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Brian Fallon

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Former Punk Frontman Brian Fallon Continues His Americana Metamorphosis On ‘Local Honey’

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The onetime Gaslight Anthem vocalist opens up to the Recording Academy about how present-day moments—fatherhood, therapy, religion and relationships—have shaped his newest collection of solo songs  
Will Hodge
GRAMMYs
Mar 27, 2020 - 9:16 am

"I got my first Tom Waits record when I was about 17 and ever since then I’ve thought, 'I can’t wait to be an old man.' I’ve always wanted to just be a crazy old man musician, banging on pots and pans and playing whatever I want," laughs former Gaslight Anthem frontman and current Americana solo artist Brian Fallon as he reflects on hitting 40 earlier this year. After spending his 20s and most of his 30s interpreting his classic-rock hero influences through a frenetic punk filter, the gravel-throated howler started slowly swapping out his low-slung, amped-up electric guitars for rootsy acoustics on a pair of increasingly introspective solo albums: 2016’s Painkillers and 2018’s Sleepwalkers.  

On Local Honey, Fallon’s newest solo record out March 27 (the debut release from his own Lesser Known Records imprint on Thirty Tigers), the 40-year-old father of two has fully completed his own version of the punk-to-folk pipeline with a musically stark and emotionally vibrant collection of some of the best songwriting of his career. Led by gorgeously spacious acoustic guitars, hauntingly bare pianos, and the pitch-perfect sprinkling of ornamental instrumentation that masterfully shades in the outer corners, Local Honey’s austere musical palette provides the ideal backdrop for Fallon’s elegantly plainspoken lyrics full of diary-close honesty, heart-stirring resonance and vividly cinematic storytelling.        

Fallon recently chatted with the Recording Academy to discuss the shifts in his approaches to songwriting, how taking guitar and piano lessons two decades into his musical career has affected his playing and how his present-day moments—fatherhood, therapy, religion and relationships—shape and define his newest collection of songs.  

Brian Fallon: During the recording of my last solo record in New Orleans, I got to play with a bunch of really great musicians like the Preservation Hall Jazz Band and it caused something to click in my head. I decided I wanted to write and play music that directly gets to the point and is pure. To do that, I had to first analyze my own skillset to say, "I don’t know if you can do that right now with what you have." So I started taking piano lessons—I had never touched a piano before—and I went back into guitar lessons. I also took a course in lyric writing. I did my best to grab all the instructive information I could; not to get more fancy, but to get more direct and to the point. Honestly, I feel like I’ve just started scratching the surface of this new thing in my brain that I’m sure will continue to shape my songwriting from here on out.

To help achieve his new songwriting goals, Fallon set out to identify as many lyrical inspirations as he could find to dissect and analyze what made them work. He even compiled a playlist of over 40 songs that he felt conveyed the most direct and simplest statements to repetitively listen to in hopes of studying their inner-workings.

Brian Fallon: When I was writing for this record, I looked to the best lyricists that I could find for inspiration. Tom Waits is always kind of hanging over my head as someone that I aspire to write songs like. Jackson Browne’s The Pretender record has been a huge one for me, especially after I found out he wrote it after his wife had passed away. "You’re Bright Baby Blues" was the track I kept listening to over and over again. The playlist I made was full of songs where I felt the lyrical statement was just so pure: Nina Simone’s "I'm Feeling Good," Fleetwood Mac’s "Silver Springs," some Springsteen, old Rolling Stones songs like "Play With Fire." I would listen to these songs over and over to remind myself to not use metaphor alone and not rely on fancy language to convey the emotion. I wanted to boil everything down to just true, unembellished emotion.

As Fallon started writing the songs for what would eventually become Local Honey, he decided on two other important elements. First, after years of talking about it together, he knew he wanted production duties to be handled by Peter Katis (The National, Death Cab For Cutie, Frightened Rabbit). Second, he knew he didn’t want to make an album that felt like it had too many songs. In fact, instead of just being an amorphous target to keep in mind, Fallon went into the recording sessions knowingly exactly how many songs he wanted to walk out with.

Brian Fallon: Nailing the right song count was a conversation that Peter and I had a bunch of times. I told him that I only wanted it to be eight songs and thankfully he was all for it. I thought he might give me a bit of resistance, but he was into it because so many albums these days just feel too long. Even though I had written more songs, I knew these eight specific ones told the story I wanted to tell. I didn’t want to dilute that at all. Peter really helped me get where I wanted to go with these songs because I wanted them to be really bare and I wasn’t exactly sure how best to execute that in a way that would keep people interested. He responded very positively to the demos I sent him and to the direction I wanted to take them in. He basically just said, "You handle the songs and I’ll handle the sounds."

The first song Fallon and Katis ended up working on for the record was "Vincent," an arresting piano-scored murder ballad in the vein of country and blues standards like "Long Black Veil," "Delia’s Gone," "In the Pines/Where Did You Sleep Last Night?", Bob Dylan’s "Ballad Of Hollis Brown" and Nick Cave’s entire Murder Ballads album from 1996. The stirring narrative that unfolds in "Vincent" came to Fallon in a single night during a rush of inspiration that resulted in so many verses that it took him a month to whittle it down to a manageable song.    

Brian Fallon: "Vincent" actually sprung up from a few different places. At the time, I was reading a Stephen King book called On Writing about his creative process. Then, I saw this documentary on Nick Cave where he was talking about how he creatively allows himself to write character stories. Then, I remembered hearing an interview where Bruce Springsteen talked about doing the same thing when he was writing songs for The Ghost Of Tom Joad. He had never been an immigrant living across the border, but he was able to write all these songs that actually felt like he had been arrested by a border patrolman and crazy stuff like that. All of these things were stirring around in my head and they all kind of oddly coalesced on this one night while I was sitting at the piano. I started playing a little bit and I felt like there was this character in my head speaking to me. I ended up writing something like 30 verses because I had never written in that way before and I really wanted to get it right. I’ve never written so much for one song, but it just wouldn’t stop. It was so weird how real the story felt to me.    

