Will Yip

Photo: Will Yip Instagram

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Philly Producer/Engineer Will Yip Works Harder Than You

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Go inside Yip's journey making records, from his mom's basement all the way to Studio 4: “I’m very in the process, and I think that’s why artists trust me"
Brendan Menapace
GRAMMYs
May 24, 2019 - 12:29 pm

Will Yip just might be the hardest working man in the music business. You won’t see him on tour. You won’t see his name on a marquee. You might not ever see him at all, unless you venture into the subterranean Studio 4 in Conshohocken, Pa., just a few minutes outside of Philadelphia. That’s where he is for about 13 hours a day. The other hours he’s probably mixing at home - something he does to force himself to leave the studio at some point at least.

You’ve probably heard his work, though. If you’ve listened to any record even tangentially related to punk, hardcore, emo, indie rock and beyond within the last 10 years, you’ve more that likely listened to one of his albums. The likes of Circa Survive, The Menzingers, Turnstile and Title Fight have been going to Will for his studio knowledge, his unique way of bringing out the best of artists, his creative vision and his insane work ethic.

Yip is a co-owner of Studio 4, the studio he dreamed of working at as a teenager, and one of the most sought-after producers in rock music. Professionally speaking, he’s come a long way from the kid recording in his mom’s basement, the one who finessed his way into internships, and the one who cleaned out a back room to record bands on his own time. His first exposure to the recording world began by playing drums in a band when he was 12.

“I just love being in the studio,” Yip says. “I love building. I love the behind-the-scenes of putting together music and f***ing with stuff, and just messing with ideas and seeing it from the first note recorded to the final mix. That’s why I don’t tour. I just want to create all day.”

He started recording his friends’ bands in his mom’s basement in Northeast Philly. In high school, he helped out at a nearby studio, making a few bucks an hour, watching and learning as much as possible. When college rolled around, he faced a choice: Go to the Ivy League school and pursue the “comfortable” life his parents wanted for him, or go to the state school and study engineering, a much more uncertain path.

He decided on the latter, going to Temple University to study under Phil Nicolo, co-owner of Studio 4 and Yip’s eventual business partner, himself an adjunct professor at Temple. Yip’s parents, hard-working immigrants from China, were concerned as any parent would be, they always supported him and his passion. After all, he had it all mapped out.

“I said, ‘I’m going to get in with Phil,’” Yip says. He speaks fast and excitedly. “’I’m going to meet Phil, and somehow I’m going to work at Studio 4.’ That was my dream job.”

Yip had first heard of Studio 4 as the place responsible for some of his favorite albums from artists like Boys II Men, The Fugees and Lauryn Hill. Nicolo, a GRAMMY winner, had also worked with royalty like John Lennon and Bob Dylan over his decades-spanning career.

So, he knew he wanted to end up at Studio 4, but he also knew he had to get a little more experience under his belt before he took that shot. So he hit up a now-defunct studio in South Philly called Indre Recording.

“I remember just like it was yesterday - I was 18,” he said. “I emailed the studio manager, her name was Jennifer… and I said, ‘I’d love to intern. I’m this, this and this. I have skills in recording. I’ve done it for the last six years of my life.’ And she was just like, ‘No, we’re full.’ And that was it. It was harsh. It was real. It was the first time someone said no to me like that. Because I always thought I presented well, in terms of, like, what I could do. Free work ­­– who doesn’t want that?”

Yip is exceptionally friendly and nice, but he’s not the type to take a loss when he knows he can get the win. So, he took something he had previously recorded in the basement, along with $600 – just about every penny he had at the time – and bet on himself hard.

“So I brought $600 with me, and I said, ‘I want to book mastering time,’” Yip said. “For songs that were already mastered! I just wanted to get through the door, to talk to someone!”

He played the songs for an engineer there, and he was immediately impressed.

“He was working on them, and he goes, ‘Dude, this sounds really good, where was this recorded?’ Oh, my mom’s basement,” Yip says. “He’s like, ‘What? This sounds better than some of the stuff recorded in our big room.’”

That gig lead to recording sessions and live shows. As he continued to learn by doing, he found his opportunity to get in front of Nicolo as he originally planned when he picked Temple, this time with a little more experience under his belt.

“I took Phil’s class, and the first class, I went to him and said, ‘I want to work for you. I’ll work for free,’ Yip says. “He gets that a lot. He had a line of kids. But again, I knew I was going to kill it. And he was like, ‘Alright, just show up.’ He has an open-door policy, so I showed up. And I don’t think I’ve ever stopped showing up since.”

“Once out of 3 or 400 students, you have someone who’s got it,” Nicolo says. “I don’t want to have a huge ego, but he reminded me of me at Temple. Will was that guy. I could tell he was just really on top of the ball.”

Nicolo was working with Lauryn Hill at the time. Hill is an artist both he and Yip say has a tendency to “push” her colleagues. That “it” that Yip had was something Nicolo recognized as the mark of a truly talented producer who goes beyond just turning knobs, and it became prevalent while working with Hill.

“He became my right-hand man with Lauryn Hill,” Nicolo says. “Talk about going through the trenches. If you can keep up with that s***, man, you’re in… It’s the psychological side. Anyone can figure out where to put a hi-hat or mic an amp. But it’s hard to get an artist to appreciate what you do and get what they want when they’re not putting it in correct terms. That’s an engineer. And Will did that.”

It’s that unique ability to almost connect with his artists on a symbiotic level that makes him such a good engineer. He becomes a member of the band and a teammate.

“My goal is to read their minds, to get inside their minds and then work with them to create – not even just follow direction – but just create what that vision is, you know?” -Will Yip

“He gets the best out of you,” says Tom May, guitarist/vocalist of the Menzingers, who first worked with Yip for the band’s 2017 LP After the Party, and is working with him again for their next album due out this year. “The kind of stuff that you didn’t know was really going to be there in the first place. And he’s just so good at making an environment that’s conducive to creating with all egos to the side. It’s a wild thing.”

