GRAMMYs

Jennifer Higdon

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How Female Classical Composers Are Encouraging Gender Equality

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This year’s GRAMMY-winning Classical composer, Jennifer Higdon, speaks with the Recording Academy about how to succeed as a woman in this male-dominated industry
Crystal A. Frost
GRAMMYs
Apr 8, 2020 - 10:19 am

Throughout music history's illustrious, centuries-long repertoire of eclectic creations and multicultural musical endeavors, women composers have been continuously silenced. Plagued by the harrowing struggle to have their voices heard, only a handful of pre-20th century women who dared to compose actually won the battle to be performed, recorded, and remembered. Any scholar of Western classical music can attest to the fact that Fanny Mendelssohn, Cécile Chaminade, and Clara Schumann are three of the few pre-20th century women composers whose names come up in conversation on a regular basis in the classical community. In fact, Clara Schumann was an example of a composer who, if not for her husband and father encouraging and believing in her, would have turned away from pursuing her creative dreams.

"I once believed that I possessed creative talent, but I have given up this idea… a woman must not desire to compose — there has never yet been one able to do it. Should I expect to be the one? It would be arrogance..." - Clara Schumann 

For 20th-century women composers, there were noticeable improvements. British composer Ethel Smyth, for instance, took part in the Women’s Suffrage movement in England, composing the official anthem of the Women's Social and Political Union entitled, "The March of the Women." The uplifting song, which has been arranged for choir, orchestra and even saxophone quintet, reached the ears of the entire nation and goes down in history as one of the early testaments to women’s compositional potential.

But was it enough to kickstart real change? In 1903, Smyth became the first woman to ever have an opera presented by the great Metropolitan Opera in New York when they performed Der Wald. Why didn’t the Met embrace another female-composed opera until 2017, more than a century later?

"Comrades, ye who have dared, first in the battle to strive and sorrow. Scorned, spurned, naught have you cared - raising your eyes to a wider ‘morrow." - Excerpt from Ethel Smyth’s "The March of the Women"

The year 2020 marks the first in history that three women have been nominated for the GRAMMY for Best Contemporary Classical Composition in the same year: Caroline Shaw, Julia Wolfe and Jennifer Higdon, who walked away with the award for her groundbreaking Harp Concerto, which Gramophone described as "a delight," performed by harpist Yolanda Kondonassis. In total, only three women have won this GRAMMY in Recording Academy history, and only seven women have ever been nominated. But thanks to the determination of longtime disadvantaged female composers, the field of classical music - one which is easy to perceive as dated—is on a path towards progress. Classical composers like GRAMMY award-winning Joan Tower, GRAMMY award-nominated Missy Mazzoli, and Pulitzer prize-winning Ellen Reid have demonstrated to the classical community—and the world—that women composers have been silenced for long enough.

This year’s GRAMMY-winning composer Jennifer Higdon faced her fair share of challenges early on in her career. Getting her start at age 15 when she taught herself to play the flute, it took years before Higdon developed her striking rhythmic, neo-romantic style, and more than a decade before she would be taken seriously by the classical community. But several concertos, an opera and three GRAMMYs later, Higdon’s list of accomplishments is as long as it is rich, even marveling fans as recently as two weeks ago when the Library of Congress announced that Higdon’s GRAMMY-winning Percussion Concerto has been inducted into the National Recording Registry. Higdon, who is currently practicing social distancing at her home in Philadelphia while she works on her upcoming opera Woman With Eyes Closed,  took a break to share a few lessons with us about how she arrived at this level of success, how she remains proactive, and how other women can follow in her footsteps.

Program Directors are out there looking

When asked about what improvements are still needed in the classical community, Higdon replied, "I want to see more women on programs." And Higdon makes a strong point, given that only 1.8 percent of music performed by the top 22 orchestras in the United States included women composers in their programming, according to a survey of the 2014-2015 concert season. And among living composers being programmed, women accounted only 14%, which means we can’t go blaming Beethoven and Mozart for the imbalance.

The question begs to be asked: why do we still see this imbalance in concert programming? According to Higdon, there are several right answers, and they don’t all involve gender bias. “Sometimes people just don’t know enough women composers. They just don’t realize how many women are out there working—working hard,” Higdon explains. The truth is, women composers are out there—just as many as there are men. In fact, at the Curtis Institute where Higdon has taught composition since 1994, more than half of her composition students are women.

Thankfully though, according to Higdon, in the past couple of years, people have become a lot more cognizant of the fact that there aren’t enough women composers on classical concerts. "It’s getting better, but I think there’s lots of room for improvement." She goes on to explain how, more and more often, artistic administrators who do the programming for orchestras are starting to look around for women composers to include in their concerts.

When the answer is gender bias, people are not inclined to share their biases and prejudices anyway. "People don’t come up and tell you, ‘Oh we’re not going to program you because you’re a woman,'" Jennifer explains. Consequently, women composers can be left questioning themselves, in the dark as to why they aren’t being heard. But Higdon is a radiant picture of steadfast perseverance, as no ounce of prejudice was ever enough to stop her from creating her best work. "I can remember in the early days when I was starting my career, probably in the late 90s, people were saying things to me like ‘I can’t believe a woman wrote that.'" At first, Higdon’s reaction to comments like these was to ask, "Really? What does that mean exactly?" But eventually, her response evolved into, "Yeah, a woman wrote it! It’s a fact. You need to get used to it."

We succeed when we unite

Another lesson we can learn from Higdon is that women get further when they unite and help each other. In 2010, Higdon won the Pulitzer Prize for her Violin Concerto, which the Pulitzer committee described as "deeply engaging...combin[ing] flowing lyricism with dazzling virtuosity." It’s clear the experience was both humbling and overwhelming for Higdon. "The expectations are so high…I must’ve done at least 200 interviews in two weeks," she recalls. So when female composer Caroline Shaw won the prize a few years later, Higdon did not hesitate to help. "Right after winning the Pulitzer, she came down to Philadelphia and we talked about trying to cope with the intensity of that prize—how it’s a little overwhelming," Higdon shares. "We sat down and had coffee and talked about my experience, and how to not let the pressure drop down on your shoulders."