Fallon notes that although he is really proud of the song, the opening line of "Vincent"—"My name is Jolene, but I hate that song"—has prompted a little cause for concern. His hope is that listeners will understand that he is singing in character and that he himself doesn’t actually hate the celebrated, GRAMMY-nominated Dolly Parton ballad from 1973.    

Brian Fallon: I wrote that line because I think it’s funny when people are named after songs—my daughter is actually named after a song—and I often wonder if people hate that when they grow up. I love the song "Jolene" and I think Dolly Parton is one of the greatest songwriters of all time. I hope people get that I’m singing that line as a character. I think that with these types of character songs, maybe as long as the emotion is true, then the details can be more like a story or a novel and not be so dependent on what you actually think or believe yourself.

Back in December of 2019, Fallon announced Local Honey with the lead single, "You Have Stolen My Heart," a swaying, starry-eyed ballad that functions as the “always leave ‘em wanting more” album closer. Marked as “my most direct attempt at a love song” by Fallon, the song’s waltzy-strummed acoustic guitar and love-letter lyricism unfolds as intimately as an overheard conversation.

Brian Fallon: I had almost all of the songs finished up and I felt like I just needed one more that was kind of in this romantic vein. Surprisingly, this one came out pretty quickly. I was listening to The Smiths and that song “Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want” came on and I was struck by what a good, honest lyric it was. It was extremely direct in a way that could’ve gone so wrong. I think he really meant it though, and that was the trick. When I sat back down to write, I just tried to say exactly what I was feeling and “You Have Stolen My Heart” just came right out.   

For his follow-up single, "21 Days," Fallon drew on his various experiences with therapy; finding inspiration in the targeted focus on process and progress. Casting addictions into a fractured relational context ("I miss you most in the morning, we used to talk over coffee, but now I’m going to have to find another friend"), Fallon’s "one day at a time" lyrics forego any mountaintop platitudes and instead place the listener in the thick of the struggle. "21 Days" also contains an interesting sonic touch that helps to drive the push-pull internal monologue of the song’s protagonist: Fallon double-tracked his vocal across distinct high and low registers and then blended them together into one ghostly reverberating amalgam.

Brian Fallon: I’ve been to therapists for a few different things and I've found that the really helpful thing they can do when you’re facing a hard situation is not to give you a solution but to offer you a goal to work towards. Oftentimes, that goal is a measure of time because people always want to know how long it’s going to take before they start to feel better. That’s where that throwaway idea that it takes 21 days to break a habit comes from. But the truth is, going in, you never really know how long it’s going to take and it’s different for every person. That’s what that song is about. I’ve read that it’s about me quitting smoking, but not really, because that’s too small for what the song is saying. It’s about just encouraging yourself and reminding yourself that you will eventually feel better. On the right songs, I really enjoyed doing the double-vocal thing. The first time I heard somebody do that really well was Greg Dulli of The Afghan Whigs; going really high or really low, like beyond his reach in both directions. Mark Lanegan is amazing at it too. I have to be careful with it because sometimes it just sounds like you’re trying to make fun of Barry White or something.   

In what may be Fallon’s most personal song to date, Local Honey opens up with "When You’re Ready," a song Fallon wrote about his two young kids. The song rides along warmly delivered reassurances ("In this life there will be trouble, but you shall overcome") and there’s something soothing in its mid-tempo roots rock shuffle that evokes familiar echoes of halcyon classics like Don Henley’s "End Of The Innocence," Neil Young’s Harvest Moon, and the breezier moments of Tom Petty’s Wildflowers album.        

Brian Fallon: This song actually started off really loud but I couldn’t get it to quite work that way. One day, when I was right at the end of the session and was a little frustrated, I sat down and just started typing some words in what I can only describe as a moment of divine intervention—and I don’t get those moments too often. The words were coming out faster than I could type them and when I finished up, I read back over them and could see they were about my kids. I didn’t even know that stuff was kicking around in me. I guess it was just the timing—I had been off tour for a bit and was getting to be home every day. It was just one of those songwriting moments where the lyrics came out of nowhere and I was just really glad somebody else didn’t get that one.   

Being a parent has also affected Fallon’s songwriting in his poetic use of spiritual themes and religious imagery. Not only recalling fond memories of his mother singing hymns around the house when he was a kid, but he also points to navigating his own approach to parenting as a factor in his existential contemplation. Luckily for Fallon, some of his biggest songwriting heroes have also managed to parse out their own spirituality in ways he connects with; being kind, leaving room for mystery, and operating with more questions than answers.   

Brian Fallon: I learned early on that when you’re in a rock band playing loud and fast, it’s not really the time to get ultra-contemplative about the hereafter. I guess I did try a few times though. Spirituality is something I’ve grown up with my whole life. The first music I ever heard was my mom singing hymns. It’s always been around me, but I will say that having kids can really put your head in a position of considering the hereafter, for sure. You wonder if you’re raising them right and you get filled with these sensations of love that you never knew you were capable of feeling for another human being. I think that any artist that digs into life will eventually have to face their decisions on how they feel about all that. I’ve been really drawn to Iris Dement’s hymns record because she has such a beautiful voice and it was all songs I knew from when I was a kid. I’m also influenced by Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, and of course, Tom Waits when it comes to that too. I’ve always come at it from a place of it being something to be discovered, not to be understood. I mean, I personally don’t understand it at least. Maybe one verse, "Love thy neighbor," I get that one.

With Local Honey, Fallon now has three solo records under his belt—meaning he’s only two away from equaling the five full-length studio albums he recorded with the Gaslight Anthem. Although, when comparing the two seemingly disparate chapters of his career, he doesn’t actually see that much of a difference between his past punk roots and his current Americana aesthetic. While some of his fans may not be ready to place the two collections right beside each other on their record shelves, Fallon sees his whole musical body of work on a singularly threaded continuum.