 

The way Yip puts it, he doesn’t want to create a “Will Yip record” or even a “Studio 4 record.” He wants to make the best record that band can make in that environment.

“I’m very in the process, and I think that’s why artists kind of trust me,” Yip says. “I always tell guys that I’ve recorded with a lot of producers before. I’ve recorded with so many engineers, and I’ve tried not to be everything that I hated in those experiences. I want someone that I can trust. And I know when you trust someone that’s manning this side of the board for you, and you trust someone saying, ‘Nah, man, that’s good,’ that’s the coolest thing. That’s the safest thing. It’s like trusting your partner.”

In a lot of ways, Yip is still the kid in his mom’s basement recording his friends. His highest aspirations are to work with people who inspire him, who are fun to be around and who make music he gets genuinely stoked on. As he puts it, he doesn’t want to “chase” anything, like a paycheck or prestige. Instead, he wants to create an environment of positivity, mutual respect and creativity. That’s why artists flock from all over the globe to work with him.

“You don’t meet that many people who are like Will,” May says. “I’ve never really worked with that many people like him. He’s just so excited and ready to go. He’s able to focus better than anyone that I’ve ever worked with on anything in my life, including any schooling, jobs, the music business, working on records, everything. I’ve never seen someone who’s able to maintain that type of attention span and attention to detail, as well as managing a roomful of personalities at the same time. It’s really kind of incredible.”

“He works constantly at the highest level, and that’s what it takes,” Nicolo says. “Of people who get into this industry, why are only 2 percent of us successful?  Because you have to have that mentality and that work ethic and the ability. It’s not all pushing the pencil. You gotta have the ability. He does, and he puts in the time.”

Today, Yip’s reputation is far greater than just a producer. He’s started two record labels so he can support artists he believes in, but who might be working with limited resources. On Wikipedia, he’s “veteran producer Will Yip.” On Pitchfork, he’s “influential producer Will Yip.” These are titles typically given to folks far older than Yip, a youthful 32.

But he is a veteran. It just didn’t take him long to get there. While some of his peers have been in the business for longer than he’s been alive, his breakneck pace has allowed him to create more albums than some people will make in a lifetime, some of them GRAMMY-nominated.

And he is influential, more than he thought he would be, and in ways beyond the walls of his studio or the words of music blogs.

“I was in L.A., and I was out there for a Tigers Jaw show,” he says. “I was just by the merch table talking to couple guys, and a couple guys came by to meet me, which is crazy. L.A. - the other side of the country. This Asian dude comes up to me and says, ‘Hey dude, I’m, like, shaking right now. I can’t believe you’re here.’ I wish I would’ve taken down his information or socials so I could hit him up. But he was like, ‘Dude, you’re the reason why I think I can be an engineer. No other engineers look like me or look like you. And for you to do all of my favorite bands, I think I can do it.’ I’m like … that f***ed me up.”

Yip’s only plan was to make music with his friends forever. Being a representative for kids who look like him wasn’t a torch he planned on carrying, and it took him a while to accept it, but now he’s embraced it. It’s not that he’s playing some Mr. Modest, it’s that he’s spent so much time in his studio world that he maybe didn’t notice how much the rest of he music world grew to respect him.

“I hate talking about myself. I hate it. It’s not what I do,” he says. “All this stuff and meeting this kid, I’m like, holy s*** man. There’s so many talented kids. What if I got too scared if I got bummed out or took whatever job offer, or went to Penn, which I could’ve went to instead of Temple, and just made money, worked in my brother’s firm—and he’s very successful and cool, but what if I did that instead? I was that close to that thought sometimes when things weren’t going the best, even though I knew I wanted to work in music. If letting that fear of not doing something because you don’t see other people that look like you doing it, that’s f***ing crushing, man.”

Philly Rapper Raj Haldar, A.K.A. Lushlife, On Going From Rapper To Children's Book Author

(L-R) Laurin Talese, Ebonie Smith, Donn T, Paris Cole
Photo: Lisa Lake/Getty Images

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Music Makers & Execs Discuss Collaboration, Culture & The "Power In Femininity"

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The Recording Academy Philadelphia Chapter brings together group of women of color for a frank discussion of co-writing, confidence, safety and culture in the music industry
Michael Butler
GRAMMYs
Mar 26, 2019 - 10:56 am

While the core components of what makes a great song may not have changed over the decades, the way music makers create certainly has. With technology allowing albums to be made on laptops, on smart phones, on tour busses and in bedrooms, songwriters and producers have become secluded in their creative process. While this trend unleashed remarkable self-contained creativity in some, it has left a void of in-person collaboration; however, that is finally changing.

Songwriting camps are popping up all over the industry as labels are revisiting the forgotten power of placing their most talented artists in a room together to create. Earlier this year, GRAMMY-nominated rapper J. Cole's Dreamville Records held a 10-day recording session featuring some of the most talented artists in hip-hop, and Def Jam hosted its firepower-packed rap camp, which Rolling Stone says, "May be a new—and cheaper—model for the record business."

The rising tide of writer retreats presents boundless new opportunity for artists, labels, content creators, producers, engineers, and more. The Recording Academy's Philadelphia Chapter recently explored the issue deeper at their exclusive event "Craft Session: Creative Collaboration."

From a member of one of Philly’s premier musical families to the co-manager of one of R&B’s rising stars, three women of color in the music business shared several gems that can help guide women and men looking to navigate enduring careers in the music business. To celebrate the recent International Women’s Day, Paris Cole, Ebonie Smith and Donn T shared some words of wisdom that they’ve learned in their musical journeys.

