Aoife O’Donovan

22:55A lot of hammer-ons. Yep. And on the record, there's kind of like a little harmonica part that's like...

23:14And capo on the fifth fret for those playing along at home. Okay, let's find out where all that great finger picking came from. We'll be right back with more from Ipho Donovan after the break. In today's super competitive business environment, the edge goes to those who push harder, move faster, and level up every tool in their arsenal. T-Mobile knows all about that. They're now the best network, according to the experts at an Ooclas speed test, and they're using that network to launch Supermobile, the first and only business plan to combine intelligent performance, built-in security, and seamless satellite coverage.

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25:50Cards issued by JPMorgan Chase Bank and a member FDIC. Subject to credit approval. Terms apply. This week on a very special episode of Health Discovered, we're taking a closer look at a condition that affects hundreds of thousands of men each year. Prostate cancer. I first found out about my cancer at the age of 45. Anything with cancer, you just think death sentence. In this episode, we'll explore the science behind detection, along with the practical steps men can take to protect their health. Listen to Health Discovered on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Open your free iHeart app, search Health Discovered, and start listening.

26:33We're back with more from Ifo Donovan. Did you grow up in a musical family? I did. I grew up, both my parents are musicians. My father was an incredible singer, guitar player, radio host. He was a professional musician. He was a professional. He was a professional music guy. He had a radio program on WGBH and was a much beloved member of the Boston music community. He's from Ireland. He passed away about a year ago, very sadly, and we miss him so much. He was really the person who, I would say both of my parents were kind of my biggest cheerleaders and champions growing up playing music. And unlike many people who grew up with musician parents, I really wanted to be them.

27:17I wanted to have their life. I loved their social life, their music community, their friends. They would always have, you know, bands staying at our house. They would always have these epic music parties at their house where my mom would play the piano and people would just stand around the piano singing all night. And when I was in high school, my friends and I, we would, like, it was like a cool thing. At least I guess I thought it was cool. Maybe it wasn't. But I'm still glad that it turned out that way and that I didn't rebel against it and, you know, only want to, I don't know, do something totally different.

27:45Was it traditional Irish music they played? Not really. My dad's radio show is mostly traditional Irish music, but it's really just kind of songs, kind of like the culture of a sing song. You know, anybody who's spent time in Ireland and in kind of that community knows that phrase. There's a thing that people do called a sing song. And my whole dad's extended family, we love a sing song where you just get around and everybody kind of has their cover that they sing their song. And my mom knows all the songs on the piano or somebody passes around a guitar and you just kind of, it's like a jam. Basically a jam, but a jam with all singing and no instrumentals and no solos.

28:18What was your first sing song performance? My, well, my first. It made me very happy if the answer is like tainted love or something by heart. Well, no, you're going to laugh at this. So when I was much younger, one of my favorite songs to sing that I really sang first at karaoke at the Inchidani Hotel in, I think it was like 1994, maybe. I think I was probably like 11 or 12. I sang Leader of the Pack. Wow. I met him at the candy store. Fabulous. The Shangri-La's. I got to bring that back. I just realized I need to bring that one back for my karaoke repertoire. So that's the first song you did, Leader of the Pack?

28:55That is in the first batch. But as I got a little bit older, I really used to love to sing The Dimming of the Day. That was one of my party pieces that I would do with my parents. The Richard Thompson song? Okay. Any other Richard? We've interviewed Richard Thompson. We're going to do it again. I love to sing 1952 Vincent Black Lightning. That really became more of a sing-song song as I got a little bit older. I used to do that song all the time. Can you do the guitar part to that? I kind of have my own version of it that I do. Nobody can play like Richard Thompson, but I do. Just like that. Oh, it's beautiful.

29:31Yeah, he's amazing. He does his own. I mean, I feel like with Richard Thompson, you can't try to imitate his guitar playing. You just have to kind of, you know, do it your own. There's too much going on there. The song speaks for itself, yeah. And so when did the guitar start for you? Or was guitar your first instrument? No, guitar was absolutely not my first instrument. I played piano growing up, but really mostly I just sang. And I didn't start playing guitar. I mean, I took some guitar lessons in high school and could kind of play basic chords. And my first band, Crooked Still, I didn't play guitar at all in that band.

30:03I just sang. And it wasn't until that band really stopped touring. I mean, I was playing guitar, you know, for I would do the occasional solo show in New York at Rockwood, or I was writing songs on guitar. But I didn't really start playing guitar and kind of developing my guitar style until I would say, gosh, until I turned 30 probably, until, you know, the last 10, 11 years. Was there a particular song or experience that made you think, yeah, I can do this? I'm waiting for that. I still am like, can I play the guitar? It was leader of the pack. Well, no, honestly, I feel like it actually probably when I started to get more serious about the guitar was when I decided I was going to make a solo album and I knew I was going to have to, you know, lead a band and play all of these songs on the guitar.

30:47And my mind, you know, I would hear these things in my head that I would want to play on guitar, but I needed to figure out how to play them on guitar. So it was sort of, I feel like the songs helped me find my way around them. You know what I mean? I had the songs, but my hands needed to follow my brain. Really? Yeah. That's interesting. I think for so many people, it's the other way around, which is they just start shapes on the guitar and then the songs come out of that. Yeah, that's not the way it is for me. Did you figure them out on the piano? I would just figure them out in my head and then I would have to find, I could hear them in my head and have to find them on an instrument.