Brian Fallon: The punk and Americana communities are so similar in the way that they allow artistic freedom but the funny thing for me is that what I did then and what I do now are so closely married to each other. When I was in the punk scene, so much of what I did was by default. Even in just the first few practices with the Gaslight Anthem, I told the guys that I didn’t know if I could write punk songs. I wanted to write in a more country or folk vein and they were totally cool with that. I wrote acoustic songs liked I wanted and they turned them into loud, fast punk songs. Almost every single song I wrote with them can be stripped back to those acoustic roots. To this day, my approach has remained very similar. When you get older, I guess you just don’t have to make your point so loud. I’ve learned that sometimes it can hit harder when it's quieter.

Cosmic Americana Duo Mapache On 'From Liberty Street,' Honoring Neal Casal & (Briefly) Going Electric

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Rising Singer/Songwriter S.G. Goodman Talks Debut 'Old Time Feeling' & Growing Up In The Rural South

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Get to know the Kentucky-born singer/songwriter, whose raw, country-tinged anthems both celebrate and hold her community accountable on 'Old Time Feeling'
Noah Berlatsky
GRAMMYs
Jun 22, 2020 - 11:04 am

"I never want to leave this world/without saying that I love you," S.G. Goodman sings on "Space and Time," a country weeper that serves as the first song on her solo debut Old Time Feeling. "I owe my life to even my enemies/the ones who have loved me/the one who have tried." Her vibrato give the song a keening, unforgettable edge—a tribute to love and community that comes with a stab of pain.

"I have obsessive-compulsive disorder," Goodman told me matter-of-factly over Facetime from her home in Murray, Kentucky, wearing striped denim overalls and her trademark large glasses. "Space and Time," she says, "was about how easy it is to "go down a rabbit hole of feeling isolated and struggling with the thought of not really wanting to be alive at that moment." It also touches on the feelings of being a lesbian in the rural South, and thinking about acceptance, representation and isolation.

But the song is written in such an open way that it could apply to anyone. Goodman's sung it at weddings, she says. She figures she could sing it at graduations and funerals. It's especially relevant now, as the country grapples with a mounting death toll and the loneliness that comes with lockdown and social distancing. "I don't want to be an opportunist there, but it has morphed into a corona anthem, for sure," she adds. "The need to tell people you love them applies to all the moments of life."

Goodman has a knack for writing about her specific experience and communities in a way that connects across differences and state lines. Her video for her song "The Way I Talk" is set on the family farm, featuring her father, her brother and her three-year-old niece. It's a celebration of the beauty of the land, and also a bitter reflection on the exploitation of Southern labor and prejudice against rural people. "Sharecropper daughter/she sings the blues/of a coal miner's son," she spits, before the song ends in a squall of angry guitar feedback—rock speaking for and to country.

Goodman's a wonderfully easy interview. She explains with good cheer that she wanted to speak by Facetime since it was about all the human contact she would have for the day, and swinging the phone around to show me her dog sacked out on the couch. Like her music, when she talks she's funny, passionate and welcoming. The interview below has been edited for length and clarity.

How did you become a musician?

I mean, I was raised in the church. So as soon as you let anybody know you could sing, you were kind of guided into performing in the choir. And I really wasn't into it! But I learned a lot.

And it is still—I mean, I'm not really involved in church at all these days, but those songs and the melodies are, I would say the most influential thing that's ever happened to me as far as music goes. When somebody tells you that you need to sing as if God's hearing you that's pretty powerful. No matter what I believe about it now, that's never left me.

This is your first solo album. But you've been performing for a while, right?

Yeah, I'm 31. I went under a different moniker for a minute and released an album as The Savage Radley. That's where I really started writing songs that were more focused on where I'm from in my home story.

And before that, when I was around 18, I did pop music. I had a radio single that supposedly was played in 40 states.

I'm not ashamed of it or anything. I mean, you know, those were songs I wrote at like 16 to 18 years old and they weren't bad. I'm not embarrassed of it, but I definitely don't want to highlight it.

Did your niece have a good time shooting that video for "The Way I Talk"? She looked like she was having fun.

Oh, my goodness, she had a blast. She was three years old in that video. And she did wonderfully, though she's a little shy. I told the boys who were filming I said just don't talk to her, she'll warm up, and she did.

I fed her candy all day, which was half good, half bad. She would have a sugar high and you couldn't get her to focus. But most of it, if you just watch the video, we really just let her do her own thing. There were very few moments in the video that we had to actually tell her what to do.

But it was pretty simple, aside from the fact that she had to skip her nap time. So things got a little rough towards the end of the day. But she did great. I mean, she was a natural. She got in the back of my car one moment she said, "I'm the star!" I was like, "You sure are!"

It was special to have two generations of farmer's daughters in that video. I wanted to portray that.

"Red Bird Morning" is a lovely sad song. What inspired that?

I came up with most of the imagery in that song while reflecting on a breakup.

So yeah, I was recently dumped. And, when you're dumped, you kind of become a detective, as you try to go back to instances where you think things went wrong. And I thought about how I got on someone's bad side for leaving the day before my birthday to go to the Standing Rock protest. So the person in the song is traveling, and it's actually about me on my way to Cannon Ball on the Standing Rock reservation.

And also, you know, there's an old saying in the South that red birds like cardinals have a special spiritual meaning. The red birds are loved ones who have left you and are visiting you. And I was on my back porch while I was writing that and—obviously I was dumped, so I needed comfort.

I think if you're going to get spiritual and think about spiritually impactful moments, you have a really good chance of that happening after getting your heart broken.

So was "Red Bird Morning" something you just wrote recently? How long have you been working on the songs on the album?

Oh, they're all over the place honestly. "Red Bird Morning" would have been written in 2018. There's a song on the record "Supertramp" that would have been written in 2011. And my song "Tender Kind" I wrote in the studio.

I'm not a factory when it comes to writing. I might have a verse for a few years, and it's just not the right time for the rest to present itself. I'm not one of those people who writes five song a day.

Are there people who write five songs a day?!