Moderated by recent Sarah Vaughn International Vocal Competition winner Laurin Talese, the conversation illustrated the value of collaboration in sustaining a healthy, innovative and thriving music industry. Here are a few crucial takeaways from the conversation in Philadelphia.

Collaboration Is Key

Paris Cole is a co-manager of Dreamville / Interscope songstress Ari Lennox and has learned the importance of being positive, cooperative and open-minded. "I’m always in a position where I have to collaborate," Cole says. "I always try to push through and kill with kindness, especially as a young person in my position. Ageism is definitely a real thing, so there are people that dismiss me when I’m speaking up for something. The collaboration part in the music industry is the most important piece."

"There’s So Much Power In Femininity."

Cole was one of a handful of women at J. Cole’s recent aforementioned Dreamville Recording Sessions. The nearly two-week sessions at Atlanta’s Tree Sound Studios exemplified the movement toward record labels bringing musicians together in one place to collaborate. "I was there for only three or four days," Cole said. "Ari [Lennox] is the only female signed to Dreamville. It was really just her, myself and Raeana Anaïs, J. Cole’s stylist. It was really inspiring because it was a lot of Black men doing some really cool things."

For Cole, the uniqueness of being able to share her energy as a woman was refreshing. "There were about 11 rooms going on and every room was filled with some of the most talented producers, rappers, songwriters," Cole said. "It was cool because they were appreciative of us just walking around the rooms and bringing our own energy. There’s so much power in femininity and they are really receptive to that over at Dreamville. The camp was amazing, but it was cool to be one of the few people there to witness that dynamic between all of those creatives."

Believe In Yourself

Ebonie Smith is a producer and engineer for Atlantic Records and has worked with artists like Kelly Clarkson and Janelle Monaé. Individuality and being herself as a woman is as important to Smith as any of the many technical skills she uses regularly in the studio.

"I think my specialized skill set is informed by who I am," Smith said. "I’ve developed a number of skills that allow me to engineer, produce, play the instruments, program, etc. But it’s not just me being able to do those things because there are lots of people who can do those things. It’s me that I should be bringing and my unique perspective on all of those unique tasks I can do should be formulated into one offering. That is my individuality, my unique perspective, my compassion and more so than anything, operating with grace."

A lover of music history, Smith looks at the foundations of the record business to help inspire her workflow. "For me, it’s thinking about the overarching concept of what it means to be in the record business and creating records," Smith said. "A friend said to me recently, ‘You use such antiquated language. Nobody [says] records anymore.’ I said that I like that language because a record is just that: A documentation of a special moment. Doesn’t matter if it’s a vinyl or tape or mp3, we’re creating a record in time, a moment, a timestamp. It’s that energy that I’m operating with. When I think about the greatest movements in record history, one of them started here [with] Philadelphia International. Gamble and Huff, that’s how they operate. That’s what created the Philadelphia sound. That’s what we want."

 

Singer, songwriter and label owner Donn T mission is clear: "To see women and young girls fully become who they are beyond age, beyond race. There are no limitations."

Having worked in the music business since the age of nine, Donn T is a proponent for walking confidently in who you are. "I’m a visionary, I’m inventive, I’m a unicorn," she said. "Centering yourself and knowing yourself in every moment and being unapologetic [is important]. I think what grew up in me was this advocate for justice and seeing that in the lives of women and young girls. If we can honor a Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones in his 70s and 80s, we need to have those equivalents in women. We need to not just applaud children and teens coming into the industry, we need to be applauding women in their 50s and 60s who are creatives because creativity doesn’t die. It is my mission to change the face of what that looks like and encourage others."

Safety First

As someone that spends a great deal of her time in the studio, Smith is aware of the perils that come with studio culture and warns against them. "Studio culture can still be a very tricky space for young women in particular," Smith said. "Spaces typically aren’t safe or conducive for young girls to be hanging out in isolated rooms or basements with men twice their age. Studio culture can be very dangerous for girls. If you’re working with women in the studio or working late, make sure we get into our cars, help us clean up. Don’t just leave. Ask, ‘Are you okay? How are you getting home?’

Smith also wants people to be aware that your personal space and security are more important than any perceived advantage in the industry. "For women, if it’s a question of your body, always say no," Smith said. "If it’s a question of your safety, always say no. I don’t care how early it is in your career. Very early in my career, I was working in the studio, some guys came in that had guns and I wanted to work in that studio. They were paying me. But after that session they could never pay me enough. It doesn’t matter if I’m a great engineer if I’m dead. Same is true with other physical things. The answer is 'no.' That’s not how you become a better engineer or artist. It has nothing to do with your craft. If that’s a part of your job then it’s 'no.'"

Men: Be An Ally

Donn T is a firm believer that while it is important for women to protect themselves in the music business, men can stand up as allies in solidarity. "We need the men that are like-minded to be allies," Donn T said. "We all know that there is one conversation that happens in a room when men and women are together and another that happens when men are in a room together. Be consistent because you are that change. It’s the people in the secret rooms that will make a difference. For the men, it’s important to take the interest you have in being [at this event] to go into these rooms and be brave. It’s something as women and men that we’re learning how to do. We have to take a risk and feel the fear."

Report: How Music Creates Jobs, Drives Tourism, Improves Wellness & More

Shura

Photo by Hollie Fernando

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Shura Tells Her Modern Love Story On 'Forevher'

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The U.K.-born pop singer/producer talks to the Recording Academy about moving overseas for love, how it inspired her gorgeous sophomore effort 'forevher' and why this feels like her "first record as an adult woman"
Rachel Brodsky
GRAMMYs
Aug 15, 2019 - 4:23 pm

Shura didn't intend to fall in love with a woman an ocean away—like all love stories, it just sort of happened.

