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By way of introduction, let me just say, I love making records. No matter how tough it is, I always want to make the next one. In fact, I am
usually thinking about the next cd before I am done with the one I am working on, it’s a process I have grown into and crave. Even in the
midst of collaboration, there is a solitude that goes along with making music, a loneliness that feels right. This project happened over the
course of a year- a year in between Indigo Girl shows and taking care of life. I locked myself in my hotel rooms and wrote whenever I could.
My most productive days were at the Mohegan Sun Casino and a luxury hotel in Sydney, Australia. I did a lot of driving. I drove through long
nights and small towns to get home from the studio in time for the next Indigo tour. I found that WNCW lasts about an hour each way outside
of Asheville and when you drive out of Georgia up 85N to get to Greensboro, you can catch a lot of college radio. I found a great Motel 8
during a snowstorm in Waynesville, N.C. I found that the YMCA in Asheville is really cool, but very crowded. Most importantly, I found that
first takes aren’t always the best. Now I am adding up the receipts, compiling notes, and remembering the timeline. I am looking at the horses
hanging out on the cd cover wondering what that means. Some kind of strength, some kind of kindness, I guess.
Didn’t It Feel Kinder started a year ago in Durham, N.C.-a place I find musical resonance in ever since I met up with The Butchies in 2000.
For this project, I started with Melissa York, the drummer from the now defunct Butchies. Mel kept saying, “Amy, I really want you to work
with Greg Griffith.” Greg Griffith is Mel’s musical co-conspirator since the punk days in NYC and he is sort of a renaissance man of all things
musical. I was ready to find someone to challenge me. I knew Greg’s production work with The Butchies, but honestly was just going on Mel’s
word. So we met up, we played through a few songs together-Mel drumming and Greg on Bass (keys and guitar too) and wearing the producer’s
hat. Something must have clicked cause we set up another session, this time at Greg’s home studio in Greensboro. Greg immediately raised
the bar for me. I could tell he wasn’t totally familiar with my prior recordings and this gave me a sort of uncomfortable freedom. I kept thinking,
“Why do I want a producer, this is just what I am trying to get away from, I just want to do my own thing and fuck up and have fun?” But as
Greg’s ideas came to fruition, it just felt inevitable.
In musical terms, I didn’t even really know what I wanted this record to be. I knew I wanted it to be a wide-open vista, the prairie at twilight,
a mountain road at 3am, a heartbreaking news broadcast. I wanted to use every voice I had inside me, every voice I had come across and
absorbed. I didn’t want to be limited by habit or insecurity or gender or place. Sometimes I sang a song right the first time, and some songs
I sang over and over until I found the voice. I wrote tunes out of my range and kept them there because that was where they wanted to be.
I let the songs control the experience. I couldn’t even tell you what tied them together until we were done with the final master. The common
bond was something musical this time, some lesson in melody and rhythm.
Kaia Wilson always hears the meat of the song and then plays it in some punk ass way on her guitar. Melissa always wants to know what
I am singing about, where the soul is. I understand the song better after she plays drums with it. These two had been with me since the first
solo record and I knew I needed what they had to offer. Greg’s bass playing was as integral to this cd as his production. His confidence created
a stability that offset even the most fragile song. There were songs on this record that didn’t find themselves until Tomi Martin put his guitar tracks
down. I knew that he would play the perfect groove for “She’s Got to Be.” But, in some cases, like “Birds of a Feather,” I had no idea where the
song was heading, until he played on it. I remember so vividly sitting in the control room listening to him just sort of jam to it and then all of a sudden
notes just started playing out of him and it was the song as it was meant to be. We were all just stunned.