There are! There are people who write at least a song a day or more. And I just don't, that's just not how my process is. And I used to beat myself up about it, but I really don't anymore. Because I always say, if a song is meant to stay around, you won't forget it. And if you do, then it wasn't meant to be.

"Old Time Feeling" is a pointed song about what people in cities think of people who live in rural areas. What do you think northerners or people in cities need to know about the South?

People often use stereotypes when talking about the South. And a lot of people are very shocked when certain legislation passes in the South.

And people don't really want to understand the way our state governments work and who's involved in them, how they came to power, and the out-of-state money that goes into making sure there's a large population of people who are forced into cheap labor. So many states in the South have become right-to-work states. A lot of the times when people look at certain things going on in the South it comes from a place of judgment, rather than from trying to understand the complexity there.

I'm not trying to be an ambassador or something like that. But people are often not in tune with the progressive initiatives that are happening in the South right now with different politicians and different organizations who are of real positive change for the people.

You know, I live in Kentucky. I want Mitch McConnell out. I want people from other states to understand that we need to work together across state lines to help these political initiatives. I worked on the Andy Beshear campaign [which won the Kentucky governorship for Democrats in 2019]. But I am really outraged politically right now, and I can't canvas.

Is it a hard time to be releasing a debut album?

There's a lot of conflicting arguments around that. But right now people have a lot more time to listen. And they might take the time to listen a little harder. It's not like they're just playing a playlist while they're driving to work and drinking their coffee and trying to get away. People might actually be listening while sitting still right now. So that's encouraging.

For a person who loves to perform, and loves to meet people…but I feel like my work will stand on its own. And I will get back out there and get to organically meet people through shows again. It is a scary time. But I really don't think it would serve me at all to focus on it, so I'm not.

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Bright Eyes Usher In A New Apocalypse

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After a nine-year hiatus, Bright Eyes' new album 'Down in the Weeds, Where the World Once Was,' hinges on apocalyptic imagery, desire and loss
Caitlin Wolper
GRAMMYs
Jul 1, 2020 - 8:49 am

An announcement cuts through barroom chatter. In Spanish, a woman welcomes the crowd warmly, preparing them for the song ahead—at the end of a hallway, they’ll open the door of forgotten memory. If you don’t speak Spanish, you’ll still catch when she names the composition’s theme: "Your most vivid nightmares."

From there, "Pageturner’s Rag" dissolves into a ragtime overlapped with conversations; at first, it feels like you're sitting in the crowd.

But of course, the song is far stranger than that. Recorded primarily in Pageturner's Lounge, an Omaha bar co-owned by Bright Eyes frontman Conor Oberst, every line is deliberate. The bar "audience" received pre-written potential topics, phrases, or conversations on cue cards; you can hear those recordings throughout as Pageturner pianist Dan McCarthy plays and Bright Eyes member Nate Walcott joins on trumpet.

These conversations are spliced with snippets of a recording from Oberst's home, a three-hour conversation between him, his mother and his ex-wife Corina Figueroa Escamilla (the Spanish-speaking announcer) after they all took psychedelic mushrooms.

Oberst and his bandmates consider the dissonant opening track to be "what makes a Bright Eyes album a Bright Eyes album," calling it a "pay-at-the-door situation": if you’re willing to step through the oddities, then you make it to the songs. ("We’re kind of shitheads like that," he laughs.)

"I’ve always loved the idea of putting the music in a world that is outside of a sterile, cold, studio sonic environment, so the little sound collages and all the field recordings and bits of sound, that’s all throughout the record," Oberst says. "It creates a world for the songs to live in that isn’t just a straitlaced studio situation."

After a nine-year hiatus, Oberst, Mike Mogis and Nate Walcott have returned with a new Bright Eyes album. Named after a now-abandoned poem/flipbook that Oberst was making after his brother’s death, Down in the Weeds, Where the World Once Was finds them searching for what’s left among ruins.

Long considered eerie, surreal, or apocalyptic, Bright Eyes' wary-eyed paranoia is discomfittingly prescient for a COVID-era listener. Whether it’s capitalistic reanimation ("This old town looks empty but we knew it wouldn’t last/Behind bulletproof windows they’re still wiring the cash"), or more literal apocalypse ("This world went down in flames and man-made caves"), we’re in a strange world, made all the more disorienting by sudden, interruptive conversations and Mogis’ producing. The band wanted to ensure that after their time away, Down in the Weeds fit seamlessly into the Bright Eyes catalogue—as it stands, it could easily be a marriage between Fevers and Mirrors and Cassadaga.

Read More: I Love You Far Too Much: Bright Eyes' 'Fevers And Mirrors' Turns 20

While the album was recorded pre-COVID, its dystopian bend aligns uncannily with our present. A number of lines now feel eerie. Saying he’s "obviously not the only one with these ideas on my mind," Oberst believes he’s tapped into a collective consciousness "where maybe because of certain advances of the world, we’re all kind of dreaming the same dreams and having the same thoughts to some degree."

Reckoning with lost love, new love, endings, illness, and death, massive abstractions are cut with quotidian action—after all, even in the face of apocalypse, someone still needs to cut celery for soup.

"That approach of blending mundane things with more fantastical or supermacro broad philosophical concepts is interesting to me," Oberst says. "That's honestly the way I feel in my life: like most of life is routine and boring, but then I go to sleep and I have very wild nightmares or nice dreams, or during the day I’m preoccupied with some sort of gigantic thought that really has nothing to do with my life."

He says that, to some degree, he thinks of all his albums as concept albums because the songs come in waves and hinge on a specific set of obsessions. At the forefront on Down in the Weeds? Dissociation; paranoia; questioned faith; resurrection.

"To Death’s Heart (In Three Parts)" is the most outright search for meaning, broken up by the words of a lover (who calls him exhausting), the words of the pope (benedictions) and the last words of Parisians who died in the Bataclan (ephemeralness). The song ends with a distorted, spoken exchange between Oberst and another, where Oberst interrogates: "What I'm wondering is, do you believe in god, champ?" "I believe that, uh…" "But you’re the champ, right?" The next track, "Calais to Dover," opens with a narrator who can’t recognize himself.