In the time after her 2016 debut, Nothing's Real, the British pop performer began to realize that having a traditional Tinder account was no longer an option, with her own show attendees screencapping her profile and posting it to Twitter, among other embarrassments. So she signed up for the considerably more private dating app, Raya, which heavily vets its users and posits itself as "an exclusive platform for people in creative industries."

During a phone call to talk about her upcoming sophomore album, forevher (out Aug. 16 via Secretly Canadian), Shura, whose real name is Aleksandra Denton, emits a sniff of laughter at the idea of being one of the dating elite ("I'm on it and my girlfriend's on it, and she's not famous," she says). But her experiment would prove successful: Once she began swiping on Raya, Shura met her now-partner, who was and is currently based in New York. After months of chatting, Shura flew to the city for a first date. Now, two years later, she's a permanent resident of the Big Apple, and her relationship informs much of her softly soulful sophomore album, which is home to the synth-splashed, Janet Jackson-esque single "religion (u can lay your hands on me)."

In many ways, forevher also represents a victory lap for Shura, who, even as recently as a few years ago, wouldn't have felt comfortable using same-sex pronouns in her songs. But the "her" in "forevher" is quite purposeful, as is its Rodin-inspired blue imagery of two women embracing. "I remember when I put out Nothing's Real... In the pop sphere there really wasn't a queer woman that I could think of, other than people who had also already been around for a while," Shura tells the Recording Academy. "So, Tegan and Sara, maybe you have Hayley Kiyoko as well. But now we have King Princess, we have lots of non-binary artists. The indie-pop world, it's just so much queerer than it was when I first put out a record. I don't feel like the only gay in the village anymore."

On the cusp of releasing forevher, Shura sat down with the Recording Academy to delve further into the story behind her latest effort—which is co-produced with Joel Pott and features collaborations with Jagwar Ma's Jona Ma, Whitney's Will Miller and more—and why this feels like her "first record as an adult woman."

When did you begin to write forevher in earnest?

I began as soon as I finished touring. I wasn't seriously planning anything. It was just about getting back into the groove of writing. No pressure to think about anything in terms of an entire record.

Then, I guess about summer of, maybe spring, summer of last year, I'd written enough songs to really go, "Okay, there's a body of work here, a story that I feel like I can get a handle on what the story is that I want to tell." And I began in the summer of last year, the recording. Kind of approached it, actually, in a very different way than the first record.

[The first record] was done like, I would write a song and finish producing it, and then move on to the next song. Whereas this was much more like, write a bunch of things, and then go, "Okay, what do I have here?" And then go in.

Did you primarily record in the States, or were you in London?

No, because earlier, I made it primarily in London. It was just about me going to the States.

I did some writing in L.A., actually, with Orlando Higginbottom, whose artist name is Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs. But that was the only writing that I did in the States for this record. I bizarrely made more of this record in the U.K. than the last one.

Forevher is about your forming a long-distance relationship with your current partner. When did you guys originally connect?

Yeah, so we met on a dating app when I was physically in Minneapolis, and my partner was in New York at the time. So we weren't close to one another, even then. And we met because she had said, "If you're swinging by New York on your way back to London, then maybe we should hang out."

But you know, I wasn't really swinging by anywhere. I'd just wrapped up finished touring. I was like, "I need to go home. See my parents and my cat, and my twin, but sure." So we began talking. It wasn't like an every day sort of thing. We would just occasionally share funny things that had happened.

And I guess gradually, we were just talking more and more frequently. For four months it slowly developed to this quite intense relationship. It wasn't sexual, of course. It was an intellectual one. That's the funny thing about it. Because it wasn't Tinder. It was an app called Raya.

Yeah, I just learned about that one. My coworker was telling me how she spotted like, Owen Wilson and Ben Affleck on there! Isn’t it where all the celebs hang?

Well, apparently. Except I'm on it and my girlfriend's on it, and she's not famous.

You have to give your Instagram handle. You go through an approval thing. It's based on whether or not you're verified, or verified people follow you. You know, it's kind of ridiculous.

I think everyone can get on it. If her and I can get on it, it can't be that bad. But I only got on it because I was at my own gig in Boston, and I hadn't even opened my Tinder. Because I wouldn't, at a gig, that would be weird.

But because I was physically in the vicinity, people found my Tinder profile and screen-shotted it, and shared it on Twitter and being like, "I hope we're going to meet." Or like, "I hope we're going to match." And I was like, "Oh my God, I need to get off this."

And I was like, "Okay, I've got to get off of this." And I told a friend, and they told me about Raya, which I found it so hilarious. I was like, well, I have to apply. It's just so funny.

Like a week or two later, after I'd applied, I was accepted. I was like, "Holy sh*t. This is what I'm going to spend the next hour in the tour van, looking at. This going to be so fun!"

So the point that I was getting across is, because it's for wildly famous or successful people, in theory. They don't show you people who are necessarily physically close to you. Because I'm guessing the assumption is that you're so successful that you can afford to fly to L.A. You could go anywhere on your private jet, or whatever it is. I wasn't wealthy enough or successful enough to be able to fly on a private jet to go on a first date. So it meant that we just had to talk, in a way that I guess you wouldn't on Tinder, because it shows you people that are close.

So you have to, after a couple of weeks go, "Should we go on a date?" We just slowly developed this relationship. I think once we got to the stage where we were talking on the phone more or less every day, and three, four, five hours at a time, I was like, "We should probably see if this is gonna work in real life, because it's taking up a lot of my emotional energy, and obviously, just a lot of my time."

So I just invented a reason to go to New York. I thought, maybe I can take a couple of meetings, and hit up some of my friends, just in case. And I flew to New York, for this date and arranged lots of other things just in case it went really badly. But it went really well. And here I am, two years later with a record about meeting someone on a dating app and then moving to a different country.