I had been obsessively listening to a new band called Arizona. They’re like a cross between Led Zeppelin and The Shins, and throw in some Judy
Garland too. They ended up living in Asheville, (via Brooklyn and Atlanta) and working, sleeping, and recording at this funky studio called Echo Mountain-
vintage gear in an old church in the South -a perfect recipe for me. I asked them to be the guest band on the record-do a couple tunes together as a
collaborative effort. The first song we did together, “Out on the Farm”, was a cynical little number about the music business, which I knew they could
bring to life. We worked at Echo and their engineer/producer, Danny Kadar, ran the session. I fell in love with the studio, the band, and Danny. The
month before, Mel, Greg, Kaia, and I had done 4 days of recording down in Atlanta, but the studio was pretty cranky, so we decided to change our
course and work between Greg’s home studio in Greensboro and Echo Mountain in Asheville with Danny in charge of engineering. When we needed
extra instruments or voices, we found the guys in Arizona. It seemed there wasn’t a sound we needed that they couldn’t come up with. When it came
time for harmonies, I wanted to go for it, really spend time on arrangements, and not shy away from them, just as a point of distinction from the
Indigo Girls. So I put it all in Garage Band and just laid down what was going on in my head. Brandi Carlile came in and brought it all together.
She morphed her voice into different styles and personalities to fit each song.
We mixed and remixed, mastered and re-mastered, and after 10 months had a record of what we created, experienced, played, and sung. Life was
going on while we were making this record. Nothing stopped for it, and it was good that way. It absorbed every struggle and clumsy human
relationship. It took longer than we expected, it cost more than we had, and it came out far better than we could have imagined. I guess. I always say,
it should be fun, but in the end I learned the value of not having fun too.
Amy Ray
4-13-08 |
AMY RAY
Didn’t it Feel Kinder
Daemon Records
"I wanted to explore new territory, and I wanted to use a different part of my voice."
In "Didn't It Feel Kinder," Amy Ray's third solo recording and most ambitious independent effort to date, the singer-songwriter's style and lyricism
reflects her many musical influences, breaking new ground for avid Indigo Girls followers and her solo career fans alike. New listeners will follow
Ray far through a rich musical landscape that is both intimate and grand, like sneaking in on sound check at the Knitting Factory.
Independent to the core, Ray began designing the album while on tour with the Indigo Girls in the UK. "I was huddled over my computer with my
Garage Band turned on in some cold backstage area. The opening band went on and the music was pounding through the walls, creating this montage
of sounds and bass beats. I started playing the most strident thing I could to cut through it all and get my thoughts down and it all started merging into
'Bus Bus'." Together with former Butchies Kaia Wilson and Melissa York, and Greg Griffith on bass, Ray molded a danceable rhythm that is at once
pop, punk rock and hip hop:
Hey baby my baby sweet baby
I'm on the bus tour bus bunk
I got my headphones on and I'm listening to
Elliott rock rock rock rock
Rock me to sleep
I got my phone on vibrate in case you call me
Rock me to sleep...
Didn't It Feel Kinder marks Ray's first solo effort utilizing a producer. Greg Griffith (The Butchies, Le Tigre, Loudspeaker, Vitapup), a fearless listener
and multi-talented musician, worked with Ray to incorporate a variety of sounds and influences as diverse as Al Green, The Pretenders, OutKast, and
Violent Femmes, to create her unique and evolving voice throughout this record. Ray rose to the challenge to redesign the halls of rock and folk that
have housed her for so long: "I just thought I wouldn't break new ground unless someone was making me do it." The two took Ray's back-of-the-napkin
GarageBand maps to structure every song - another first for Ray's solo work, because she normally has arranged her music and harmonies in a live setting.
Overall, the album teems with the Clash-esq energy that drives so much of Ray's solo work, bouncing and begging the listener to shout along. But as it rocks
out, it starts to groove, and then waxes poetic in a well-balanced sequence of intensity, beauty, and fun.
Great art, and perhaps music in particular, cannot exist in a vacuum, and Ray is the first to sing the praises of everyone who collaborated on Didn't It Feel Kinder.
Wilson, York, and Griffith supported the musical strides that Ray took, but every musician extended Ray's reach. Guitarist Tomi Martin - who with Trina Meade
is half of the ascendant Three5Human (and who has played with the likes of Madonna and TLC), filled in parts that Ray says forms the spine of many songs such
as "Birds of a Feather" and "She's Got to Be." Ray calls shooting star singer-songwriter Brandi Carlile, whom she met through her work with Indigo Girls, and whose
voice adds ethereal power to the record, "the glue" throughout the CD, a glue that is heard clearly on the song “Stand and Deliver”.