31:25Really? Yeah. That's amazing. When did the song start? I started writing songs, I mean, gosh, when I was really young. I remember the first two songs that I feel like were complete songs I wrote with my friend Sarah Heaton, who is an opera singer. She's in the Met Chorus. And we had a band in, we were in seventh grade, and the band was called Fairy Mist, F-A-E-R-I-E. It's very inspired by the Indigo Girls and by The Story, that great band with Jennifer Kimball and Jonathan Brooke. Oh, right. And I think we basically just wanted to be either of those two female duos. And we made this little cassette demo of these two songs.

32:03One of them was an original called Lover's Secrets. But I have the tape somewhere. It's really, it's kind of hilarious. But it's a good song for two 12-year-olds. And then we set the E.E. Cummings poem, Maggie and Millie and Molly and May, to music. And I played it on the piano. That sounds like a really good idea. It was cool. It was like, Maggie and Millie and Molly and May. Went down to the beach to play one day It had all these cool sort of major to minor mode things going. It was cool. I think more people should probably do that. I think I heard Andrew Bird did a song by, oh my God, her name's just flown out of my head.

32:39She's only the most. Emily Dickinson, thank you. And I thought, well, this is going to be terrible. I thought, actually, this is really good. I bet. Yeah. It actually really worked. And you sort of think, oh, this is going to be too dramatic in high school. But no, it was. I think if you're, I mean, somebody like Andrew Byrd is definitely up for the challenge. Well, maybe we should leave it to him. And then you went to New England Conservatory. I did. In fact, if you look up, I just did this, I thought, when you look up New England Conservatory alumni, the first picture is Coretta Scott King. Oh, gosh.

33:12And you're the second on Google. Wow. Maybe that's just your Google. You ever wonder that because they knew you were searching for me? do I have a Google? I don't know don't you? is that really true? me and Coretta Scott King what company to keep? maybe it was and Rose Kennedy is up there so they've covered the rest of the Boston Irish exactly they're just covering their bases here they've got the lace curtain Irish I love it Coretta Scott King my mother-in-law my late mother-in-law was at New England Conservatory Ivy Jacobson that was one of the things that my husband and I first bonded on was that I went to NEC and his mom had gone there.

33:51She was a flute player. But it was a great place for me. It really, I have to give it so much credit for opening my mind in ways that I never could have imagined. How did you, because you went in as someone, were you considering an opera career or something else? Into the contemporary improvisation department, which at that time, this was in 2000 when I started. I really, it was basically part of the jazz department. It was separate, but it was, there were so few kids in CI that it was, I think there were like three undergrads when I started. So we were, we were really kind of lumped into the jazz department, even though I was not a jazz musician at all.

34:29I knew nothing about jazz. I still know nothing about jazz, but it, but it was, it kind of kicked my ass in a way because you're, I was around all these people who were so musically virtuosic. They had this deep theoretical, you know, language that they could speak. They had these great chops, this great rhythm. And I felt a little bit like, oh my gosh, what am I doing here? What do I have to offer? But it was really fun. I remember actually those first couple of weeks getting together with the kids in the basement of the dorms and having these like, just like late night jam sessions, just improvising, singing, making up shit and just kind of going for it.

35:07Were you playing guitar at that point? Not really. I was really still mostly just singing. I don't even think I was playing. I don't even know if I had a guitar with me. I was just singing and playing piano. Right. That's amazing. And is it four years you did? I actually did three years. So I switched halfway out. I switched from the bachelor's program. My third year, I really wanted to tour and I knew I didn't want to stay in for four years. So I switched to an artist diploma program. And then what did, did it give you the theory? Are you now going to point out C minor 13th? Well, it's funny.

35:39It definitely did give me that theory that I use and I do use all the time. I think that people always say, oh, Bob Dylan couldn't read music. Or people love to shout out these things. Just because you can do this, it doesn't mean you're better. And that's absolutely true. Many of the greatest musicians that I know don't know a third from a fifth. but I will say that as a side man and as a collaborator, it's so handy to have, have that skillset in your back pocket. And it just makes things go a lot faster to, to be able to know what the chords are. When you, when you want somebody to play along with you, you can shout out the chords, you can shout out the key, you can shout out the shapes, you can say the numbers, or you can say the actual chord.

36:21You can transpose things quickly in your head. All of those things. I think that if you're, you know, young people listening, if you're considering a career in music, like it doesn't hurt. definitely doesn't hurt. It's better than shouting out, you know, Bob Dylan, he couldn't play. And he's like, thanks. You know what I mean? I think that people sort of love to, and it's great. There are many people, like I said, who I love to play with who don't speak that language, but I mean, no disrespect to them. But they bring, they bring something else to the table. So then what were your first, you said you wanted to tour, what were your first steps as a professional?

36:52So it was around that time that my band Crooked Still started. It was a string band where we did mostly old bluegrass songs, old, you know, source recording old time songs that we would find and rearrange for our untraditional instrumentation. We had a crazy cellist named Rashad Eggleston who really was one of the first people to do the chop on the cello. He was at Berkeley. Greg List, this great banjo player who was getting a PhD at MIT at the time and he now teaches at Berkeley College of Music. And a bass player who was also at NEC named Cory DeMario. We were a quartet. We started playing gigs my freshman year of college and really started touring.