Higdon also makes a point to promote her female peers as often as she can. "Sometimes an orchestra will contact me and ask me for suggestions of composers they should check out, so I have a list of women composers that I will send," she describes. "I'll ask them what they’re looking for and then pass along as many names as I can." Higdon’s approach is a refreshingly simple yet positive way of being proactive.

The community of women in classical music is vast, and their ability to unite rather than compete is how they are succeeding. One album released last year, Project W (the "w" standing for "women") is an excellent tribute to women composers’ efforts by the Chicago Sinfonietta, which is known for doing works by people of color and women. Featuring only new orchestral works by female composers, the album is also conducted by world-renowned female conductor Mei-Ann Chen, whom Higdon describes as a "dynamo" when it comes to inclusivity. 

Organizations like Women in Music (WIM) have also aided this move towards progress. Founded in 1985, WIM is a non-profit organization out of New York that is committed to educating, empowering and advancing women in the music industry.

Let your music do the talking

Perhaps the most important lesson emphasized by Higdon is that no composer should ever give up and stop writing, even if she feels excluded, outnumbered, or unheard. "Keep writing the best music that you can," Higdon says. "That’s going to be the best argument to get your music out there; to have music where people go, ‘Oh, I want to hear that again!'" The sound advice is as empowering as it is true, for it comes from one of America’s most performed living composers. It is Higdon’s experience that if you keep creating your best work, eventually the fact that you’re a woman will become less and less relevant. The music will speak for itself. 

“Keep writing the best music that you can. That’s going to be the best argument to get your music out there; to have music where people go, ‘Oh, I want to hear that again!’” - Jennifer Higdon

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GRAMMYs

Spencer Zahn

Photo by Landon Speers

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Spencer Zahn Talks New Album 'Sunday Painter' & Drawing Inspiration From Miles Davis

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In a conversation with GRAMMY.com, the ambient jazz performer and bassist also shares some sage advice he received from GRAMMY-winning jazz bassist Charlie Haden
Nick Fulton
GRAMMYs
Sep 19, 2020 - 8:10 am

Spencer Zahn didn’t plan to release an album in the middle of a global pandemic, but if there was ever a time to shift from making eerie electronic music to something a little more soothing, such as the ambient jazz and neo-classical arrangements that comprise his latest work, Sunday Painter, now is certainly the moment for it. Unlike his two previous albums—2018’s People of the Dawn and 2019’s When We Were Brand New—which began as solitary synthesizer and upright bass experiments and developed (with the help of Darkwave's Dave Harrington) to have wavy rivers of sound, Sunday Painter, Zahn’s third album and first as a bandleader, is lined with pillowy textures and slinky grooves that drift idly by like clouds. It’s the perfect album for these tense, unfamiliar times.

Zahn is no stranger to switching gears. As a touring bassist for Kimbra, Empress Of and numerous others, he often explores different sonic landscapes and adapts quickly to new ways of playing. But aside from a project 10 years ago when he led an 11-piece band playing some of Bartók’s piano pieces, he had not attempted to lead a band of highly skilled jazz musicians playing his own music.

That all changed last summer, when he assembled some of New York City’s finest for two absorbing music-making sessions at Red Bull Studios NYC. Taking inspiration from Miles Davis’ 1969 masterpiece In A Silent Way—a record that Lester Bangs described in Rolling Stone as "part of a transcendental new music which flushes categories away"—and the solo improvisations recorded by the jazz pianist Keith Jarrett for the ECM label, Zahn and the ensemble set out to make a record that relied equally on instinct and interplay. "I thought it would be a challenge, but that it would also yield something really special," Zahn tells GRAMMY.com of why he decided to assemble a group rather than continue experimenting on his own.

You can read more of Spencer Zahn's conversation with GRAMMY.com below, where he talks about the group he assembled for Sunday Painter, shares some sage advice he received from GRAMMY-winning jazz bassist Charlie Haden, discusses growing up as a jazz-obsessed teen in southern Massachusetts and explains how a series of music videos breathed new life into his music.   

Can you tell me about the people that played on this album? How do you know each of them?

Dave Harrington and I have been working together for a long time. I’ve always loved what he does and he always brings so much wisdom to the music that I am making, it feels very much like a partnership between the two of us. Through Dave, I met Kenny Wollesen, who to me, is one of the great drummers in New York. He has been on so many amazing records, both in a pop context and a jazz context. Mauro Refosco is someone who is constantly changing the way I hear rhythm and melody. I think he is one of the most melodic drummers I’ve ever worked with. I first met him through the EXO-TECH project that I do with Kimbra and Sophia Brous. Andy Highmore and Jacob Bergson, I do a lot of touring and session work with those two guys. Both play Rhodes and organ on this record.

Spencer Ludwig and I met in 2015 at a strange festival gig on a ship off the coast of Bermuda. I have always been in his band, so it was cool to have him be in my band and to hear his style change to suit my aesthetic. He is such an amazing trumpet player. And Mike McGarril on soprano saxophone is someone that Spencer recommended. I don’t think he considers himself a soprano saxophone player, but he did a fantastic job. His tone, and just the way he approaches music, was really suitable. And Red Bull Studios in New York was kind of what allowed me to make this happen. Chris Tabron (chief engineer at Red Bull Studios NYC) and I have worked together on a bunch of different projects and he wanted to do a record together, so we decided to do this one there. Nate Odin recorded it and Chris mixed it, and it was such a good room to all play together in, because we didn’t use any isolation or anything like that, it was all live takes. I think Chris and Nate did a really good job of making it sound so lush.

You mentioned earlier that you were glad some of the guys were available. With you all working on so many other projects, that must have been a challenge.

Yeah, Mauro is one of the busiest guys I know. He had just finished David Byrne’s American Utopia tour and then they were about to start rehearsals for the Broadway show. I feel really lucky that I was able to get him, because he basically carved out those two days.