And as the songs' narrators (all composites) look for and lose themselves, paranoia furthers that divide, pulling harder on the tether to reality. "Mariana Trench" captures an entire world, pointing listeners to extreme highs and lows while warning of what lies between them: "Look out for the plainclothes/Look out for what the wiretap knows/Look out on the ever-widening money trail and where it goes."

It’s an ever-running current of love that keeps the album from giving in to its dread. While “Just in the World” starts by affirming that humans either discover or destroy, it leads into a narrator facing storms with his love and concludes: “If it ever occurred/just once in the world/a love as absurd/as ours I would scream what we lost/From the mountaintop.” Down in the Weeds never loses its sense of the world at large even as the individual loves and loses.

“I feel like some of my songs come across as a little schizophrenic: one verse will be about one thing or situation or person and the next verse will be about a totally different person and situation and they’re connected,” Oberst says. “They connect perfectly, logically in my mind, but they don’t necessarily come across as clearly to a listener, which I think is OK. I appreciate that in other people's music, a more surreal logical line.”

Oberst loves records that unravel and reveal themselves upon repeat listenings. He credits Mogis’ production style for Bright Eyes’ ability to do so: “every little sonic taster, little delay or weird effect — all that stuff might blow by you the first time you hear it, but if you listen on headphones enough times you start picking out more things.”

Bookended with subterranean vignettes, Down in the Weeds offers us a world uncannily similar to our own, where conspiracies intermingle with heartbreak.

"I’ve always been a pessimist and I think there’s been a slightly dystopian, apocalyptic bend to my songs and words for a long time, so it’s nothing new to me," Oberst says. He adds wryly: "I take no joy in being right about all this stuff."

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Haim

Photo by Drew Escriva

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Haim Open Up About 'Women In Music Pt. III,' Protesting In L.A. & Music Industry Sexism: "Not A Lot Has Changed"

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Ahead of the release of their third studio album, Alana, Danielle and Este Haim sit down with GRAMMY.com for a wide-ranging interview about loving (and almost leaving) L.A., battling gender-based genre stereotypes and much more
Pamela Chelin
GRAMMYs
Jun 25, 2020 - 8:43 am

While conversing over Zoom, it’s easy to see why the Haim sisters work so well together. Chatty and affable, they alternate between finishing each other's sentences and talking in unison, and paying rapt attention as each sister speaks. Born and raised in a tight-knit family in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles, bassist/vocalist Este Haim (34), guitarist/vocalist Danielle Haim (31) and guitarist/keyboardist/vocalist Alana Haim (28) grew up playing in Rockinhaim, a covers band with their parents. In 2012, Haim released their debut EP Forever for free on their website before releasing their debut full-length album, Days Are Gone (2013), which shot to number one on the U.K. Albums Chart and garnered a GRAMMY nomination for Best New Artist. Something To Tell You, their sophomore record, was released in 2017. After opening a string of dates on Taylor Swift’s 1989 tour, headlining their own international tours and selling out both New York City's Radio City Music Hall and London's Alexandra Palace two nights in a row, a couple of "SNL" performances, and attracting celebrity fans in Fleetwood Mac's Stevie Nicks and U2's Bono, the trio is on the verge of releasing their highly anticipated third record, Women In Music Pt. III.

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, WIMPIII’s release date was initially pushed to August from April before being rolled back to June. The viral outbreak also cut Haim's promotional deli tour short (they had just begun a jaunt performing at delis across the United States). On its surface, a deli tour may seem strange. But for Haim, who share a lifelong fondness for delis, it's actually a natural fit. "We grew up going to delis and when we were introducing the record we wanted to do something creative that we’d not seen before. We really do feel at home the most in delis," Alana tells GRAMMY.com. "We really wanted to do a different thing and we thought how cool if people can go and be able to eat Matzo ball soup." In fact, Haim's first gig with their parents 20 years ago was at West Hollywood landmark Canter's Deli, where the band also hosted a star-studded party with special guest DJ Mark Ronson in 2017. Earlier in the year, Haim—along with their frequent music video collaborator director Paul Thomas Anderson—shot Women In Music Pt. III’s album art Canter's. In the cover photo, Haim are shown standing behind a deli counter with sausages (wink, wink) hanging behind their heads with NOW SERVING 69 (hint, hint) prominently displayed.

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Co-produced by Danielle and longtime collaborators Ariel Rechtshaid (Danielle’s live-in boyfriend) and Rostam Batmanglij (formerly of Vampire Weekend), WIMPIII is Haim's favorite record to date. "For the first time, with this record, I don't think I’ll ever get sick of it," says Alana, crediting their years of recording experience. "We’ve always been confident but this is our third record, our third time around the sun if you will, and even thinking back to Days Are Gone, we didn’t know anything in the studio." "We knew the fundamentals of production when we first got into it, but now we know so much more," says Danielle. 

This time around, it was important to Haim, who are known for their highly energetic performances, to capture their live sound on record. "We wanted it to sound like the person listening to it was in the room while we were recording it, and that’s why it sounds super live," says Alana, who says they played as loudly as they could and put a room mic in the corner of the studio. Danielle says making use of her home studio was pivotal, too. "Being in expensive studios on Days Are Gone, there was so much pressure with being in those kinds of professional studios. But at Voxx [Studios], where we also did our last album, too, we'd do basic tracking and then take it into a home studio, and that’s where we feel our most comfortable," says Danielle.

Their most mature, contemplative, revealing and musically realized record, the melodic, hypnotically rhythmic and catchy WIMPIII reflects Haim's huge evolution over the last eight years including a deep lyrical exploration of myriad relationships (romantic, self, each other, the music industry and the media). In Haim's customary genre-busting musical style, the 16-song offering incorporates a variety of musical influences, seamlessly blending pop, R&B, hip-hop, folk, ska and classic rock (in addition to splashes of Prince and '90s pop-radio mainstays Savage Garden). Despite the range of musical influences going into WIMPIII, what comes out the other side sounds uniquely Haim.