37:31And that's kind of what I wanted to do is, was go on the road and be with Crooked Still and make records and tour. And then you also did, you did radio, you did the Prairie Home Companion. Yep. That was a couple of years later that that started. That was a huge, a huge part of my life for, in both configurations with Garrison Keillor first for many, many years. And then when it changed over to Chris Seeley, I was in the house band for that as well. And that was some of that. What was that experience like? Really some of the happiest, most fulfilling musical moments of my life, to put it into words.

38:08Getting to do that every week. I mean, talk about a good course in having to have your chops be at a certain level. Chris is obviously, I've worked with Chris for many years. We have a band together called Go Rodeo Sessions. But he, in that context where he's calling the shots and you're showing up on Friday and learning, you know, 30 songs. I mean, literally often it would be just so much music because you would do sort of half songs, snippets of this. You would do song of the week. You would many times be in the band for whatever guest was on the show. So you'd have to learn, you know, all of Trey Anastasio's songs, all the parts for that, all the harmony parts, et cetera.

38:45It's just one song. It just goes on a long time. What were the, you'd only have a day to rehearse for that? You'd show up on Friday morning. And a lot of the times you would not even get, for the first couple of years that Chris was doing it, he was doing this thing called Song of the Week. And he would be writing the song all week. And he often wouldn't finish it until the middle of the night on Thursday. So you would wake up on Friday morning with an MP3 in your inbox and have to basically learn the song by the rehearsal, which usually started at 12. Wow. And then you would have the rehearsal from like 12 to 10 and then you'd go back the next day and start sometimes as early as like 7.30 in the morning and then do the show.

39:29It was such a rush. It was really, really fun. Yeah, it must have been. It must have just been terrifying. But in that. But everybody's in it together. So it's this sort of real communal, terrifying thing of just saying, okay, we got this. And it's live radio. That's the thing. It's live and then it happens and it's over. It sounds like you're playing in the NFL or something. It was just like doing an award show every week. Yeah, it was so much fun. Tell me about some, I wasn't going to ask you about the guests, but now that you mentioned it, can you remember any experiences that stand out with the guests?

40:01Oh, my gosh. I mean, tons. I mean, that first show, this is right when Chris took over. That was the one with Trey. That was like just such a blast. There was one that we did with Gregory Allen Isakoff that was really special. We did, I got to sing with Renee Fleming with Garrison, actually, the first time. That was another time that I got to sing with a guest. Bonnie Ver, I got to sing with Bonnie Ver on that show. The list goes on and on. Every week it was somebody different who was incredible and getting to just sing harmonies with. I talked to someone who did this analysis of Renee Fleming and they ran her voice through it.

40:36And apparently she can hit just dead center of every note. She's a real magical singer. Yeah. And no slide when she's going up to it. He said it was surreal. You never see someone who can sing like that. Yeah. And she still got it. Oh, yeah. So tell me then, you had that project. You've had other projects. You did Goat Rodeo with Yo-Yo Ma. I guess you should explain that. That really came through Chris and Edgar Meyer, both, and Stuart. I mean, that's kind of my world there, the Bluegrassers. When that started in 2011, I think that's when that started. They were writing music, and they knew they wanted to have some vocals on the album, but Chris didn't want to do it by himself, or Edgar thought that it should be a duet.

41:26And I think he had heard Chris and I sing Farewell Angelina at Tell Your Ed a couple years before, And he's like, what about you and Aoife do a couple songs? So we wrote those two songs that are on the first record together. And then for the next record, which was almost a decade later, I actually got together with them and wrote the music and the lyrics for those two songs that are on the newer one. And they don't, you know, people who, you know, I grew up with certain classical popular music crossovers. Yehudi Menuhin famously did albums with Stefan Grappelli, the great jazz violinist. And, you know, it never really, it was a kind of a party trick that never really worked, but it was nice to be at the party.

42:09This is something completely different. Well, Yo-Yo is, I think, he has managed to avoid falling into that trap of being somebody else's party trick. There's not really any musical figure quite like him, I think, alive today. And I don't know if there really ever has been or will be. He's a one in a million guy, musician, player, cellist. And his taste for creating something special is infectious. He really, he pulls people together. He sits back, he does his thing and he lets everything else kind of come around it and sort of envelop it in whatever it's doing. Do you know what I mean? So in Goat Rodeo, he's not being asked to do the same stuff that Stuart and Edgar and Chris are doing.

43:01He's being asked to be himself and play these gorgeous melodic lines and harmonize with the other string instruments and provide the rhythm that only he can do in his way. And then they've managed to sort of create what almost sounds like a chamber orchestra with just these four instruments. And it's really special. I think it doesn't sound like crossover at all. I think it just sounds like music. It sounds like it's his own thing. That's what I mean. It doesn't have that kind of, you know, Pavarotti sings the classics. And I think that Yo-Yo achieves that as well in other sort of collaborations that he does across the board at the Silk Road Ensemble.