What was the process of playing together like? Were you specific about what you wanted each of them to play, or was it more collaborative?

There were specific things that I wanted to happen—certain melodies and form ideas—but outside of that it was pretty collaborative. I didn’t tell Kenny Wollesen much at all, and it made me a bit nervous, because I respect him so much. I didn’t want him to think that I’d just called him in to mess around. It was more that I love what he does so much that I really wanted him to do what he felt was best for the situation. And Dave is just so good at letting the space come to him. We couldn’t quite get the title track to land right and then without saying anything he just counted it off and did this really beautiful guitar intro, and then the whole band fell into place. That was the kind of thing that made this session so special to me, it was seeing how each musician made it their own.

Do you remember what was holding that song back?

I think it was probably me, I was trying to force it into the demo version that I had come in with and the form wasn’t working. The whole song centered around the harmony and the form that I had come up with, I hadn’t really come up with a melody, and that is something that you can hear in the recording. Spencer Ludwig and Mike McGarril, they kind of alternate, taking turns at improvising melodies, and it was finding that direction that we couldn’t quite get at first.

One of the pieces that you’ve said inspired Sunday Painter is Miles Davis' In A Silent Way. When did you first encounter that record?

I first heard that album in 2006. I’d listened to Miles a lot, including his records from the early '70s—In A Silent Way came out in ‘69—but the stuff that came after it is so different. He is almost finding his footing in this new vocabulary, directing the band, probably in a similar way to he did with his quintet from ‘65 to ‘69, but there is just a totally different space and breadth in that album. Every time I listen to it I hear something new. I wanted to try and take some lessons from that and let the band have some space to just do what they would do, but then direct them at certain moments as if a conductor would, or as Miles would do on some of his albums.

The designer and visual artist Hana Tijama made three really beautiful music videos for "Roya," "The Mist" and "Key Biscayne." Has seeing your work through her eyes altered how you see each of those songs?

Absolutely, there is so much that she has brought to the music that I didn’t even know was there. They are very sculptural and abstract, but abstract in a very human way. I feel like you can see the natural elements in each one. They are not videos that are synced to the audio, necessarily, they are improvised along with the audio. She was creating everything in real time, doing full-take improvisations along with the music, and I think that is a really unique way of creating video sculpture.

It’s nice to see multiple videos created by the same person. 

It really is. Hana and I were talking about the album art designer for Radiohead [Stanley Donwood], he is always at the sessions when they’re making the record, so everything goes hand-in-hand with their artwork. And although she wasn’t at the sessions, I thought that taking a nod from that and having her do all the artwork would really bring her artistic vision in alongside the music that we’d created.

Shortly after you moved to New York from Massachusetts in 2006, you had an opportunity to work as a tour manager for the legendary jazz bassist Charlie Haden. Did he give you any sage advice that really stuck with you?

One thing he told me was how to hold the string down on the fingerboard with my left hand. He said you really need to hold it down hard because you want the note to speak as clearly as possible. The way he played bass, every note was so intentional. When you listen to him with Ornette Coleman, it’s not so much a flurry of notes, but rather these really thoughtfully placed melodic ideas that help guide the band.

You started playing bass when you were 12 years old. Do you remember who your bass idols were back then?

I loved Herbie Hancock’s Headhunters and Thrust. That band was such a bass-led group, the way Herbie produced those records was so forward-thinking. I loved the Paul Chambers stuff with Miles Davis, and a lot of Miles’ stuff with Ron Carter. Then I started listening to newer New York bass players like Christian McBride and Chris Wood.

So even as a teenager you were listening to jazz records. Where did your interest in jazz come from?

I think it was because of my first bass teacher. He gave me Relaxin’ by the Miles Davis Quintet and I remember listening to that and thinking wow, this is really interesting music. Then he gave me more Miles Davis records, then Herbie records, and Weather Report. Then I started listening to Jaco Pastorius and everyone else that was in that band. When I was a teen I thought I had my own little private club. I was discovering all these amazing musicians, it felt like an endless ocean of possibility.

And this was before music streaming, so you would have been having to seek out those records in physical form.

I also had a bass teacher in Boston and there was a record store around the corner from his apartment. My parents would drive me up to my lesson and then after my lesson I would walk over and buy some records. I think that’s where I first got Live-Evil [by Miles Davis].

There are multiple songs on your album, notably "Key Biscayne," "Empathy Duet" and "Roya," that remind me of vaporwave music. Both your music and vaporwave evoke this feeling of moving towards a brighter future, beyond the constraints of modern capitalism. Do you see any parallels between your music and a contemporary online music genre like vaporwave?

That’s a tough question. I would like to think that my music could be enjoyed by people who don’t normally listen to instrumental music, or people who only listen to instrumental music that’s more electronic, like Jon Hopkins or Tim Hecker, but I know that this music is very different to those artists. I think there is a place where they intersect. Jazz music has always been a really modern music, it is quite forward-thinking, and it would be really cool to see new audiences being drawn to it. I’ll have to think about it a little more, because thinking about the electronic musicians that I love and what they do, and thinking how they intersect with acoustic instrumental music, there are a lot of similarities, it’s just kind of the instruments and the tonalites that they are using that are different.

'Giant Steps' At 60: Why John Coltrane's Classic Hard Bop Album Is More Than A Jazz-School Worksheet

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GRAMMYs

 Ariel Rechtshaid

Photo by Ryan Hunter

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More Than A Decade In, Songwriter & Producer Ariel Rechtshaid Stays Winning

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With another HAIM album under his belt and a Hot 100 hit from a member of his Heavy Duty Music roster, the Los Angeles-based hitmaker is having yet another banner year in a string of banner years
Brennan Carley
GRAMMYs
Sep 18, 2020 - 8:38 am

In late June, Ariel Rechtshaid scored a Hot 100 Number One in the unlikeliest of ways, he says. "It was another random phenomenon in a series of random phenomena that I've witnessed in my life—and another thing you couldn't possibly control or cook up."