Wow. So have you officially moved to the States?

Yeah, yeah. I moved to New York in November of last year.

How are you liking it?

I love it. Which is really weird, because I hated it when I first went. I hated New York and I loved L.A., because L.A. is immediately appealing. There are palm trees, and the weather's great. And New York was kind of weird, because it was either too hot or too cold, and everyone was cross at you. In England, if someone's cross at you, they're going to apologize. You bump into someone, they'll be like, "Sorry." Even though you bumped into them. Whereas in America, if you bump into someone, they'd be like, "What the f**k are you doing, you f**king asshole?" And I'm like, "I'm sorry! I didn't see you!"

But once you sort of peel away the layers of New York, it has this real energy that's like no other city I've ever been in. I mean, for Christ's sake, it also of course helps that I fell in love there. You can't not fall in love with the place in which you're falling in love. Which is kind of weird to be that person that's being like, "Oh, America's really great!" at a time where everyone else was like, "F**k the Americans!" It's mad! So yeah, it's been quite a weird backdrop to a queer love story.

Well, in looking at your description of the album and its lead single, “religion (u can lay your hands on me),” I’d love it if you could elaborate a bit on how you’re approaching the concept of religion and Christianity here.

I think there's a few things going on. Frankly, there's this rich history, in general, with pop music playing around with religion that I enjoy. Whether it's the iconography or toying around with it lyrically. So it's just fun to me to explore that and be, "This is my contribution to that tradition," shall we say.

Especially, if you think of me being a devotee of, to use a religious phrase, Madonna. And I think it's sort of my way of honoring that tradition. But also, the language that we use around love is very close to the language we use around religion.

Whether it's "I believe in love" in the same way that you believe in God. It's a type of faith and the act of devotion. Something that we say, we devote ourselves to someone that we love, and the physical act of laying your hands on someone. It's something that you would do during sex.

But also it could be in religion. It's something you might do to bless someone or to heal someone. So there's me, just having fun a little bit with that and other factors.

I've always been really interested in religion. I very nearly studied theology instead of English literature, because I just found it fascinating that in every culture there is a kind of religion. Which is kind of hilarious, because I'm an atheist and always have been. But you know, to be fascinated in that and especially being a woman and being queer, two things that don't often get treated well. Like women, since the dawn of time have gotten a bit f**ked over because you know, in Christianity, the prime example of a woman is a mother and a virgin. Which is kind of a physical impossibility. From that point on, we're a bit f**ked.

Yeah, there's not a lot of gray area where women are concerned in the Bible.

Yeah. So I think just something that I'm interested in. I think love is kind of absurd if you think about it. Like the idea of being with one person forever, is kind of absurd. But that's how I love. That's how I do it. If I am to be with someone, it's because I think I'm going to be with them forever, even though all the evidence points to the contrary.

And I think there's something about religion that's also absurd, and that we believe that most every culture has a belief system, where we go, there's someone bigger than us that does everything and knows everything. And I think it's just playing around with the absurdity of humans and being human and love and faith is a big part of that.

Hopefully I want it to be kind of done in a fun way and also a funny way. I really, on this record more than the last one, I wanted to make people cry, but I also wanted to make people laugh, and feel joy. There was a lot of me in that first record, but I feel like in general, my personality gets across better in this record, in the fact that I am a deep thinker, but also a bit of a joker. And a bit, I like to kind of play around with things and have fun.

Yeah, forevher has a soulful quality that I think was missing on your debut. When you mention how you are with someone, specifically the way you enter a relationship believing in the concept of forever—even though all the evidence points to the contrary—is that where the title of the record comes from?

Yes, well, it's a combination of things. Firstly, the idea that we love forever, in a sense. Or the idea of the ultimate love, or the one true love, is someone you would love forever. But you know, it stemmed, or the reason I started thinking about that as a title, was because of the song "Forever," which isn't spelled with an "H." I rhymed "together" and "forever." Which is like the biggest no-no in songwriting history. Because it's so obvious that the point in doing that, I think, was to point out the absurdity of it.

And I think in the middle of it, I start talking about the sun crashing into the sea, and leaving us in the dark forever. When I'm saying "I'm gonna love you forever," I don't want it to be just this saccharin, cheesy thing. I want it to be like, "Oh, there's an absurdity to it, or a sense of humor to it." But forevher, the title, and the way that I spell it with the pronoun, arose because it was a mix of, well, her. My partner.

So much of it has to do with that. But then also it's a mix of, "for-her, forever, and forever-her." I think because I really made a conscious choice on this record to use pronouns in a way that I hadn't done before. It felt important to specify that in the title.

My first record was queer. If you watch the music videos and it's queer as f**k. But this record, lyrically, is more explicitly queer.

Yeah, I think that’s been in the conversation more recently. That artists, if they do identify as queer, they’re more likely to use the pronouns of their choice. And that probably would not have been the case, say, 10 years ago.

Even five years ago! I remember when I put out Nothing's Real... In the pop sphere there really wasn't a queer woman that I could think of, other than people who had also already been around for a while. So, Tegan and Sara, maybe you have Hayley Kiyoko as well. But now we have King Princess, we have lots of non-binary artists. The indie-pop world, it's just so much queerer than it was when I first put out a record. I don't feel like the only gay in the village anymore.

Absolutely. And as far as the album cover goes, that feels like it adheres much more closely to your identity as well. Would you say that’s true?

Yeah. I felt that this record was a more certainly musically mature record. And I think I felt like I wanted that to be visible just from the artwork and stuff. I always joke that my first record was kind of like the soundtrack to a John Hughes movie that was never made.