43:35And when it first started, it was really a lot of that sort of world music and bringing people in. And it never sounded cheesy or forced to me. No, he's just a great experimenter, I guess. Exactly, exactly. And it's really honest and authentic. And I think that that's when you can sniff that somebody's doing something to be a crossover thing, then that's when you start to lose me. Yeah. So your first album was Fossil. Mm-hmm. And if someone looked at the album, looked at the photo, looked at the titles, they would think, oh, someone's doing a traditional Irish album they're doing. But it's you.

44:14It's me. It's your songs. Exactly. It's all my songs. How did that come naturally out of the songs you'd been doing before? Yeah. Or was that something you thought, no, I'm going to make everybody think it's one thing? No, that really did come naturally out of the songs that I had been working on. You know, your first solo album, obviously, I was 29 when I made it. So it was everything that I had, not everything, but the 10 best songs that I had written up to that point. And I really had, you know, quite a few to choose from. But that was a, I really wanted to do it. I wanted to make a solo album.

44:44I wanted to work with Tucker Martine. that was kind of a dream of mine in my 20s was to get to make a record with Tucker. And tell us about why. Tucker Martine had made some records that really just knocked me out when I was in the early 2000s. His records with Laura Veers, I loved so much. I still love so much. But it was in particular a record he made with Sarah Siskind, who I first met in, I think, 2003 or 2004. A great singer-songwriter. she was filling in in a band that I was in called the Wayfaring Strangers and she this was before she had had you know the sort of viral success she ended up having having with Bon Iver covering her song and with you know writing for the tv show Nashville and doing all this stuff and being quite a lauded writer that she is now but she made this record called Covered she gave it to me gave me a copy of the cd in 2003 or 2004 whenever it was and I remember getting home and putting it in my car and just, I was like, what is this music?

45:42What is this production? Who made this record? Someday I want to make a record with whoever this guy is. And it really happened. It's really cool. And then you were covered by Alison Krauss. Yeah. So that happened before I made my record. Oh, is that right? And I remember getting that call. She covered my song, Lay My Burden Down. She first covered it for a movie called Get Low with Bill Murray and Robert Duvall. And then they ended up recutting it for a Union Station record. Which had to feel affirming. Oh, it was, I think that was the moment where I was like, maybe I can, you know, write songs and I can sing them.

46:18Because she's a little, she's a little like Yo-Yo Ma in that whatever else she does, she's got incredible taste. She really does. She doesn't hit too many bad notes. Yeah, talk about singing in the center of a pitch. Yeah, no, incredible, incredible voice. Did it change the way you were writing at that point? Was it still just, I got the song in my head? Yeah, it didn't really change my approach to the craft itself, but it definitely gave me probably a much-needed boost of confidence to say, okay, I can be, I even still, you know, am I a songwriter? Am I a singer-songwriter? What is it exactly that I do?

46:58But that was the first moment where somebody else said, okay, we like this song and we want to sing it. And that's a huge compliment to any songwriter. Mm-hmm. And then there's a check coming. That's another nice thing for a saga. You're right. Yeah, that's a good thing, too. But you said you ran at a writer's block. Was that before the age of apathy? That was before the age of apathy. So after Fossils, I made a record called In the Magic Hour. I did a bunch of stuff in the interim. My band, I'm With Her, etc. When COVID hit, I just come out of a two-year tour with I'm With Her. My child was two, a little bit more than two.

47:36She was two in a couple of months. And I really hadn't stopped in a long time. And I had made no time to sort of sit and be creative and think about what I wanted to say and what kind of songs were going to come out. So that whole first six months of COVID, I was really just like, you know, I think many people were kind of stricken with what am I going to do? What am I going to do? And out of that, it was really when I moved to Florida that somehow something kind of got unlocked and I was able to sort of re-access that side of myself. And I'm so grateful because once the door kind of got pushed open, it's just continued to be fruitful.

48:14Okay. But it was six months during COVID. Yeah. I'm not sure that's right. I'm sure there's much more writer's block down the road for me. So, well, then you made Age of Apathy with one of our favorite people here, Joe Henry. One of the greats. One of the greats. How did that come about? I first met Joe in 2014 in Cincinnati. I was doing a show with the Cincinnati Pops called American Originals, where we were singing the songs of Stephen Foster. And it was Roseanne Cash. It's also where I met Roseanne Cash, who's become a friend. Joe Henry, Dom Flemons was there. The great band Over the Rhine was there.

48:54It was a really special weekend of music. And I really hit it off with Joe. And, you know, I didn't see him that often over the next decade or eight years. but I knew I again he was somebody who I was like I want to make a record with Joe I love the way his records sound his solo records I love the way his the records he produces sound and I just knew we had we had a kinship we had a vibe and I knew he was the right person for Age of Apathy when I got to Florida and I started making the demos for Age of Apathy I think I'd made like three demos and I just kind of cold called him and I was like can can we talk I are you interested in making this this record it's COVID we're not going to be able to do it in a traditional way where we're in the studio together, but I think this will work if I make these demos and send them to you and you send them back.

49:40And it worked so well. It was so much fun. Well, you're lucky it was COVID because he's in Maine. You don't want to go there in the winter. He had just moved too. It was really, he had just gotten to Maine when we were starting these conversations. Yeah, you don't want to do that. No, I'm from Massachusetts. I know. Yeah, of course. You know, just as an aside, Roseanne Cash, one of the first people we interviewed for the show and Joe both helped us. Malcolm and I did a book with Paul Simon and they both contributed chapters, but the producers cut Joe's and I was so disappointed. I know he did this amazing riff on the song, Duncan.