Hoping the record's title Women In Music Pt. III speaks for itself, they are understandably as tired of talking about being women in music in 2020 as they should be. "In the back of our minds, we were hoping that because we’d named our album that, it wasn't going to be the first question everyone asks," says Danielle. "That’s why we put our song 'Man From The Magazine' in music form so we would be able to touch on it without having to have it be the thing that we talk about constantly."

The lyrics of "Man From The Magazine" discuss Haim's experiences with sexism ranging from a male journalist inquiring inappropriately about the faces Este makes when she plays bass (Man from the magazine / What did you say / Do you make the same faces in bed / Hey man what kind of question is that / What did you really want me to say back?) to a guy working at a music shop who assumes the sisters are beginner musicians. (Man from the music shop / I drove too far for you to hand me that starter guitar / Hey girl why don’t you play a few bars / Oh what’s left to prove?)

Asked if things have improved over recent years, the sisters sigh. Unfortunately, they haven't. One after the other, Alana and Este both say, "Not a lot has changed." 

What frustrates Haim further, which Danielle elucidates as another of WIMPIII’s themes, are perpetual attempts at forcing genre-specific labels on their music. "We have had to deal with people trying to put us in a box our whole career and not understanding what we do," she says. "There was a lot of, ‘Oh, you’re a girl band’ or ‘Oh, you make pop music,’" says Alana. "We've always felt that we carved our own path and made the music we wanted to make and we never put a label on it and we were OK with it. But to some people, if they don’t understand what box you go in, they get confused and say they don’t understand it, which is weird to me. We’ve always bridged the gap over a bunch of things and we’ve never been afraid to explore different kinds of genres and different kinds of songwriting." 

"I think other bands that aren’t all female can dabble in a bunch of different genres yet they're still called a rock band," says Danielle. "Meanwhile, we’re women and we dabble in all sorts of genres, [but] because we’re women it’s pop. That’s frustrating to be honest with you."

When they first received recognition in the U.K., Danielle says even being tagged with having a "California Sound" was baffling. "It was funny when people started saying that we have a 'California Sound.' We didn’t realize. We were just making music that we were coming up with. It's interesting. We never thought about it that way. Maybe it’s the harmonies? I don't know," says Danielle. "Our hair?" asks Alana. "Our long hair? Our middle parts?" says Danielle. "We never really felt super L.A. until we went to the U.K.," says Alana.

That’s not to say they resent the L.A. tag, though. You’d be hard-pressed to find greater L.A. champions than the sisters Haim, between their album art, lyrics (songs on the new record reference Crescent Heights, earthquake drills and freeway overpasses), music videos and recent promotional photos showing the band gracing the front page of L.A. Times Calendar section strategically placed over their seemingly naked bodies.  

"We’ve always been advocates for our city and we've repped it super hard, and throughout our whole lives we had to deal with pop culture telling us, ‘L.A. sucks.’ I feel like that was a popular theme," says Danielle. "Yeah, New York is the cool place. L.A. sucks," says Alana. "Yeah, it was always, ‘L.A. sucks’ in a lot of different movies," says Danielle. "In movies and TV shows, it never got respect," says Este. "We ride for L.A.,” says Danielle. "And I think with this record we embraced it. We talk about L.A., and obviously 'Free Fallin’' and Tom Petty are huge huge inspirations to us our whole lives. Actually, Wildflowers was a huge inspiration on this album."

Ironically, WIMPIII’s opening track, "Los Angeles," reveals Haim contemplating moving elsewhere. "That song is speaking to the mass exodus of everyone and their mom moving to L.A. and having a vindication that, yes, L.A. is the best,” says Danielle, "So the aftermath of that for me was, ‘Wait, is this city even mine anymore?’ Maybe I recognized why some people didn’t like it and we kind of collectively thought maybe we should move somewhere because we’ve never lived anywhere else." It's plain as the Hollywood sign on a clear day, however, that the sisters aren’t going anywhere. "I love it," says Alana. “L.A. is stuck with me.” 

The only thing stronger than the love for their hometown is the sisters’ adoration for each other. The penultimate track on WIMPIII, "Hallelujah," is a beautiful guitar- and vocals-driven ode to sisterhood emanating a "Landslide" vibe that would make Fleetwood Mac proud. Solemn and somber, the tender and naked ballad reflects each sister's grappling with personal and heavy topics—Este’s Type 1 Diabetes, Alana’s grief for a close friend who was killed in a car accident years ago and Danielle’s coming to terms with Ariel’s testicular cancer (he’s now cancer-free)—while expressing gratitude for each other’s support. Their close bond is most sharply illuminated by the lyric "three roads, one life."  

"That was a cathartic song to write, a hard one to write but a really nice release," says Este. "I think we had so much to say and it flew out. I remember the day we wrote it, it felt like I lost 20 pounds and felt light as a feather and needed to happen," says Alana. "Another overlying theme of the record is dealing with things we’d kind of been running away from. For years, we’d been a touring band that [thought] leaving your troubles in L.A. is the easiest thing to do. 'See ya when I come back, probably not but OK bye.'"

Meanwhile, the sisters have been isolating separately from each other, and lockdown has been tough. "It sucks,” says Este who’s suffered the most in isolation. "I feel I’m a strong, independent woman but I think that I’ve realized in this quarantine that I also crave human connection. It’s also why I love touring so much, and the idea of not being able to do that is heartbreaking. It feels like I’m going through a breakup and, truly, the relationships with audience members that you foster on the road—to me, that’s connection. To go from feast to famine is really, really difficult for me. I very much love the routine of touring and being able to share it with my family is so special. And now being home is kind of sad.