The 41-year-old songwriter and producer is talking about "Trollz," a splashy chart-topping collaboration by New York meme-turned-rapper 6ix9ine and actual New York legend Nicki Minaj, which was co-written and produced by Jeremiah Raisen, who’s signed to Rechtshaid’s Heavy Duty Music. While it’s not a direct Hot 100 credit to Rechtshaid himself, it’s one in a string of massive successes the company has racked up this year. In 2020 alone, acts like HAIM, Charli XCX, Bon Iver, Yves Tumor, and Francis & the Lights have enlisted Heavy Duty Music’s stacked roster to assist on their recent projects. "When you're able to take a step back and forget about all the bullshit, when you see the impact that you've made on people's lives, that's really the thing you're most proud of," he says.

And that’s not even taking into account Rechtshaid’s own massive accomplishments over the last decade. Long considered one of the most thoughtful voices in pop music, he’s likely contributed to at least one of your favorite artist’s projects, helming hits for Madonna, Sky Ferreira, Carly Rae Jepsen, Blood Orange, U2, Vampire Weekend, The Chicks, HAIM, Adele, Beyoncé and more (many, many more).

Rechtshaid, a GRAMMY winner (for Usher's "Climax" and Vampire Weekend’s Father Of The Bride), carved an hour of his afternoon in early August to walk GRAMMY.com through his massive 2020, his equally staggering career and the ways in which he’s been able to get business back to usual after the pandemic hit Los Angeles earlier this year.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

You're someone who likes to get in the studio with artists for full projects. So how has this pandemic changed the way that you work?

It made me feel like I'm between jobs. I haven't had that in a long time. Everything's been one thing after another. I've taken breaks, but I've never been at home in my studio during that break.

My version of working in this world is not [stacking up sessions with] loads of different people every day. It's just not the groove I landed in. So once we were able to have access to testing, which we're fortunate to have in L.A.—and if it's somebody you know well enough that you feel like you can trust them, and there's transparency—then I was able to start getting back in the studio and do things the same way I'd ever done it. There’s fewer people hanging around, though, and it’s a little bit more focused.

At least a couple of the pandemic months have been occupied by surprise live recordings for artists that I have been working with. I did some work with The Killers on their new album. I did obviously a lot of work with HAIM on their last record. That's been the version of touring or promoting.

Why do you prefer working with fewer artists on longer projects?

I came into it from more of a conceptual, full album state of mind. At first, there wasn't even really an option beyond that.  Nobody I knew was even thinking about the idea of working with multiple producers or multiple co-writers. I don't think anyone would be able to afford that. It wasn't an option.

On top of that, the most influential music on me was always made that way too, whether it was hip-hop and a producer like J-Swift doing the whole Pharcyde record, or Dr. Dre doing full records too. Of course there's room for external people coming in to collaborate, but there's an overarching concept you're trying to achieve. It doesn't work by randomly working with different people and making a compilation album. That works for certain records, but it wasn't the kind of records that I think I’m at my peak working on.

For a full album, it's very easy to lose perspective and not really achieve what you necessarily wanted to or could have with a little bit more time and space, but there is control because it's lots of trial and error. So many songs change several times over the course of making an album. Sometimes the concept is found on the journey to making that album.

How do you choose how to divide your time in terms of who gets your attention in any given year?

A lot of it has to do with timing. If I commit to something, I'm in it. Unfortunately, [that means] I'm not available for other things and that's been weird and heartbreaking for me. At the same time, I've never really felt like I needed to work on everything that I like, or that I needed to work on everything, period. I'm so happy to be a fan of music and just listen to an album and not have gone through the hard work, and sometimes traumatizing work, of making that album. It's not a sport for me.

I want to work on things that I understand and I feel passionate about. Sometimes that's just not what people are looking for. When you talk about records where I've done a song or two, it's usually because they were just already making an album that way. Then they came to me and I felt either adventurous that day or I had an idea and there was some sort of reason or chemistry for doing it. Sometimes you want to try something you’ve never tried before. [That’s true of] Usher. I was a big fan, but I never really saw myself making that kind of music in the room with him, but I got asked. I was like, "I’ve got to give it a shot." I was really happy with it. "Climax" is a song that I'm very proud of being a big part of.

I mean, of all the songs to have taken a swing on, you walked away with a GRAMMY-winning cultural reset of a track.

Having been there, I attribute it to nothing less than just chemistry and luck and timing and the mood of everything, because it just happened. We didn't go in there with preconceived ideas. In fact, if I had any, they were incorrect. They were false. They [were just me being like], "Okay, I know what Usher sounds like," to hype myself up.

He really was instrumental in shutting the door on anything you could have expected from him. He was all about functioning on pure intuition, like, "Let's just roll, no ideas." He knew certain things [about what he wanted]: "I don't want it to be a four-on-the-floor track. I want to do something unexpected with you. That's why you're here." I was like, "Okay, oh shit."

It was a very different kind of experience than producing the Vampire Weekend album or the HAIM record. It's almost a completely different job. It's funny that you could be called a producer in both instances; it's such a vague term, in a way.

And yet you do take those single-song swings every now and then, and they seem to pay off. You just did it with The Chicks, who spoke so highly to me of you recently, on Gaslighter.

I had huge respect for the Chicks. Timing-wise, I was available, they were local, it was easy to accommodate the session. We just showed up and we talked. They probably told me a lot of what they told you. It's funny because the demo [of "For Her"] is very banging. Every reference they had was hard-hitting. We started to freestyle around the room and then me and Natalie [Maines] stayed there until midnight, putting together the framework of the song—a little bit of banjo and a little bit of fiddle, just to give it their identity. Then I handed over the stems to them and it was a year later and suddenly, I got asked for approval and I heard a very different version, which is interesting.

On the record, it was a very mellow, long, epic version. Ours was this three-minute, hard-hitting little gospel jam; it reminded me of Tom Petty, hip-hop, and gospel mashed up together. It goes to show how different each process can be.

Do you ever feel weird about leaving your work in someone else’s hands, not knowing what it’ll end up sounding like, if it ever even comes out?