50:13I don't know if you know that song. I do. And it's funny because I feel like I've heard Joe play that song before. He's played it, but he did this big thing about how it's like the boxer, but different in the same way that To Have and Have Not is different from Casablanca, but kind of the same. Okay. It was so genius. I got to read that book. Well, it's an audio book. And then Roseanne and her, I don't know if you know her husband. Yeah, John, of course. They did Only Living Boy in New York. And they just talked about the production because the production of that song is so incredible. Is it on Audible or how do I get this?

50:48I don't know how you find it. That's terrible. I'll find it. I'll find it. Yeah. That's so cool. One of the, and I still say the best nights of my life, the best, the top three nights of my life. I was seeing Paul Simon at Madison Square Garden in 2018. It really was just one of those moments that, gosh, I actually went with Sarah Droz. The two of us went, we bought tickets, we were in the 13th row, and we were sobbing the entire time. It was so good. Yeah, so many good songs. So many good songs, and also what a great performer. My favorite part of that show was how much better he sounded at the end of the concert than he sounded at the beginning.

51:27He was so warmed up by the end. Oh, interesting. I didn't want it to stop. He was just, he really felt like his voice was just opening up and opening up and opening up. And then by the last couple of songs, he had every shade. We'll be back with the rest of Bruce's conversation with Aoife O'Donovan after the break. In today's super competitive business environment, the edge goes to those who push harder, move faster, and level up every tool in their arsenal. T-Mobile knows all about that. They're now the best network, according to the experts at Ooclas Speed Test, and they're using that network to launch Supermobile, the first and only business plan to combine intelligent performance, built-in security, and seamless satellite coverage.

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54:07Cards issued by JPMorgan Chase Bank and a member FDIC. Subject to credit approval. Terms apply. This week on a very special episode of Health Discovered, We're taking a closer look at a condition that affects hundreds of thousands of men each year, prostate cancer. I first found out about my cancer on my birthday at the age of 45. I found out my cancer has spread to my pelvic bone, and from there, life just changed. About one in eight men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer during their lifetime, and the risk increases with age. Anything with cancer, you just think death sentence. And the only thing I could think about was, who's going to take care of my family?

54:53You have to go out there and build your support system. You got to build your team. In this episode, we'll explore the science behind detection, along with the practical steps men can take to protect their health. Listen to Health Discovered on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Open your free iHeart app, search Health Discovered, and start listening.

55:20We're back with the rest of Bruce's conversation with Aoife O'Donovan. So a couple songs I wanted to ask you particularly about, there's a lot of great songs on Age of Apathy. It's such a good album, but Elevators was one of the songs that for some reason was really taken with. Can you just talk a bit about that song? Yeah, that song is one of my favorite songs on Age of Apathy also. So I remember starting to write that song and just kind of having this movie playing in my mind of me watching like a movie of myself in the rearview mirror, like of my youth, sort of my more wild days as a touring musician.

55:57And just the concept of have I been here before, like waking up and looking out the window literally. And the first line of the song is looking out the window wondering like, you know, if I've been here before, that looks the same, that looks the same, that looks the same. And how when you are a musician and you live on the road, you tend to be able to pinpoint events based on the randomest things. Like, who was I dating at the time? Or who was my bandmate dating at the time? Or all these things that just end up being sort of silly and trite, but really are coloring the fabric of your life in this funny way.

56:29And that's kind of where that song came from. And you need that because every day you're just waking up at a Holiday Inn Express. Yeah, every day is the same in this one way. And it's so monotonous to get in the van and to stop at the gas station and get the same snack that you always get at the gas station because you're sick of, you know, for a while it's smart food. And then you switch to some other sort of healthy thing like, oh, I'm going to eat beef jerky on this tour or something. But it's, I feel like musicians just have this, you have your routines that you go through when you're on tour all the time.

57:01And there's sort of no clear way to mark the time. Like, when was I in this venue? And then you see your name on the wall and you're like, what? I don't even remember writing that. You know, it's really, it's very trippy. Yeah. It was your beef jerky tour. Yeah. It's like, oh, yeah. Oh, that was the tour that like her boyfriend was there with us for like that. And that was so awkward. Like, you know, just weird memories like that. Sure. Oh. So I want to ask you, we're now up to your current album. I want to ask you about Daughters. Yeah. Tell me about that song. That song was one of the first songs that I think I wrote in its entirety for Age of Apathy.

57:40And I think I mentioned at the beginning of the interview that I did have some of the lyrics intact before I sent that one off to the arranger. I was imagining, or I was just sitting there thinking about, you know, who were these women, who were the suffragists, and what did they think we were going to be saying about them? Did they know how important the work they were doing was? And when I get to the chorus, I'm singing, I say, all your enemies never leave your side. And it's just sort of that idea of, you know, no matter, even if the fight has been won, there's still going to be a shadow of your opponent next to you forever, potentially.