After spending the first month of lockdown without seeing each other, the longest time Haim have ever spent apart, the sisters made a pact only to visit with each other and no one else. Though they’ve used their lockdown time productively, doing press for their record, appearing on talk shows and hosting weekly Zoom dance classes for their fans, it’s been heartbreaking to sit on a record that was specifically made to be played live. "The thing we wanted to make sure with this album is, and it’s bittersweet now, but we were really thinking about how we were going to play this album live. That was at the forefront of our minds. Playing live is such a big part of us and something we take seriously," says Danielle. "We were just stoked to play this shit live. That’s the thing. We love the studio but we love the tactile act of playing music, so the idea of not being able to do that is pretty tough,” says Este.

Notably, even while Haim air their grievances and disappointments, they remain warm, upbeat, enthusiastic, playful and positive. They are grateful for their success while simultaneously seeming slightly incredulous as if they are still pinching themselves to make sure they aren't dreaming. "The fact that we started out playing at the Echo, first of three [bands on the bill], and have made it to this point, just on our own, is the biggest gift," says Alana, who is still stunned that Haim sold out L.A.'s Greek Theatre in just a few hours. Her eyes widen in disbelief as she says, "Man, the f**king Greek? What? What?"

While they are L.A. to the (hard)core, the sisters haven't gone Hollywood. Down to earth and accessible, they are highly interactive with their legions of fans online where they post regularly. Recently, when a fan posted concern on Haim’s Instagram page that WIMPIII’s release date would be changed yet again, the band immediately responded with assurance. "It’s just how we’ve always been and how we’ll always be," says Alana. "We truly crave human connection and thrive on it. We’re just three sisters from the Valley, you know," says Este. "You can take the girl out of the Valley but you can’t take…," Alana trails off with a wry smile.

While they typically veer towards quirky and lighthearted online, the sisters have switched gears in some of their recent Instagram posts voicing support for justice for Breonna Taylor who was shot eight times in her apartment by police in Kentucky, posting photos from Black Lives Matter protests they attended in Hollywood and downtown Los Angeles following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and calling upon L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti to fire LAPD Police Chief Michel Moore after unsettling remarks in which he said protesters and looters also had the killing of George Floyd on their hands (the remarks were later rolled back by Garcetti and retracted by Moore, who issued an apology).

"When the protests began, we knew there was a risk with COVID, but we had to go out, support and protest," says Alana. "It didn’t feel right to just stay at home. We needed to be out there with everyone. Walking down Hollywood Boulevard with everyone chanting the same thing, moving together, it was a really special feeling. There were so many people that came out to help one another, too, to make sure everyone was safe and protected. People were handing out masks, hand sanitizer, water, etc. it’s been really beautiful to see everyone come together and stand for change."

"Having this platform is not something we take lightly, especially during times like these," says Este. "We've been protesting, donating, calling and sending emails to help raise money and awareness to help organizations like the People’s City Council Freedom Fund and Black Trans Femmes in the Arts Collective. We’ve been encouraging our fans to do the same."

In the meantime, while it's anyone's guess as to when bands will be able to perform live, the sisters are happy WIMPIII is finally being released while remaining cautious about scheduling future tour dates. "We can’t wait to start playing shows but want to be sure that we’re keeping our fans, our crew and everyone’s health and safety a priority. When it’s finally safe for everyone, we’ll definitely be playing live," says Este.

"I do feel when things are opening, then maybe we can finish the deli tour," says Alana. "Or if delis are open and that’s the only form of how to play music, I can solely do a deli tour. If that’s the only way to play live, I’ll solely play delis."

Phoebe Bridgers Talks 'Punisher,' Japanese Snacks & Introducing Conor Oberst To Memes

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Phoebe Bridgers Talks 'Punisher,' Japanese Snacks & Introducing Conor Oberst To Memes

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The singer/songwriter talks to GRAMMY.com about nostalgia for life on the road and how she personally defines the word "punisher"
Laura Studarus
GRAMMYs
Jun 22, 2020 - 9:27 am

The day before the scheduled release of her sophomore album Punisher, Phoebe Bridgers let the cat out the bag. "I’m not pushing the record until things go back to ‘normal’ because I don’t think they should," she tweeted, along with an album link. "Here it is a little early. Abolish the police. Hope you like it."

The move, while unorthodox by most promotional standards, was a no-brainer for Bridgers. Open about her beliefs, both on social media and in interviews, the musician has already been a strong supporter of Black Lives Matter and The Bail Project, which in early June she helped fundraise for with a hushed version of Bright Eyes' classic "First Day of My Life."

Of course, resiliency and improvisation isn’t a completely unheard of attribute in the mist of the 2020 quagmire. When we spoke in early May, Bridgers is calling from on top of a treadmill in the middle of her house. For the singer/songwriter, the exercise equipment represents the adjustment we’ve all been forced into, and a way to get some exercise now that walking in her Los Angeles Echo Park neighborhood has become too complicated. (Only walking—she confirms, citing "shitty knees.") The sense of movement helps her think, particularly after calling her summer tour off after only one rehearsal with her band. 

This pause, both figurative and literal, has been the first Bridgers has had, almost since her 2017 debut, Stranger in the Alps. As if supporting one critically acclaimed album wasn’t enough (see the year-end lists and string of film placements that made singles like "Motion Sickness" shorthand for complicated sadness), in 2018 she hit the road with boygenius, a meeting of minds featuring her, Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus. In 2019, she repeated the collaborative trick again hitting the road as Better Oblivion Community Center, a project she shares with Conor Oberst. Fans have been catching on to Bridgers’ ability for narrative storytelling—and not just the social media manager at Men's Health, who seems to be an omnipresent visitor during her live streams. ("I feel like they’re doing something right over there," she cracks of her unnamed admirer.) 

Of course, it hasn’t been all stillness. Even recently during lockdown, Bridgers has been making the rounds, including a recent appearance on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!," where she gave a pajama-clad, Omnichord-led performance of her single "Kyoto." (An aesthetic, she explains, that was inspired by both acoustics and a similar performance from The Killers.) She also recorded a video for "Kyoto" on green screen—channeling the aesthetics of Japanese Monster films, after a trip back to the country was scrapped. Creativity is still happening—even if she has no clue when fans will get to experience it live. 