It's so fun for me, really, because it's so interesting and so opposite of what I'm doing 364 days a year. By all means, I do love that. I don't feel like I'm a control freak. I feel like I have a point of view and I feel responsible when I'm hired to do something that that's what they're asking for. I'm here to give it. I'm also very interested in what the people I'm working with have to say and have to offer.

I feel like that's been really instrumental with HAIM and Vampire Weekend, where I give something, they give me something back, and we just keep going tit for tat. The result is far more elevated than either one of us could do on our own. We're pulling each other in different directions and it's fun. It's like a great game of basketball.

Where in the end, both teams win.

That's the idea—or both teams are at least better.

Let’s talk more about that HAIM record. What keeps you coming back to that creative well, three albums in?

They originally reached out to me because they saw my name on the credits of some of their favorite Cass McCombs songs. They also loved "Climax." They were like, "What?" Even though when I first heard them, I was like, "Woah, why me?" I think it was about exploration. They assumed that I was down for all of it and they were right. They were right that my influences and my interest is vast.

What people expected of them, at least for their first record, was based on their live shows—very straightforward rock. They just didn't have the means to expand on that yet when I met them. When I got to know them, they told me their influences ranged anywhere from the Eagles to Pharrell to Chaka Khan. They had a deep, deep, deep musical knowledge, and years and years of playing and studying and rhythmic abilities. It was this huge open canvas.

What's been really gratifying about working with them over the course of three albums is that things were moving so fast for them from the moment I met them. They were already touring and it just kept growing and growing; there was always a finite amount of time for work. That's okay. There wasn't not enough time, but you just hope that the next time, you can expand and go in a different direction and keep evolving. I had seen a glimpse of everything that everyone else has seen now, from "Forever" to "Summer Girl." I'd seen a snapshot of all of that on day one. The fact that we're talking about less than 40 songs or whatever it is? That's nothing. I feel like we could easily get to another three albums and still be exploring new territories.

You worked with Vampire Weekend on Modern Vampires Of The City, and you returned on Father Of The Bride. Is that another instance of you feeling like that’s a band with more to show the world with each album?

Why it worked out with us on Modern Vampires is because, without even having to think about it, I would never have any interest in trying to copy what they’d already done. I'm like, "Okay, let's explore," and that's exactly what they wanted too. They felt like they had already closed the chapter with the first record and Contra, and they wanted to break out of it.

We didn't make a conscious decision to go in and start working on the third record. They were fooling around. I think the process between production and writing is blurred when it's done in house. They’d started a lot of things, but had hit some sort of a wall. I had started to work on Rostam [Batmanglij]’s solo album after Contra came out. Then, at some point, just out of the blue, he was in town with Ezra. He called and asked if my studio was available, and would I be interested in coming and helping a little bit?

Without really knowing it, by the end of that first week, they had knocked down some barriers that they had felt. Then, we just kept going. Father of the Bride was very premeditated and also an experiment. I don't know that it was 100% clear that there would be a fourth album. People talk about how long that album took. It didn't really take that long. There was just a lot of time in between.

Without saying too much, again, it feels like the beginning of a new era. They had albums one, two and three, and then… I don't know. Now I feel like the process continues with potentially four, five, and six.

Am I to understand you’ve also been working with Sky Ferreira again?

Oh yeah.

This should come as no surprise to you, but fans are beyond eager for new Sky Ferreira music. We've been wondering where it is.

On some level, we never stopped. There was so much that was birthed out of that era of us working together. I can't exactly tell you what's going on internally over there, but I've wondered the same thing. I was always just on the tip of, "When you're ready, hit me up." When I met her, she was very young and she'd had a couple not great experiences trying to make music, trying to get what was inside of her out. I don't know that she had even fully formed a clear picture of what it was she was trying to get out of her.

The chemistry between us was good and we went on an exploration period. Out of that came, "Everything Is Embarrassing" and a couple early singles which clarified the direction of the album. We made that album, [Night Time, My Time], pretty quickly. Honestly, they were demos. After she had some time to sit with it, she realized that these "demos" were what she wanted, so it just came out like that.

I'm honored to be asked to be part of the next chapter. When Sky put out "Downhill Lullaby," I was super happy for her because I know what a struggle it was on the first record, and those previous singles, to find that sound. I know how much she had to fight against. There was an energy behind her but she just was never happy with the music. She was fighting the machine, in terms of like, "Oh, just sing this song this pop writer has written," you know what I mean?

Someone wanted her to be one type of artist, which isn't what she wanted for herself.

From my perspective, it's not such an evil idea. It's just...they believe in her as a personality, and they want to help her put music out. They can't make the music for her, so they can only help her by suggesting this or that. What she and I did together is not something that you can really plan… it was a bit abnormal. We just played around and found something that I thought was very unique and represented her, and she felt the same way.

It was honestly another chance meeting, but for her to feel empowered enough to go do something else and figure it out is really exciting. I also felt that way with Solange. We had done a lot of work together early on. We stayed close and she played me A Seat At The Table, and I was like, "Oh, my God, I'm so happy for you," because I could sense that that was something that she was trying to make early on. She played me songs that she'd done all by herself. She took her time and she found it. It's nothing that I could have done with her. That was her. I was excited for Sky on that level as well. I'm also happy to be called back in for this next chapter, and we have some stuff cooking. It's cool. It's exciting.

The work you did with Sky, and then later with Carly Rae Jepsen, really changed the ways people thought about quote-unquote "pop" music in the 2010s. Suddenly, the most uncool genre was cool again.

I've felt that, but you really only realize it in retrospect. When artists call you to work on their project, you start to wonder, "What are you looking for that we're doing over here in our other world?" Because when I was working with Dev Hynes on Blood Orange, and Sky on Night Time, My Time, and even HAIM on Days Are Gone, it really felt like the periphery of the mainstream. With HAIM, we felt high praise by artists like Taylor Swift. A lot of artists were really inspired by that first HAIM album, and Sky’s too, but you're just doing your thing. The fact that it made a little dent in pop music? It's crazy.

