The music of Jolie Holland is steeped in that rich tradition of folk and Americana, musical lines that run deep, stories that help define who and where we are. When you think of Woody Guthrie, Odetta, Townes Van Zandt & countless others, what really comes to mind are people who made music because it was their absolute calling, they actually came from the worlds of which they sung, if they were rich at all it was in life experience, and living and creating as an artist didn't come easy, but they were on the path and there was no going back the other way. The music landscape is changing harshly, it's hard to make a living these days, Jolie explains, in part because of the changing sale structures, the way music is listened to (streaming) but also because of who is making the music. Songwriters most often came from the lower economic ends of society, what happens, asks Jolie, when music becomes a craft that is largely practiced by people from 1% families? Will there still be voices heard from the trailer parks and the outskirts of life? What happens when all that is left are people who make music because they can and not because they have to? AHC: What first drew you to music and what was your early musical environment like growing up? Were there pivotal songs for you then that just floored you the moment you heard them? Do you remember the first song that you ever wrote? Jolie: Yes. I recorded it on Escondida, used as the intro for another song. It's the short piece played on the toy piano. I wrote that when I was 7 on a toy instrument my step-grandfather bought for me. My parents never got me music lessons or playable instruments. I have taught many more music lessons than I ever received. Once my mother got me a completely unplayable mandolin. Kids at school, distant relatives I only met once or twice gave me instruments. I would get grounded and go to my room, and there was a piano in there. It wasn't my piano, or my mother's piano. It was a piano my mother was babysitting for her friend who had moved out of state. For whatever reason, they let me play piano in my room. I don't remember anyone telling me to stop. I used to experiment with vocal tones and whistling sounds when I was alone in my room, and I remember once, one of my step-parents told me it was bugging them. AHC: Who are some of your musical inspirations? Are there certain albums or songs you couldn't live without? Jolie: It's hard to imagine who we'd be without certain transformative moments with music, right? I'm sure teenagers of the 1800s felt the same way about poetry. Music has gone from being primarily a performed social experience to being a private recorded experience. At first, people still listened to recordings socially, rolling up the rug to dance. But most people's experience of music is now happening alone, with the radio in the car or on headphones in transit. How many people do you know who still have a hifi at home? When I was a teenager, certain music was like a secret code. I could listen to English goth music when I was a teenager and imagine possibilities outside of suburban Houston, Texas. I mean I wasn't just into goth music. I was into all kinds of music from all over the place. That music was a passport to larger a reality. It spoke of scenes beyond the place I was stuck in with my parents. And now with headphones and streamed music being available to teenagers everywhere, those possibilities are simultaneously stretched and diminished. There is further privacy for an individual to discover music on their own. But streaming and lost revenue kills off the scenes from whence the music originates. Musicians quit making music because they have to get other work, or in uglier cases kill themselves. The estuaries, the communities from which music arises are drying up. Music becomes more monocultural. Most of the songs I hear on the radio or at the gym or on internet commercials sound like exactly the same song. They become indistinguishable from one another. There's one or two predominate concepts about vocal tone, one or two concepts about rhythm. What happens when the only people who are able to choose a musical career are rich kids? We're seeing that now, where most of the big acts come from one percent families. Will the idea of music be confined to the fads that were popular at Ivy League universities? We're in a funny place right now, culturally, because music has usually come from the bottom, from oppressed communities. But now those communities are less able to make music. I know fresh batches of kids will find a way to make something new, but where are they going to connect with one another? I'm watching the neighborhoods that spawned powerful musical movements be blasted into the outer reaches by gentrification. Where are people going to get together? The mall? In the trailer park? In jail? Not everybody has a computer. AHC: What do you think makes for a good song, as you're writing and composing, is there a sudden moment when you know you've found the right mix, that perfect angle of light, so to speak? Jolie: I think what makes a song nourishing for someone is a very individual matter. For instance, Sinatra's voice gives me the total creeps, but a ton of people adore him. From what I've seen, musicians don't always know when they've written or recorded a hit. I think about the one hit Louis Armstrong had with 'Hello, Dolly.' He didn't even remember recording it. That's how busy he was. It's success took him completely by surprise. I thought 'Crush In The Ghetto' was going to be huge. And maybe it is, but streaming/theft/the decimation of record stores disguised that fact. Back in Louis Armstrong's day, a band could survive with no hits. A couple of my artistic heroes just told me how much they love my song 'Crush In The Ghetto' now 10 years after it came out. That's my success now. I can barely pay my bills, but my heroes tell me they love my songs. That's the only payday I get now. AHC: Do you consider music to be a type of healing art, the perfect vehicle through which to translate a feeling, a state of rupture, hope lost and regained? As a listener of music I have this impression, I wonder, as the artist, the creator, do you have this feeling about the transformative power of song? Does the writing and creating of the song save you in the kinds of ways that it saves us, the listener? Jolie: It does not save me financially. That actually used to be part of the equation. As I have watched the music industry falling apart in the past 15 years, I have felt some sense of vindication. I was happy to see the plastic giants fall because they were so terrible. But new plastic giants of even lesser musicality have risen in their stead. It's like what's happening in the ocean: when more complex forms of life can no longer survive, we get jellyfish blooms. I thought that by providing music of deep value to people that I could at least survive. No. It hasn't worked out that way. My friend just told me that my song was echoing in her head as she was providing hospice service to her father, helping him die. I met political prisoners who told me they sang my songs when they were in solitary confinement. I know