Indie favorites Arizona lend their sound to the mix as well. The group recorded "Out on the Farm" and "Rabbit Foot" with Amy at Echo Mountain Recording Studio
in Asheville, NC. Ray met the band after one of their members interned at her indie label, Daemon Records. She sites them as a major musical influence and wrote
“Out on the Farm” specifically with them in mind as collaborators. On “Rabbit Foot”, brilliantly engineered by Danny Kadar, Ray’s lonely guitar is joined by Arizona’s
tender and raw playing along with uplifting high harmonies creating a lovesong, with the emotional intensity of a hymn.
Ray’s experience recording with Arizona at Echo Mountain Studio in Asheville convinced her it was the place to record the majority of her record. The rest of the time
she spent between Greensboro, N.C. and her home in Georgia. “I spent a lot of time driving in the North Georgia mountains between studios, getting tracks done
during down time from the Indigo Girls. These late night, rural excursions informed the recording process for sure.”
This relationship to the environment - whether musical, natural, geographical, or political - is one of the main themes running through the album. "I use a lot of nature
or pastoral images - I always have - to describe things that aren't about nature exactly, it's a lens I see through.” Like in the song “Bus Bus”:
Snow In March spring in May.
Do you remember younger days?
Before the arctic was turning to sea
Before the polar bear was drifting helplessly
I really measure my life by the seasons and the weather and how much it changes over time, over years of touring. I realize that sometimes these days, I feel a lot
like that lonely polar bear stuck on a melting glacier, sort of bewildered, but compelled to be there cause it’s all I know and it’s instinctual for me.”
Ray's writing is characterized by an emotional complexity which she expertly expresses together with a verbal poetry that dovetails with the music. On the grand opening
cut, "Birds of a Feather," Martin's electric guitar elevates the spare lyrics and sparse snare drum allowing the surprising vocal performance to take flight. "Part of what
breaks the mold for me this time is in the songwriting, and the other part is the production. For ‘She's Got To Be,’ I was experimenting with using my head voice, my
falsetto, and so I wrote in a different direction, too." On this track, voice underscores meaning as Ray breathes through the verses:
She's got to be with me always
to make sense of the skin I'm in
Sometimes it gets dangerous
and lonely to defend
Marking time with every change
it's hard to love this woman in me
A bass-heavy rhythm section picks up to float dense lyrics that negotiate gender, relationships, and self-love, rendering the song both thoughtful and groovy. It was a
calculated musical risk, unlike any track in Ray's repertoire. "I sang in that high voice to reference the struggle to be who you are. The way soul music was about a
struggle, but with a groove - it's so simple with the rhythm that it gives you room to be thinking and also letting your heart hear what's going on."
"Hearing with the heart" is one of the record's other main themes, and is expressed lyrically in many ways. If the musicality of Didn't It Feel Kinder is wide-ranging,
so too is the songwriting, which covers community, politics, gender and sexuality, religion, the environment, the war, and the sometimes strong, sometimes tenuous
lines of love that connect Ray and the listener to it all.
In the musically-playful "Who Sold the Gun" she connects a boy gone mad at Virginia Tech to a society losing its humanity in a never-ending war:
See you're just one in a long line
You're not so lonely after all
And I guess we made you famous
Cause we're just as fucked up, yeah
The lo-fi fairground feel of "SLC Radio" describes a tour stop in Salt Lake City to support a radio station in an overwhelmingly religious-conservative community:
I'm sending love to all the Mormons
...I said keep the good things and throw out the bad things
you gotta pull the reins on a whole lot of suffering.
No bleeding heart polemics here, but rather an example of reaching out - out of your comfort zone, out of your self and your community - that Ray lives and articulates
with her music.
"What ties the record together for me is this human yearning to be understood and the yearning to become empathetic with other people - how to love each other and
be kind even when we're brutally angry." Or, as the final words of this album ask:
Didn't you feel stronger
when you let love grow?
Didn't it open you up inside?
when you let love grow?
Hey let love abide |