It just kept me honest, really. I worked very hard for those successes, but I feel fortunate to have the encouragement to just do my thing, to not be competing with other trends or producers, to not do something that is not authentically me. In those earlier days, everything felt like little stepping stones of encouragement and confidence, and achieving a slightly higher plane with every artist and every project.

With Carly, it wasn't like any of those songs were as big as "Call Me Maybe," but it seemed like her goal was to make something that felt more authentic to her—or at least authentic to her then-self. It achieved what it was trying to achieve, and introduced her to a new audience. All those things feel good. A lot of times, people just run through a Rolodex of producers who are just getting it done in this era, and that could be me. Really, what they're hoping for is more of the same, and for me to have success with doing this thing that we cooked up in the comfort of our own anonymous little home was a really fortunate thing for me because it encouraged me to just continue to explore and do my thing and be me.    

We’ve talked about building up newer artists. But how do you go into a room with someone like Madonna and not lose yourself in those sessions?

I'm fairly sure I lost myself that time.

Are you?

I mean, not in a bad way. I came into that session with Diplo, who I had a longstanding creative relationship with, which I'm also extremely fortunate for. When we first started working together, it could not be more bizarre [of a pairing]. That first Major Lazer record and some of the stuff we were doing early on was so left field, and the fact that he became such a go-to pop producer was so wild to me. That got us in the room with people like Madonna, but nobody was steering that ship other than Madonna.

I was just flipping through pages of her Sex book and reliving my youth and inspiration from her, with her. She's such a gracious, awesome person in real life. That was just a fantastic opportunity in this weird exercise of fantasy. It's so hard to have a clear perspective on her because she's just omnipresent. Her peers coming up were Michael Jackson and Prince, you know what I mean? It's totally insane. If you've seen her live, that's another experience altogether. Getting to know her, she's like a true eccentric, very smart and very knowledgeable. There's depth and real roots in stuff.

She's also just done it all. You get to a point where you don't know what to expect and it doesn't even matter. She's just continuing to create and add to her catalogue. Who's going to tell her no? I had ideas, but she's a strong personality. And you have to respect the legacy. I wasn't going to be the one to control what direction she went with it. She wasn't even asking me for that, to be honest. I was there to be part of a team of just helping her create and find a vision that she was comfortable with. My respect for her is more than enough to allow me to do just that.

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Joan Osborne

Photo by Jeff Fasano

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Joan Osborne Talks Getting Political On 'Trouble And Strife,' Singing Jerry Garcia Songs With Phil & Friends And More

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The GRAMMY-nominated "One Of Us" singer opens up about the "all-hands-on-deck moment" that led her to address current events on her latest LP
Will Schube
GRAMMYs
Sep 17, 2020 - 9:18 am

Joan Osborne is one of those artists you’ve heard before even if you’ve never actively searched for her music. Her song, "One Of Us," written by collaborator Eric Bazilian, is one of those songs that transcends time, space, and individuals. It’s catchy and powerful, and landed Osborne three GRAMMY nominations. Not bad for her first single from her debut LP. Though Osborne, born in Kentucky but residing in New York, has never penned a song as culturally captivating as "One Of Us," her career is a sterling example of craftsmanship and dedication to superior songwriting.

Osborne plays with a number of genres, and on her new LP, Trouble and Strife, she bounces from Americana to bar rock to pop with ease and style. Though the album is her boldest political statement to date, she wanted to blend the serious moments, like the powerful immigration tale, "What’s That You Say," with moments of optimism and celebration. "I really wanted to make this record a fun and joyful album and something you could dance to," she explained to GRAMMY.com. "It's about staying connected with your joy and allowing that to lift you up," she added. As the world continues to crack and we fall under the weight of it, Osborne hopes to be a source of positivity and hope. Though songs like "Hands Off" deal with the prevalent corruption of our modern era, "Never Get Tired (Of Loving You)" is a heartwarming ode to her daughter, and "Boy Don’t You Know" wraps themes of female empowerment and misogyny in society around warm piano chords and silky guitar runs.

Though Osborne's songwriting is subtler and more nuanced than her defining hit, her voice continues to be a revelation. From her days of singing Jerry Garcia songs in the Grateful Dead after the legend passed away to her Bob Dylan covers album from 2017, Osborne continually displays why her vocals are some of the most iconic in modern rock ‘n’ roll. Trouble And Strife is another example of her power and dexterity, a beautiful encapsulation of our times, warts and all.

What is it like releasing a political (and fun) album in this particular cultural climate?

Because of the pandemic, the process that we would normally be going through to release a record and support a record is, of course, different because we can't do any live shows. We can't go to any radio stations in person, and we're limited with the amount of stuff that we can do to promote the record. We're, of course, doing a lot of phone interviews and Zoom interviews and things like that remotely to be safe, but it's not the same as going on a tour and playing your songs in front of audiences and stuff like that. It feels a little weird, a little abstract in that way.

This is not a good thing, but I feel like the record, being a very political record or at least the most political record that I've ever released, it feels like there's an audience that's going to be receptive to it. That's the response that we're getting. People are saying that they're happy to have music that is addressing what's going on in the world. It makes them feel less alone and it can be a useful thing to help to navigate this particular moment. That's gratifying. I'm not happy for the reasons behind it being so relevant, but I'm happy that people are responding to it in that way.

When you are interacting with moments to inspire your songs, like "Hands Off," is it draining being inundated by negativity and awful things happening all around us?

It can be very difficult to navigate a time like this. Every day seems to bring some new crisis and some new disaster. If you have kids, you're thinking about the world that you're going to leave to them. That's a difficult thing just as a person and as a citizen. But as a writer, it lights a fire under you and gives you a lot of energy to put the things that you're thinking and feeling into your music. There's a real urgency that I've felt about having songs like this that address this current moment. It gives you a real push in that direction of trying to wrestle with this moment in a creative way.

Having the platform to be able to illuminate a story like on "What's That You Say," is so important, too. Can you talk about how that song came about?