58:20But how do we overcome that? And how do we get past that? And my favorite part of that song and that recording is the San Francisco Girls Chorus singing behind me on that chorus where I'm singing, all your enemies never leave your side. They will always be there. Daughters, dry your eyes. And they're singing behind me saying, kind of echoing me. And it's this really sort of powerful physical thing. When I listened to it, when I got their parts back, I just, that's exactly as I wanted it to sound. And I wanted it to be me. And this does tie into the song we were just talking about, Elevators, talking to your younger self talking to the past version of you or talking to your mother when she was a child or your grandmother when she was a child and then looking forward talking to the daughters of your daughters it's really just sort of the the line keeps going because it had this theme about your enemies always being with you there was one line that that really struck me as strange and that is the line about protected and serene rich women still honing their malevolent skills.

59:25That part is about the people who were opposed to suffrage and often the people who, and I feel like we still see this in today's political climate, it's often people with great privilege that are the most fearful of change because they're not the ones who are being negatively affected by the lack of progress. We're not going to turn this into a debate, but the suffragette movement, and it's been criticized for this more recently, did rely on often very prosperous benefactors. Of course. I mean, famously Alva Vanderbilt, who had changed her name by that point, but put a lot of her family money.

1:00:10And it seemed like a strange note to hit because a lot of those women were regarded as privileged. They wouldn't have been able to do it without it. Right. No, you're not wrong. But I think that in that line, I was sort of talking about the people who were nay, the antis, the people who were against it, it wasn't that all the rich people were pro-suffrage. No, no, absolutely. So it was just one side of it. Okay. Honing their malevolence skills, growing bulge in their treachery. You know, I may have been, I didn't talk about this with my wife, I may have been channeling my wife a bit though, who sort of felt that in the last few years, being a certain kind of woman has not exactly insulated you from criticism.

1:00:59Yeah. And you got it with the, why didn't you do Ida B. Wells. Of course. And it almost seemed like everybody comes from some kind of privilege. Well, not everybody does. Not everybody, of course, but it is, I mean, I think it's important to acknowledge and to be aware, at least that's what I'm trying to do as a person in the world, to be aware of my own privilege and how, of course, I'm very privileged to be able to sing these songs and to write these songs. but that line I think I was trying to you know later in the song it kind of comes back like you know women in the fields and counting houses I'm really talking more about the common woman as the song goes on in the next stanza after the chorus comes back and you know the women in the shops and in the farms they're all around us they got babies crying out their breasts you know the veins of these women are not filled with milk and water these are mothers of bold American daughters just really trying to make it more of a sort of an every man every woman type thing, if you will.

1:01:56That was kind of the, maybe it was a misstep, but I think that - No, no, no, no. You're not to sit there saying, maybe I'm not a songwriter. No, but that is how I was trying to sort of tie it into these women are sort of sitting in their gilded homes, not out there, even if they were going to vote yes, which they couldn't vote, obviously, but even if they were pro-suffrage, it wasn't necessarily affecting them in the same way that it was affecting the women who, you know, are on the frontier. And by the way, that line that the mothers of old American daughters is just such a great, great line in that.

1:02:35I love singing that song. I love singing that song live. Yeah. No, it's got such a kind of, the other one I wanted to ask you about was, because I think it's one of the, you've got a lot of beautiful, very long, You write very long melodies, by the way. But that's a good thing, right? I mean, you know, it is what it is. Some people are like, yeah, I think I read a review once of a record of mine. And they were like, her melodies, they're not exactly the kind that you can sing along with. She sort of meanders from one idea to the next. By the way, I think the answer to that is don't read critics.

1:03:04No, I think it was still a positive. It ultimately was positive. But it kind of cracked me up because I'm like, yes, that is exactly what I'm doing. Isn't that what all melodies do? Yeah. But I think one of your loveliest is America Come on this. Thank you so much. On that record. Tell me about writing that one. That one I think I really just got in my head is kind of this march of like, like that real ascending melody to kind of end all the octave jumps. It's a very hard melody to sing live. It is, there's big jumps. But it's funny that I had that melody before I had the phrase because I feel like it's in like F, I think, is what it is.

1:03:45And I play this one with like a mic. I tune my low string up to an F on this one. It's like, what is a democracy? What is this democracy for which the world is battling? For which we offer up? It's really low and then really high at the same time. And it's very jumpy. By the way, I've never seen a, I guess, it's like a drop D tuning, but it's an F tuning. I do. I actually write a lot of songs in that tuning. Is that common? I don't know. I don't know anybody else who does it, but... They've never heard of it. I can't say that I invented it, but I don't know anybody else who does it. Well, then I think you can say you invented it.

1:04:18I would patent it. I'm sure Joni's tried it. She's tried it all. Are you a fan, by the way, of Joni Mitchell? Oh, come on. Huge fan. Biggest fan. Okay. I would say some of your songs, I can hear that influence a little bit. Elevators, actually, is a song. I can hear a bit of that influence. I'm a very big Joni Mitchell fan. And I love all of her music and her melodies and her writing is just, I think, unparalleled. It's funny because in interviews I've read with you, you don't mention Joni Mitchell. I feel like I do. When I talk about my influences, I feel like I would say Joni Mitchell and Paul Simon are kind of the two people who I would say are my most old school biggest influences.

1:04:58Okay. Those are good influences to have. And I did a recording of You Turn Me On, I'm a radio. and actually one of my favorite live from here performances was Coyote that I got to do at town hall with Chris and the live from here band what's that like to that's a really hard song to play it was so fun that was really one of my top musical moments of my life there's another YouTube clip then you should look at which is because I'm Canadian of course my number one is Gordon Lightfoot love Gordon Lightfoot Gordon Lightfoot had this house in Toronto he was famous for having these parties that nobody remembered later.