[For this record] I wanted to use photography and illustration to have that childish, teenage vibe. And this felt like my first record as an adult woman. And so yeah, I knew from the beginning that I wanted it to be, to feel vastly different.

I remember talking with a friend of mine, he's a brilliant photographer, Hollie Fernando, about wanting to recreate a classic image of love with women. And we were talking about the Rodin sculpture, "The Kiss," which is one of the most classic examples of erotic love in art.

I remember saying, "Well, how would you feel about recreating that and doing a photograph?" It was very important to me, even at that stage, of it not being just a straight photograph. I wanted to go through another process. I really want to print it as an aristograph, which is the the style of printing that just feels sort of nostalgic and almost going to make something look like an oil painting, rather than just a photograph. 

What I didn't know was that the image that we used for the cover, I didn't know that that was what it was going to be. I'd thought it would be very obvious, and it would be a wide shot where you can really clearly see what we were doing. And now, actually, the cover is kind of quite mysterious. You wouldn't necessarily know it was two women until you open it up, and it's unveiled to be two women.

I felt like that was a really nice representation, aesthetically, of the music. Because it's a very queer record that you could completely miss with queer, somehow. Especially if you don't listen to the lyrics. That's the first thing I listen to, is lyrics. But a lot of people are all about melody and the music. 

I'm just so struck by [the cover], how blue is such a promiscuous color. And I don't mean that it sleeps with a lot of people. It means so many different things to different people, to different cultures. For some people it symbolizes depression or loneliness. For others it's love or royalty or holiness. And I just really loved how blue that blue made me feel. It kind of feels like longing and maybe it's something to do with the ocean and the distance between us. I look at it, and it feels like there's this halo around her head. We might see Mary and religious imagery, which tied in with some of the religious themes.

But it's this kind of desire for the eternal that I really got from that color in that dimension. And I think that's what we strive for and when we are in love, it's this weird desire for things to last forever. There's a song on forevher called "tommy," which very explicitly deals with the notion of forever, and foreverness, and the desire for the eternal, and death.

Yeah, you mentioned working with Hollie Fernando... Speaking of collaborators, you also have so many on this record Orlando from T-E-E-D, Jona Ma from Jaguar Ma. How did you connect with everyone?

So Joel Pott, I wrote a lot of this record with him. We co-produced it together, which is why I still made it in London. So that was fairly easy because we'd worked together before.

With Whitney, I had just worked with Will, who plays trumpet for Whitney. I just fell in love with that record. When I was writing "princess leia," decided I wanted to have a brass arrangement, because there's a moment where I'm talking about, I was on a plane and a dead soldier was taken off the plane, and I saw that, and there was a brass band. Whitney's [also] signed to Secretly Canadian. So they just introduced us and I sent him the track and I said I'd really love for you to just do your thing on it. I didn't give him too much direction. As a fan, I trusted him. And when I got it back, I just remember crying and just thinking it was so wonderful. And why hadn't I ever learned to play the horn?

With Orlando [from Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs], he'd just put out a song, I think, on SoundCloud called "Leave A Light On," that I couldn't stop listening to. And it's very rare for me to reach out to people, like just slide into the DMs. But I did. I just DMed him and was like, "Hi, this song is so beautiful, I can't stop listening to it. If I were to ever be in L.A. for writing, would you like to try some things?" And we spent three days together and wrote four or five songs, two of which made the record. So that was just very exciting.

And then, there's a chorus of incredible women: Rosie Lowe, Kerry Leatham and Reva from NIMMO. They're friends of mine too. They just happen to be really brilliant vocalists.

And I mean, I've obviously been a big fan of Jaguar Ma. I'm so lucky to have, like, slid into the DMs of people who I'm a big fan of and have them be receptive. Some DMs, you don't get a response. So these are the ones that came off.

Well, it never hurts to ask.

I have this thing, "Don't ask, don't get." The worst thing that someone can say is no, and the world's not gonna end if that happens. 

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Billy Strings

Photo: Daniel Mendoza/Recording Academy

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Billy Strings Talks New LP, Being Billed As Bluegrass' Future, Heavy Metal & Mental Health

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The virtuosic bluegrass guitar star opens up about his forthcoming album, his rock and metal influences and how he copes with the pressures of touring and being hailed as the future of a genre
Nate Hertweck
GRAMMYs
Aug 8, 2019 - 11:31 am

Once you hear Billy Strings do his thing, you'll get it. His unhinged flat-picking guitar playing kicks the tradition of bluegrass into new territory with one foot while keeping the other firmly planted in the genre's rich tradition. As a young artist, his songwriting, already scary good, seems to only be improving. For good reason, Stings is being called the future of bluegrass. And even though seeing is believing, and he proves he's worthy of the attention every night he takes the stage, that's still a lot of pressure for one person.

Aug 8, 2019 – 11:31 am

Billy Strings On Bluegrass, Playing Live & More

We sat down with Strings recently at Newport Folk to talk about how he handles the challenges of all the attention and success, how other genres like rock and metal have weaved their way into his astonishing guitar work, the collaborative process of making his forthcoming album, HOME, and more.

You're new album HOME is on its way, Sept. 27. Can you tell us how it was recorded?

We made it back in January over about 10 days or 12 days I think.

So lots of live tracking then?

Yeah, we just all were isolated in different booths and stuff, but we just try to lay the tracks down and I'll play it and live track it. Yeah, I think most of the songs we just end up doing that way. It kind of feels more live that way too than if we played the music and then did the vocals and then did this and that. We kind of just do it all at once like we do at our concert, you know?

I think there's a collaborative element of that, and a collaboration is a theme to this album. Why is it important to you, as a solo artist?