I'm dismayed by the immigration conversation that's going on in this country right now. I believe that America is great because it's a country of immigrants and because of the mix of all the different cultures and artistic traditions that different groups of immigrants have brought with them. That's why American culture is so fascinating. People bring their different traditions with them and then those different traditions and styles have mixed together and created brand-new forms of art in this country. I think that's part of what makes us an amazing country.

I wanted to write something about a person who has come here and brought the best of themselves to this country and really contributed. And so I wrote this song, "What's That You Say," about this character. There were these moments in the song that were instrumental passages that didn't have lyrics and there wasn't singing. I kept hearing a spoken voice in those passages. I thought, well, why don't I turn the mic over, so to speak, to someone who has actually lived this immigrant journey? That's another thing that frustrates me so much about this issue, is that we talk a lot about immigrants and immigration, but I don't hear a lot of people listening to actual immigrants. I don't hear their stories that much. That's very frustrating for me.

I felt like this would be an opportunity to allow somebody to talk about their experience, someone who's actually lived this experience. I can come at it from an artistic perspective and try to have some connection to someone else's story, but no one's going to tell it like someone who's lived it. That's when I approached this organization called RAICES. I've been aware of the work that they're doing at the southern border, trying to help people who are attempting to immigrate to the U.S. from Central America and Mexico and people who are trying to navigate this really dehumanizing system that is in place at the border and helping them with their legal applications for asylum and things like that.

I called them up and I said, "I'm really a fan of the work that you're doing," and I told them about the song and I asked them if they knew someone who might be interested in telling their story to become a part of this song. They introduced me to Ana Maria Rea-Ventre. She is very much the kind of person that this song is written about. She's someone who came to America as a child and has lived the rest of her life here and has been someone who's contributed to her community. She's this shining light to the people around her. She agreed to tell her story.

When your songs began to take a political angle, did you watch what was happening in the world and think to yourself, "I need to make my next album a certain way"? Or had you already started writing and that's just the way that the songs were taking shape?

It's a little bit of both. I wrote these songs in a big rush in 2018. It was before the most recent disasters, but this has certainly been a rough four years. These things were on my mind and a lot of ideas for songs about the current state of our country and of the world kept coming to me. I feel a responsibility as a citizen, a parent, and an artist to try to do what I can to effect some positive change. As they say, "It's an all-hands-on-deck moment." None of us, I don't think, have the luxury to just sit back and watch it unfold. We have to participate.

There’s a cautious optimism that prevails over the entire album. Is that something you really had to work towards? Or is that your MO as a person?

I've been reading a lot of this writer, Sarah Kendzior. She was one of the people who believed that Donald Trump was going to win the presidency. She's an expert on authoritarian governments and she's brilliant. I don't think I can quote her directly, but she said something about, "I'm not an optimist and I'm not a pessimist. I believe that we have to do the work that we have to do, whether we know what the outcome is going to be or not. There's no guarantee that the work that we have to do is going to bring about the change that we want, but we have to do it anyway."

With the revitalization of the Grateful Dead in this modern era, your time playing with Phil & Friends is particularly relevant. Do you have any fond memories from that era?

I was able to work with the Dead after Jerry Garcia passed away and went on a big tour with them. Then I went on a bunch of tours with Phil Lesh & Friends since then and have a real lengthy connection with those guys and with that music. It's a really interesting phenomenon because you have the Grateful Dead and you have their fan base and then you have this larger jam band scene that has spun off from the Dead and from that world.

I have so many memories. I think I was very nervous before my first handful of shows because I sang a lot of the Jerry songs and I felt like, "Wow, is this audience going to accept me? This girl singer doing these songs or are they not going to accept me?" But the audience was very welcoming. I remember it was my birthday and we were playing part of a five-night stand at Red Rocks in Colorado. I got to sing "Stella Blue" in that beautiful setting. There was this gorgeous moon and it was a clear night and it was just one of those moments where you could have heard a pin drop. The song is so delicate and so emotional and it was this moment that's now frozen in my mind. It's this pure, beautiful moment of being on stage with those guys and performing that song in front of that audience in that beautiful space. It was really transcendent.

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Brent Cobb

Photo by Don Van Cleave

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Brent Cobb Sounds Like An Old Friend On New LP, 'Keep 'Em On They Toes'

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The GRAMMY-nominated country/Americana performer discusses his recent move back to Georgia, what he learned writing on Music Row in Nashville and discovering a hidden family member in producer Dave Cobb
Will Schube
GRAMMYs
Sep 16, 2020 - 8:33 am

Brent Cobb grew up in a musical family, even if he didn’t know it. Around the age of 17, the now-34-year-old born and raised in Ellaville, Georgia, discovered the music of Shooter Jennings. Jennings, in his words, “...represented a cool side of country music. I just knew it was cooler than anything I was hearing on the radio." The producer of Jennings’ 2005 Put the "O" Back in Country? None other than legendary Nashville producer, Dave Cobb, who funnily enough shared a last name with Brent. That’s because the two are cousins, and Brent didn’t discover this until after he had already become obsessed with Shooter and Dave’s stellar country album.

Before you go searching for nepotism, Brent Cobb’s already admitted to thinking as much: "Dave gets irritated with me. He thinks that I think the reason why we work together is because I'm his little cousin. I don't think that," he explained to GRAMMY.com with a chuckle. "He would go, ‘Well, it's because of your great songwriting. It ain't because we're cousins, you dumbass.' Even if we didn't exist as a family, just to be associated with all of this feels like I'm living a little piece of history," he added. Brent’s "Down Home" is featured on a compilation record made by Dave in 2016, and the songwriter’s realistic, humorous, lyric-driven songwriting is apparent on the track, as it is on his new LP, Keep ‘Em On They Toes (out on Oct. 2 via Cobb's own Ol' Buddy Records via Thirty Tigers).