1:05:35But if you look it up, there's a party at his house and I think he's there and Dylan's there. And then she starts playing an early version of Coyote. I feel like I've seen this clip on Instagram or something. Yeah. And at some point they're looking at each other and you realize you guys are kind of out of your depth here. Like they're trying to play along. They're like, we can't tell what she's doing. They should have gone to music school. I'm not sure it would have helped because I think her stuff is so idiocy. And that song is very, at Lydia Synchronic. Yeah, I wasn't playing guitar. I was just singing when I did it.

1:06:06Oh, you didn't try and do that. I didn't even attempt. I didn't even know what her tuning was or anything. I think it's an open C tuning, I'm pretty sure. Okay, but it's got a very, it's got its own thing. So cool. Yeah, you should look it up. If you haven't seen it, because there is kind of a nice moment where they're like, oh man, we're screwed. We got nothing. We got nothing. Maybe we get the bass note. Maybe not. But yeah, too many notes. Too many notes. Too complicated. You know, in this album, because the album is, it's not, as I said, it feels like a theater piece. It feels very much of a piece.

1:06:41Then it takes this shift, this album. And I'm sure it was a very deliberate shift. But the last two songs go in a completely different direction. Totally. Yeah. Starting with Over the Line. Over the Finish Line. Yeah. Oh, Over the Finish Line, pardon me. Which has just a very different mood, very different lyrics. Do you want to talk about that? Yeah. The way this album ends, I think, was unexpected. And maybe I wasn't quite sure. To be honest, from the beginning, I was sort of like, how am I going to release this music? What am I trying to say with this as an album? Because usually you put out an album and it's like neat.

1:07:24It's, you know, 10 or 12 songs and you can play each song and there's little snippets and there, some of them are happy and some of them are sad and some of them are slow and some of them are fast and you have, you know, an album's worth of material. This record was just a totally different beast. So the last two songs, I felt that I had to sort of finish my thought. I had to kind of come from the past into the present, but then take a slight detour to a different part of the past. It's almost like the sort of time travel thing that I'm doing. Over the Finish Line is the second to last song on the album.

1:07:58And it's a song that I'm singing from really the only song where it's entirely from my perspective. You know, me, Ipho Donovan, 21st century woman, mother, citizen, you know, artist looking back at what I've just said. You know, I think that there's a lot of sort of referencing of the previous songs that you've just heard. when you get to that point in the album, I'm kind of talking back to Carrie Chapman, Kat almost, and talking about the current state of affairs and about how I feel that it's almost kind of ties into Age of Apathy in that way, that we're sort of not connecting in the same way.

1:08:33And what can we do about it? And I don't think I really come up with an answer in the song. It's more just a, you know, if I could change a mind, whose mind would I want to change? If I could make something that would get us over the finish line, and then it's almost like I throw up my shoulders and say, we're living in hard times and it's an intense song to sing and anais mitchell sang harmony on it so beautifully and i feel like really helped me kind of get the the feeling across the urgency that i was sort of talking about before just what what can we do and how do we do it and at the end of that song i i quote carrie chapman cat and i sing you know what is this democracy for which the world is battling the song that i just had sang that long line in the previous song and then And I ask Carrie, I feel that we might have made our beds here.

1:09:19Like, have we? And it's really just a question. It's a very, it's a down song. It's a down song. There's nothing happy about it. And that's what you were feeling even after you wrote the rest of these songs? It really is. And it's funny because, you know, the question, America Come, the song that comes right before this, where it really ends with me and the girls and the brass and we're singing. You know, it's almost like a chant, like holding her torch high, like America, America. And then I think it's kind of the whiplash that I certainly have felt over the last eight years of existing and this time, this crazy time, and I sang about it in Age of Apathy.

1:09:56But the whiplash of kind of going back and forth between feeling really hopeful and just really dejected and wondering how we can do about it and what is our role? What is the role of the artist throughout this? It reminds me of American Tune, the Paul Simon song. One of the great songs. Right. But it's more downbeat. Yeah. I mean, American Tune at least has that really soaring bridge. You cut out the soaring bridge. No soaring bridge in this one. Well, it's interesting because at the end you are addressing this to Carrie Chapman Cat, who the album really springs from. And I was particularly in the combination with America Come.

1:10:40By the time I got to the end of that song, I was thinking, I was wondering, what do you think, when you talk about we're living in a hard time, what do you think her answer to you would be? Well, I think that the crazy thing is, and I read a lot of historical fiction, just looking, gosh, times are always hard. Times are always crazy. when you think about i read recently i read libra by don dolillo a great book you know harvey oswald kennedy the whole sure that whole time period was so crazy like that that was so crazy i feel like it's crazy now but it's crazy in a different way and everybody always thinks that what they're going through was like the crazy is like shit's crazy times are so hard times are so hard technology this you know but if it wasn't technology it was tv or it was uh the cubans or it was whatever the fear du jour is.