For me it's just I love playing music with my friends. Like I just did with Molly Tuttle up there [on stage at Newport Folk], but yeah, Jerry Douglas played some on the record and sometimes collaborating with people like that, it's just inspiring. It kind of puts a fire underneath you and keeps you going. When I get to play with my heroes, it really inspires me. It's good for you.

There are a lot of the people who want you to carry the torch for bluegrass, bring traditional bluegrass into the new generation. Obviously, you know the history and you come from the history, but you're doing something new. How do you navigate that as an artist?

A lot of people have said, and I would believe that it's true that you kind of have to know the origins and to know traditional bluegrass before you can then branch out. I think there's something true about that. I grew up playing bluegrass with my dad and very traditional bluegrass, I cut my teeth on it, but then somewhere along the way when I was a teenager, I got into heavy metal and rock and roll and all sorts of different music as I grew up and branched out a little bit.

As a writer, I try not to block off those other genres for inspiration as well. I'll let all the rock and roll and the metal and all that stuff that I've listened to inspire me while songwriting just as much as a bluegrass. And also, even if I'm writing a song that's not very bluegrass, it sort of comes out because that's how I learned how to play. It always kind of, you'll hear that flavor in there, I guess.

Yeah, is there something specific about rock or metal that has worked its way into your style?

I think it's more just about our live show. I think the most important thing that we do is our live show. I think that's where we are really best seen is on stage, in a concert venue somewhere. We're gonna make records and we're going to do our best to recreate that live setting on an album, but we're a live music band. Every night it's different. We could play the same song, but it's totally sometimes different. I don't know, we just try to jam with each other.

How often do you practice to play at such a high level?

I mostly even play on stage every day. Sometimes I never get to practice because I'm always on stage. I was talking to my friend David Grisman about that the other day and like, "Man, I never have time to practice." He's like, "Well you could work up new songs and play them and we do that." But, we play a lot of gigs, and sometimes when I'm not playing gigs, I finally get a day or two off after several weeks on tour. Man, it's almost like you just want to take a nap and catch up.

But, I would like to practice more. Honestly, I think I could do better about that. I'd like to write more music. I'd like to get out my metronome more and practice with that. I'd like to just practice learning my fretboard, everything. I mean I'm still trying to get better.

You spend a lot of time playing shows and touring. For a lot of artists, mental health has become a topic we talk about now, where it used to be avoided. What do you do to kind of stay grounded when you're away from home?

The main thing that I do is I see a therapist and I talk to that person and I've been doing that for a while. I had a lot of anxiety back in January maybe before we started making the record and I don't think it was based around the record. It's based around a lot of other things. Things when I was young and just everything, everybody has their own troubles and that kind of things, but certain things can haunt you or if you keep things inside and don't talk about them, that stuff can come out as an anxiety.

It's almost if you have a pot of boiling water, all these emotions and things that you wish you would have said or maybe thought about or this or that and you put the lid on, it starts boiling and a little bit of steam is gonna get out no matter how hard you hold that lid on. Might as well just take it off.

That's what I do is I talk, I see a therapist and I would recommend it to anybody who struggles at all in that way. I think it is an important thing to talk about and I'm certainly not ashamed of that or anything. I have to work on myself and I think a lot of other people do too. I've lost a lot of friends to, whether it's substance abuse or depression and anxiety and that kind of stuff is very real to me.

Unfortunately, I do believe in this line of work as a musician, entertainer, an actor or actress, those kinds of folks, because there is this added amount of pressure, I think a lot of times anxiety and depression sometimes, I think a lot of musicians deal with that or I think maybe a lot of therapists or psychiatrists see a lot of musicians or entertainers because we're like in the public eye and there's a lot of stress involved.

A lot of musicians depend on things. I know a lot of people that are in bands drink a lot and that kind of stuff. It's easy to do. People are always handing your stuff too man when you're out there. People are offering you everything and it's hard to say no when there's a party and it's, until you start to have anxiety and stuff and that's, man, I just, I do everything I can to try to stay healthy. I try to make sure I get enough sleep, make sure I drink enough water, don't be doing drugs except for psychedelics, but yeah, just try to take care of myself and stay zenned out brother.

One more question: What's inspiring you right now?

I think my earlier life, I use [it] as inspiration a lot. When I grew up, I grew up in a small town and I saw a lot of drugs and stuff, a lot of substance abuse and I saw also that those people drove themselves down into a dark hole and that they can never get out of, prison and overdose and stuff like that. It's like, I didn't want to be a bum. I wanted to do something good with my life. I think just seeing that kind of helped me run towards the light in the right direction.

It's great that we get to travel and spread the light and meet people and play music for people and hopefully brighten somebody's day. Also, I've got to mention my father who taught me how to play. It's just great to sort of carry his torch in a way and to kind of, I'm doing it for him and from my mom and him.

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Amber Gray and the Broadway cast of Hadestown

Photo by Matthew Murphy

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Singing—And Streaming—To Success On Broadway

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How the success of streaming platforms has launched an unorthodox new wave of Broadway productions
Bryan Reesman
GRAMMYs
Aug 7, 2019 - 10:17 am

The traditional trajectory of a musical seeking to reach the Great White Way was that it would start as a local or off-Broadway production, go through multiple permutations of performance and development, find the right commercial casting choices, do an out-of-town tryout, and then, if the creators got lucky and the show thrived, arrive on Broadway. But some recent productions have been bucking traditional channels, finding audiences through original soundtracks available on CD and more prominently by streaming platforms like Spotify, which has allowed unorthodox shows like Hadestown and Be More Chill to skirt the usual gatekeepers and reach mainstream theatergoers in New York City.

Streaming is making a difference. During opening week performances of both Hadestown and Be More Chill, their audiences emanated incredible enthusiasm. This was beyond even the normal warm reception given new shows. Many people in those seats intimately knew these shows.