people who were born to my songs, conceived under the influence of my songs, people who lost their virginity to my songs. People have considered my work to be proper for burying, marrying and birthing their loved ones. So many people have told me that my work has helped them heal psychologically in so many ways. I appreciate knowing that my work is being applied to people's lives. A lot of my heroes have spoken kindly to me about my work. Lou Reed was really sweet to me. Songwriters I adore have said positive things to me about my work. Lucinda Williams, Michael Hurley, Tom Waits, Nick Cave, Will Oldham, Victoria Williams have said kind things to me about my work. Bob Dylan played a couple of my songs, and said my name and spoke about me on his radio show. Many of my favorite musicians who are Not famous, just excellent musicians, or "sidemen" have showered me with love for my work. I feel so honored to have the support of my peers. And I do everything I can to support other musicians. It's a great honor for me to pay my backing musicians as well as I can. If I'd started my career ten years earlier, maybe I'd have gotten a leg up enough to have a little more financial stability. As it is, I'm skirting around with about a grand in the bank most months, just barely shuffling enough money around to stay in business. I went 20,000 dollars in debt paying my band the year Wine Dark Sea came out. Now musicians have to study up on marketing in order to survive. That's not good for either marketing or music. Even hugely successful artists with tons of bank find it difficult to make time to work. JK Rowling says she constantly has to remind people that she needs time to write. She can't just be the face of her brand, because that's another full-time job. If you can't pay your rent, where are you going to work? When are you going to work? AHC: I read this beautiful quote once which reads "music is not only the art of harmonious sounds; it is the expression of the world before representation", I wonder do you experience music in this way, as you create, write and compose your songs, do you have the feeling that there is something in the music that jumps ahead of you, so to speak, some ineffable mystery that you try to put your finger to the pulse of? That the song is a translation of a deep inner experience that is sometimes, maybe not always, hard to name or recognize outright? Jolie: Music comes from a trance state, or at least a lot of music does. That's an open door where the artist is listening like the oracles. The complete human engagement with mystery is present in that entranced listening. So of course, all that human experience has the possibility of coming through in the work. A lot of musicians, increasingly more, are not interested in writing from this kind of listening trance. In the global English-speaking monoculture, we don't have a way to consciously acknowledge trance-originated, trance-inducing music, even though of course it is valued. We don't have a language for acknowledging transcendence, and maybe that's why we are moving away from that type of musical expression. In some cultures, this kind of transmission is explicitly valued. In the Islamic world, there is a custom of speaking the name of God when you feel the transcendent power of music. That's how "Olé" got into the Spanish language. Ethnomusicologists talk about how the blues comes from Arabic music. And the blues is one of the US's great cultural commodities. The blues is part of the fabric of jazz, of R&B, of rock music, of country. There is very little pop music from America or anywhere else that is not shaped by the blues. So when we hear melismatic, emotionally-charged R&B vocals, that comes to us via a culture that values trance-oriented music. Even though some music can have a very dry delivery, that can still be generated by trance-state. I'm not saying it all has to be super emotional-sounding. And even melisma can be emotionally dead. Albert Ayler versus Kenny G: who is more interested in transcendence? AHC: When you set out to write an album of songs, how much does 'where the world is' in its current moment, culturally, politically, otherwise, influence the kinds of stories you set out to tell? Jolie: Oh yes. Of course. AHC: What are your favorite on-tour, on-the-road memories? Jolie: There are millions of beautiful moments. Hearing bandmate's stories, listening to Gorecki's symphony on a dark highway, watching the moon rise over some strange city, finding some long-lost friend at a music festival. So many memories. The band & I like to go to second hand stores because most of us live in big cities where you can't get good cheap second hand clothes. And we like to go to co op grocery stores on the road. It keeps you from eating crappy restaurant food, and you get a sense of the land- what grows there, who lives there. AHC: Do you have any words of advice or encouragement for other musicians and singer-songwriters out there who are trying to find their voice and their way in this world? Jolie: I don't have any words of advice for musicians In General. I wouldn't presume. But I did start an advice column recently, and I need more questions! So if anyone had any specific questions they wanted to send in, please don't hesitate to hit me up on my website or any social media platform. There's only been 3 columns out so far. You can find them at my website in the blog section. joliehollandmusic.com #AskJolieHolland AHC: Do you have any new projects in motion you'd like to tell people about? Jolie: I have a new band with my old bandmate from the Be Good Tanyas, Samantha Parton. We are called Jolie Holland and Samantha Parton. We started recording a record, and maybe we'll be able to release it this coming Spring? I'm working on some literary projects, including an illustrated book that my heroes Black YaYa and Mayon Hanania will illustrate. I'm also trying to get a musical off the ground with my wonderful collaborator David Coulter. This winter I'm going to Europe twice, once as a guest singer as part of a big show David Coulter is producing of music used in Jarmusch films. And then I'm going over to collaborate with some Swedish musicians outside of Stockholm in January. Then I have a short tour booked ranging from England to Italy with my duo-fronted band Jolie Holland and Samantha Parton.
4 Comments
Lez Watson
10/11/2016 02:33:56 pm
Sobering. But good to read.
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Roy
10/11/2016 04:16:41 pm
From down to Earth to the trancendent. Let's buy those cd's and records folks. Support your (anti) Heroin chic!
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Bob K.
10/13/2016 12:49:18 pm
Jolie Holland's music is heartfelt and real. I own all of her albums on CD. Looking forward to her new projects. Automatic purchases for me!
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Charles Edwards
10/17/2016 01:22:43 pm
Looking forward to seeing (and happily paying for) Jolie with Samantha Parton in England in the spring. Lost a loved one recently and am getting a lot from listening to the real music on my four (bought!) Jolie CDs.
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