 3: black doll and just you know, it's like they're all
47:55
Speaker 3: objects that have come to us through history for you know,
47:59
Speaker 3: how do they get here? And you know what have
48:02
Speaker 3: they observed? And I just find the whole thing really fascinating.
48:05
Speaker 3: And you know, there are obviously so many, so many
48:08
Speaker 3: of the questions that the objects are asking are still
48:11
Speaker 3: questions and still hotly debated things.
48:17
Speaker 4: Now.
48:18
Speaker 3: I think the fact that the history wasn't done was
48:20
Speaker 3: the thing that made me interested in it as well.
48:24
Speaker 2: Cool.
48:24
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for putting the record out. Thanks for
48:26
Speaker 1: taking the time to chat.
48:28
Speaker 4: Thank you so much. She's been really great to talk
48:30
Speaker 4: to you.
48:33
Speaker 1: Thanks to Krin Bailey Ray for explaining the inspiration for
48:36
Speaker 1: her newest album.
48:37
Speaker 2: Black Rainbows.
48:39
Speaker 1: You can hear it, along with our favorite songs from her,
48:41
Speaker 1: on a playlist at broken record.
48:42
Speaker 2: Podcast dot com.
48:44
Speaker 1: Subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash
48:47
Speaker 1: broken record Podcast, where you can find all of our
48:50
Speaker 1: new episodes.
48:51
Speaker 2: You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record.
48:54
Speaker 1: Broken Record is produced and edited by Leah Rose, with
48:57
Speaker 1: marketing help from Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer
49:01
Speaker 1: is Ben Tolladay. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries.
49:06
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49:23
Speaker 1: to share, rate, and review us on your podcast app.
49:26
Speaker 2: Our theme music's by Anny Beats. I'm justin Richmond.