Writer/composer Anaïs Mitchell's Hadestown, a retelling of the Orpheus myth with both New Orleans and an industrial Hell as its settings, began life as an abstract, DIY community-style show in her home state of Vermont in 2006. Two incarnations later, she recorded a cast album in 2010 featuring vocalists Ani DiFranco, Greg Brown, Justin Vernon from Bon Iver, and Ben Knox Miller from The Low Anthem.

Andre De Shields in Hadestown

"It was a very magical collaboration," says Mitchell. That first cast album later lured director Rachel Chavkin and co-star Patrick Page to the project, which lead to productions off-Broadway and in Edmonton and London between 2016 and 2018. Later, Hadestown premiered on Broadway this past spring and won eight Tony Awards.

Mitchell does not seem to concern herself with streaming numbers on Hadestown (the Top 10 tracks on Spotify have notched up 7.6 million streams), but she notes that the three different recordings—the original concept album and off-Broadway and Broadway cast albums—"have definitely helped the show reach people who otherwise might not set foot in the theater. For all the complicated aspects of music streaming, I love that music is free. It's like water running to the sea. It will find the people who will listen to and love it, whoever they are."

The Hadestown creator adds that the process of developing the show over the past six years has been very public. "It's a little intense sometimes because people get attached to one version of a thing, and they inevitably have feelings when that thing changes," notes Mitchell. "But people have been incredibly supportive of the time it took to bring this show to Broadway. In a way people are invested in, and have really been part of, the journey itself, not just the destination. They’ve literally been part of the process."

Be More Chill

After the sci-fi teen comedy Be More Chill (adapted from Ned Vizzini's book) finished its four-week run at the Two River Theater in Red Bank, New Jersey in 2015, the original cast album was recorded to commemorate the experience. "No one ever thought that it would lead to having the show find a way back to a stage," admits composer Joe Iconis. But something unexpected happened.

"It was a perfect storm of things,” says Iconis. "There were a few shows around that time that had come out that had some audience crossover with us, like Dear Evan Hansen and The Lightning Thief musical. Through the magic of social-media algorithms, Be More Chill was suggested to people because of that." From their growing streaming audience, old-fashioned word of mouth built up interest. By August 2018, the offbeat musical Be More Chill, about a geeky teen outsider who swallows a supercomputer that seeks to turn him into a cool insider (with consequences), landed an off-Broadway run and then transferred to Broadway in February. It ends its official five-month run this Sunday, and a film adaptation is reportedly in development.

"The craziest thing when we were first experiencing this viral sensation was that kids who were listening to it just didn't know that it wasn't playing somewhere," recalls Iconis. "I would get messages every day being like, 'I'm confused. What theater is this that?' We had this bizarre thing where for the longest time we had this hit show audience without having a show. It was just these kids who knew it so well from the album."

The two soundtracks for Be More Chill have reportedly racked up over 300 million streams combined, with the older off-Broadway version accounting for a greater share of those. The show made enough of an impact that it was parodied on the opening sequence of the Tony Awards this year (although, oddly enough, the source material went uncredited). The musical was nominated for Best Original Score (Music and/or Lyrics) Written For The Theatre, the award for which ultimately went to Hadestown.

"When people first started discovering the show I would get messages, and I was just so thrilled that anyone was listening to the show at all," says Be More Chill writer Joe Tracz. "People were not just listening to it, but living with it and thinking about it and wanting to know more about the characters and the world. [This is] a show that's actually looking at whether technology is a good or a bad thing. The grand irony of Be More Chill is finding an audience through the Internet."

On the indie circuit, Buried composer Cordelia O'Driscoll says her offbeat show, about two serial killers who serendipitously meet on a date, has mainly built up an audience through over 70 performances in the U.K. and U.S. over the last two years. It was originally crowdfunded through Indiegogo for its 2017 debut at Scotland's annual Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Based on a book written by director Tom Williams, the show recently played at the New York Musical Theatre Festival in N.Y.C. Streaming has helped the show's creators find new fans as existing ones share the music, which she says has exceeded 200,000 streams, reaching many fans who do not live near where a current production is happening.

"In terms of what we've found out about our fans, it’s been interesting to see which songs have been streamed more than others, to see what music people are connecting with the most at certain times," says O'Driscoll. "It's an amazing way to start to understand audiences." The fun, irreverent show looks like it will continue to thrive and grow.

Other productions have been aware of streaming potential for musical exposure. Between their 2015 D.C. run and 2016 Broadway debut, the producers of Dear Evan Hansen released the streamable single "Waving Through A Window" which reportedly accumulated over one million streams prior to the show's N.Y.C. premiere. On the Broadway side, fans who have been waiting and clamoring for Hamilton tickets have repeatedly streamed its score and memorized it. They know the show before they have seen it. The full Hamilton soundtrack on YouTube alone has racked up nearly 10 million views.

"The new British musical Six has grown a huge following from the streaming of its album," says O'Driscoll. "The music is brilliant and works very well as a stand-alone album, so people are going to their shows already knowing all the words. It's really cool to see."

"It feels like with more musicians like myself coming to the theater from different angles, and being able to reach supporters by way of musical channels and not just theatrical ones, we all benefit,” says Mitchell. “It makes for more aesthetic diversity, and brings different folks with different tastes to Broadway.”

"When I was a kid, you'd find any musical by like digging through the musical theater section at Sam Goody or your local library, and you were lucky if they had like one Sondheim title," recalls Tracz. "The things you saw were restricted by what was there with physical media. Now with streaming, if you're looking to discover something new, you can find it. Or, even better, it can find you."

"Streaming has huge potential to significantly expand the reach of musical theatre, and remove the perceptions of elitism or exclusivity that some people think it has," says O'Driscoll. "It’s a very exciting time for musical theater."

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