1:11:30And I think that that's kind of what made me want to program the record this way. After that song, it goes into the lonesome death of Heidi Carroll, which is living in hard times, you know, 100 % living in hard times. Those times were horrible for Heidi Carroll and for anybody in her situation. And was that a song you'd, we're talking about the Bob Dylan song, of course. Is that a song you'd performed before? I performed it live a few times with orchestra, with full orchestra. Because it does end on a very... It ends in a very, very bad note. No, but I don't mean the song itself, but it just ends the album on a strange...

1:12:06It does. Note. It does. And what's always interesting to me about that song is, you know, he took the melody from another folk song. I think an Irish folk song, probably. I can't remember what the name of it is, but you're right. Mary Hamilton. Right. but I think a lot of people in casually hearing that song thinks about think about something that happened long ago it actually happened in the 60s 1963 she was killed right but he makes it seem as though it's like something from old Baltimore exactly but no it's very recent right and I think that that I really thought long hard about if I wanted to put that song on the record at all or if I wanted it to just read these neat eight songs and I think of it almost as a coda to the album.

1:12:50It's almost like the album does, you know, psychically end after over the finish line. And then you kind of go into this sort of dreamscape of just one more thing, just one more thing. And that arrangement, I find it so compelling. My friend Gabriel Kahane did that orchestral arrangement and it's, it's very stark. It starts with, you know, just me singing the opening stanza after, of course, the Battle of the Republic and the orchestra comes in and it It turns into this kind of wild, there's like a Viennese waltz section that he puts in. And then, but it does end, you know, with now, you know, bury your face deep in the rag.

1:13:29Now is the time for your tears. It reminds me a little, I'm just thinking of this now, of the Faulkner book that has the bear. Go Down, Moses? One of the few Faulkner books I haven't read. Well, you should, because it ends, well, you know, it has the bear, which is that famous short story, which is indecipherable. but brilliant. But it ends with a very contemporary scene in an American, in a police station and a mother's there and her son's been arrested. It has that same kind of feeling. You should read it now. I will, I'll get it. It's on the broken record reading list. Great. I mean, I'm a huge Faulkner fan, but I guess like, you know, Absalom, Absalom, As I Lay Dying, Sound of Fury.

1:14:07Yeah. Well, try this one. Okay, I will. They're short stories, but they're connected. Great. And it's... Oh, I'm excited. I'll go to the bookstore on the way home. They're kind of brilliant. Do you want to play another song? Sure. Take us out. What do you want? You want elevators or do you want a new song? You should play whatever song you think is going to really move product. What would that be? I don't care about products. But now I kind of want to play elevators because I haven't played it in so long and it's like fun. All right. Okay. Okay, great.

1:14:39Looking out the window, it feels like I've been here before. The shady patch of green behind the big box store. Round another corner and past the swinging light In the back of a cutlass Sierra one night In America, America I was pulling out my hair trying to remember where I was In America, I swear I saw you Running for the back door

1:15:19I'll follow you like breadcrumbs down the county road Where the only thing that mattered was Latin and my lord At an Exxon station I stopped for a drink And I washed the memories down the dirty bathroom sink In America, America I was pulling out my hair trying to remember where I was In America, I swear I saw you Running for the back of the world

1:15:55Elevators, old songs And tea bottles so long After me at night, when I was young The ice melted on your tongue Elevator, broken glass Nothing less

1:16:23I finally figured out that everything was lost So I climbed in my wagon and I started across The wide open prairie and headed up to the lake Where is what's good here and what are we gonna make of America? America, I was pulling out my hair trying to remember where I was in America. I swear I saw you running for the back door.

1:17:04Running, running, running For the back door elevators Old songs empty but all so long After midnight when I was young The ice melted on my tongue Elevators, broken glass Nothing left

1:17:40Elevators

1:17:50Thanks so much to Ipho for coming by to talk about her project, All My Friends, and for performing some songs. And again, congratulations on the Grammy nominations. Best of luck to you. You can hear all of our favorite Ipho Donovan songs on a playlist at brokenrecordpodcast.com or in the episode description for this episode. And be sure to follow us on Instagram at The Broken Record Pod. You can follow us on Twitter at Broken Record. Broken Record is produced by Leah Rose with marketing help from Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer is Ben Tolanay. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries.

1:18:27If you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content and ad-free listening for$4.99 a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple Podcast subscriptions. And if you like this show, please remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast app. Our theme music is by Kenny Beats. I'm Justin Richmond.

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1:19:33Cards issued by JPMorgan Chase Bank and a member FDIC. Subject to credit approval, terms apply. You've probably heard me say this. Connection is one of the biggest keys to happiness. And one of my favorite ways to build that, scruffy hospitality. Inviting people over even when things aren't perfect. Because just being together, laughing, chatting, cooking, makes you feel good. That's why I love Bosch. Bosch fridges with VitaFresh technology keep ingredients fresher longer, so you're always ready to whip up a meal and share a special moment. Fresh foods show you care, and it shows the people you love that they matter.

1:20:11Learn more. Visit BoschHomeUS.com. I'm Glenn Washington, the host of KQED's Snap Judgment podcast, and at Snap, we don't just tell stories. We live them. Every week, a different journey, like on a plane with Rihanna, a racetrack in Tijuana, a year inside an Oakland homeless encampment. Real people, real voices with original music and cinematic sound. Snap Judgment from KQED. New episodes every Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.