For Toes, Cobb enlisted the help of another star producer, Brad Cook, who has helmed albums for Bon Iver and Waxahatchee, among others. On songs like "Dust Under My Rug," you can almost hear the psychic powers between Cobb and Cook. Brent was insistent on highlighting his lyrics by stripping the instruments back to bare essentials, and Cook’s keen ear for subtle details highlights Cobb's tales of individualism and honesty with peerless precision. Though Cobb’s connections in the music industry run deep, his work on Music Row in Nashville and GRAMMY nominations have earned him respect outside of his familial ties. Brent Cobb knew he wanted to be a musician from his teenage years, and he’s followed that guiding light, discovering a few friends and family members along the way.

When did you begin writing this album and conceiving the direction you wanted to head in?

I think the first song that I wrote for it was "This Side of the River." That one set up the rest of the foundation for the themes and direction for the rest of the album. Then the second one was “Keep ‘Em On They Toes.” Up until that point, I had written a lot about missing home and describing Georgia and that sort of thing. We moved back to Georgia a couple years ago and I wasn't missing it anymore. So the songs I started writing began to focus on the world we live in.

When you wrote the title track with your wife, had your son been born yet?

He had just been born and that night I had started that song here in the backyard and was just thinking about my legacy. After I had kids, each album I write is approached from the mindset of, "If I died the day after this album came out, what would I leave behind for my kids to get to know me?" This song was no different. The initial thought was, "How would I want my son to grow up? What lesson would I want to leave behind?" Then my wife and I finished it during the first weekend we had away where the grandparents took both kids for the weekend. We just hung out and wrote that song. That's how we spent our first night of freedom since the second one had been born.

What were some things that you wanted to do differently on this record versus earlier releases?

I don't know that I wanted to do anything different per se. I wanted to make sure the lyrics were the focus of the album. I wanted that to be the focal point. Maybe that would be the only thing that was intentionally done differently.

Does that come from working with Brad Cook? How did that collaboration come about?

Well, I don't know how familiar you are with a lot of his work, but he's great at that, specifically. On the albums he produces that I gravitate towards, the small amount of instrumentation used is used well and it covers a lot of ground. The lyrics are always the focal point of the albums that I've been into that he's worked on. Brad and I couldn't get our schedules on the right track. Anytime I was free, he was busy and then when he was free, I was on the road. I was itching to make the album. This was last December. I had all the songs written for it, but I knew I wanted Brad to hop on board.

You do a lot of songwriting with friends, family members and collaborators. What is it about inviting people into your world that you get so much satisfaction from?

Well, I spent 10 years in Nashville writing on Music Row. Every day you go in and you collaborate with another person. That's the name of the game for the publishing world on Music Row in Nashville. So I love that process of collaborating with someone. Once we moved back to Georgia, I still enjoyed that process. It just so happens that the people here were my wife and my dad and those were the people that I collaborated with. I just enjoy it. I just enjoy getting on a song with somebody else.

Did working on Music Row writing for other people inform the way that you write your songs as a solo artist?

The only thing I've ever been good at in life is writing songs. Even as a kid. That's the only thing that just kind of sort of came natural to me. But being in Nashville surely refined that natural ability.

Can you talk a little bit about your relationship with your cousin, Dave, and how he helped inform the style that you have now, if he did?

Well, he absolutely did. He would say he didn't, but I was a kid. I was 16 or 17 when I first heard that Shooter Jennings album Put The “O” Back In Country. I had no idea Dave even existed. We didn't know each other, but I was a huge fan of the album. We met after I was already a fan of that album. Then when I went to L.A., I was exposed to that freedom of creating "country music" in a way that I may not have been exposed had I gone to Nashville first.

It was all Dave. It was Dave and Shooter. It was them just being completely free in the studio and it felt like the way you would imagine making an album should feel. It didn't feel sterile at all. It didn't feel like you'd walked into a doctor's office like sometimes it can feel in other places. The way he operated gave me the confidence to continue to be free in my creativity and my song writing.

Do you think about your own legacy in that way?

I try to. None of us are going to be around forever and we're only spinning around for a little while. I absolutely try to think about what I would leave behind. Whether it's to my kids or whether it's to this world, I try to constantly think about that. It's all fleeting.

But you can take the positive aspects of that without dwelling too much on the finality of it?

What are we going to do? What are we going to do about it? When you're in a bad situation and you could freak out and go, "Holy shit. This sucks," but it's just going to make the bad situation worse. I don't know that life is a bad situation. It's kind of a beautiful situation. Part of the reason why it's so beautiful is that it isn't forever. I always think about that.

Are you always writing or do you sit down and get to work when it’s time to make a new album?

It's both. I will say it is harder for me to write when I'm not trying to write for a project. That doesn't mean I'm not writing decent songs. The inspiration is much more robust when I have a project that I'm working on.

How does your lyrical process generally begin?

I've always thought that most songwriters write about what their heart desires and for me, when I was writing for Shine On Rainy Day, I was focused on down-home Georgia life that I missed and had been removed from for so long. It generally just begins with the question, "What am I thinking about right now?"

It’s fairly clear then that you don't miss your days in L.A. and Nashville as much as you did miss being back home in Georgia when you weren't there.

Not yet, but it took me a while to understand the longing for Georgia. Maybe in a couple of years I'll really be able to decipher those emotions and what was really going on. Maybe I will miss it. It's hard to tell, I don't know if I'll miss it. Perhaps.

Do you sort of use songwriting as a way of reckoning with your thoughts? Is it only through songwriting that they come to your head?

There's so much other stuff going on that's directly in front of me, like raising two kids and being a good husband and a good father and what the next lesson is for homeschool. There's a lot of stuff going on. It's hard to take a minute and think about the deeper thoughts and emotions. When I sit down with a guitar and I try to make the music happen, that's when the stuff comes out clearer.

What's something you hope a listener takes away after hearing this record?

I would hope people realize they’re not alone in thinking that it's okay to do what you feel in your heart. If you have a good heart and you're not harming anybody, then do what's right and live your life and don't f**king worry about what anybody else is doing. I hope I sound like an old friend. I'm here to talk to you and I'm here to listen, too. I just hope people find comfort in knowing that it's okay to live your life the way you see fit.

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