Ahead of the release of Punisher, Bridgers spoke with GRAMMY.com about Japanese snack food, learning to be grateful and nostalgia for life on the road. 

So aside from the treadmill, what has been the most unique purchase you've made during lockdown?

I bought a bunch of cheese cloth so that I could make almond milk at home. I'm not very crafty or homey. So, that was a big purchase. For me, even though super cheap, but like out of the box, I bought a pajama onesie with a skeleton on it, but the crotch has ripped out of it already because it’s really cheap.

Is it true that you were Conor Oberst's gateway to memes?

Yeah! I still think he's pretty outside of the gate. Sometimes they'll genuinely make him laugh, but mostly he's just like, "What the f**k is that?"

You're doing a service to humanity one meme at a time.

Exactly. I'm solving all our conflict that's reported on. Totally taking it upon myself.

Given that you were casually into other bands last year, when did Punisher start coming together?

It started coming together before even my first record was out. I kind of take forever to write music, so I started writing it and then started recording it like, right after I recorded both my other bands. "Garden Song" was one of the first ones. "I See You Too." I remember playing that for everybody on the boygenius tour the recording. So, we were working on it for a really long time and then and then finished it up.

Are you the are you the kind of writer that’s constantly writing?

No, I go through weird phases. Mostly I'm procrastinating.

Hence your amazing Twitter presence. I get it now.

Hey, yeah! You're hearing the only 10 songs I really have. I guess I have like one extra song that I finished after the album was already recorded. I tend to write what is needed for me and I don't really like edit, or use elimination. I just record what I have.

Has the fair amount of collaborating you've done in the last year change how you work with other artists on your solo albums?

I really learned how to collaborate with first record, and then just every project I've done since it's like involves more and more people. Just because my friend group and the people I can like, call upon has become very big. I've always wanted his work like that. But this is the first time I've had the opportunity to.

Are there any names you wish you could add to that creative Rolodex?

It's so funny because like, honestly, not really. I think I will discover more people that become collaborators of mine, but for right now, my group is so solid, and it works.

Punisher seems like a very evocative title.

Well, I was gonna do like a self-titled album, which I might do to the next one. But then I wrote a song called "Punisher" and I was like, that's actually a sicker album title. A Punisher is someone who doesn't know when to stop talking. So, I think of like, older relatives who are talking about, like their hip replacement or something. They just don't know when you're disinterested. And I think we've all been that, like, to our heroes. So, in this context, I'm like punishing someone. You know, like, you get cornered at the bar by the friend that the person you were hitting on. That's a punisher.

I wish you could see the spit take I just did. 

Yeah, I think it's a little too relatable for everybody.

I feel like at some point everyone has been a punisher--and everyone who's been to Japan claims Kyoto as their favorite place. What's your relationship to the city?

It was like my favorite place I've ever been. Still is. I just had such a good time when I was there and wanted to go back. Yeah, I just made like a really big impression on me.

How do you handle that sense of displacement when you're discovering these amazing things so far from home?

Right now, I would kill to be on tour. But when I'm on tour, I save cute Pinterest home ideas. And I like look on Google maps [of] hikes by my house. I think it's pretty common, like wanting to be where you're not, but it's especially prevalent and weird when you're, like, living out something you've always wanted to and you're thinking about the next thing.

Yeah, I think anyone who lives in fast motion like that can identify with that as well. When those moments strike, and you realize that your brain is somewhere else like you described in the song "Kyoto," how do you bring yourself back?

It's hard. I'm still working on it every day. I'm trying to write like three things I'm grateful for every day now. I think it's pretty common and Pinterest-y again. But it seems to be working because at first you really have to wrack your brain and then after a while, it just gets easy and they become like tiny little details. But I've been talking to a couple friends it's like, when we forget about all the fear of being alive right now, it's going to be tempting in 10 years to be like, remember that crazy time when we were all just like finding ourselves or whatever? Like, I know there's gonna be like op-eds that are, like, romanticizing right now. And it's easy to think of the past that way. Because it's really hard to romanticize your present. Especially when everything's so uncertain and literally dangerous and life-threatening. But yeah, I just want to romanticize my life a little bit more while I'm living in it instead of in the future or past.

So, what has been on your list for the three things you're grateful for?

I should go look at it. But some days are really bad where it's like, I didn't eat until I got sick. But that is a special skill. I feel like an anxiety mechanism is like, I ate five toaster waffles in a row in the middle of the night a couple nights ago and I felt ill. So, the next day was a victory to not do that. I learned how to not do that. Sometimes I'll turn on a yoga class on my computer and then lay on my yoga mat and stare at the ceiling. And since I've been writing stuff down, I realized that when I finish the class I will write it down. Or like if I make something, or if I get enough sleep, or just like, you know, made a really good pot of coffee today, and it kind of sets the whole day instead of reheating yesterday's coffee.

I like that you're giving yourself credit for the little victories we're all having right now.

That's all there is.

Since it played a role in the song "Kyoto," what is the best thing about Japanese convenience stores?

Snacks. Just like, the triangle rice onigiri at convenience stores are so good, which is funny because I think they're for kids. Oh my god.

If you had to place yourself in the chaotic good chaotic evil sort of square, where would you rank?

I'm like all over the place. Sometimes chaotic good. And sometimes I'm neutral evil. I'm all at different times in my life.

What are you looking forward to most once we get back to the era of live music?

I'm finding myself looking forward to the weirdest smallest things, like being at a truck stop in the middle of the night. Going to diners after shows. Looking out the window if the bus in Montana. Seeing other bands. I'm remembering all the extra stuff, but mostly I'm just looking forward to playing these songs. We had one rehearsal before shit the fan with the band and it sounded so good. And I was kind of scared that it wasn't gonna translate. But it did immediately and it was so fun to play the songs. I can't wait.

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