Natalie Merchant - Sister Tilly

0:00You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishikesh Hirway. This episode is brought to you by Booking.com. I've been to a few national parks over the years, and it's always been a pretty magical experience. I've been to Yosemite and Joshua Tree here in California. Those are some of the closest ones to me. But I've been wondering about taking a trip to one that's maybe not so close. and last year I started looking at some lists ranking some of the most beautiful national parks and one that's come up on a few of the lists is Glacier National Park in Montana.

0:37Okay, that's the first part of the daydream sorted. The next is where am I going to stay? So I went on booking.com to look at some options and they have all kinds of different places to stay. I found a little cottage that looks incredible. It has a mountain view, it has a balcony, it has air conditioning, it has great reviews. I'm very excited about that idea. Or if I decide I want to bring my dogs with me, I can use the pet-friendly filter, and it turns out there are some really nice pet-friendly hotels on the site too. So go on, book that trip. It's easy. Booking.com. Booking.yah. Song Exploder is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.

1:15You're listening to this podcast, so I know you've got a curious mind. Here's a helpful fact that you might not know yet. Drivers who switch and save with Progressive save over$900 on average. Pop over to Progressive.com, answer some questions, and you'll get a quick quote with discounts that are easy to come by. In fact, 99 % of their auto customers earn at least one discount. Visit Progressive.com and see if you can enjoy a little cash back. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. National average 12-month savings of$946 by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2024 and May 2025.

1:52Potential savings will vary. When I heard the news about Dolly Parton's death a few weeks ago, and then a few days after that heard about Gloria Steinem's death, I thought about this song that Natalie Merchant wrote called Sister Tilly. It's about losing a generation of activist women who did so much in their lifetimes. So I wanted to go back and revisit that song and Natalie Merchant's beautiful story about what the song means to her. Also in the show notes, I'm including links to donate to Dolly Parton's Imagination Library, which mails free books to children, and to the Women's Media Center, a non-profit that Gloria Steinem co-founded.

2:29Okay, here's the Natalie Merchant episode, which originally came out in June 2023.

2:37Natalie Merchant is an award-winning singer and songwriter from upstate New York. She was the lead singer of the band 10 ,000 Maniacs until she left in 1993. And then, as a solo artist, she's put out nine albums over the last 30 years. Between 10 ,000 Maniacs and her solo work, she's had multiple multi-platinum records. In April 2023, Natalie put out her first album of new songs in nine years. It's called Keep Your Courage. And for this episode, she talked to me about the song Sister Tilly. It's a eulogy for a fictional character, a woman who represents the generation of women who influenced her, women who were activists in the 1960s and 70s when she was growing up.

3:21Oh, Miss Tilly, I think you should know Everyone's missing you here Your fortune-telling cards Prayer flags in the eye Your Rilke poems and your stacks of Mother Jones Your feminist raves in your tidying shades And your Zeppelin So loud My name is Natalie Merchant. About three years before I wrote Sister Tilly, I went to a funeral for a beloved librarian in my small town. The memorial was so large that we had to have it in a school auditorium. Her husband came up to me before the memorial because I was running the sound. And he said, when I give you the signal, play this song as loud as you can.

4:19And he gave me the signal, and it was Waterloo Sunset by The Kinks. It was her favorite song. And the entire group of people in the room started weeping and laughing, and everyone stood up, and I was one of the people laughing and crying at the same time. Millions of people, swallowing like fly sound, Waterloo Underground. fast forward three years in the middle of the pandemic lockdown i had a couple other friends of that same generation pass away and we weren't able to have any memorials one was sally grossman who was a local legend in upstate new york so between those two experiences of being at a memorial with a full room of people all celebrating this woman of that generation and then poor Sally passing away and no one could gather for her.

5:14I had them in mind and how I wanted to celebrate the lives of these women and so many others of my mother's generation.

5:30I was just sitting at my piano. I wasn't really writing with the aim of making an album. I hadn't done that in almost 10 years. and I came up with the chord progression that made Sister Tilly appear. Oh, Miss Tilly, I think you should know Everyone's missing you here I just said, oh, Miss Tilly. She just came out of my mouth, and that doesn't happen very often. Sometimes it's a blessing when you get a little message that says this is what your song is about, and sometimes it's a curse because then I was like, okay, I've created Sister Tilly, but I don't know who she is, where she lives. I just had to flesh her out.

6:15I really wanted to turn Sister Tilly into a composite character, an amalgam of many different women, because I'm not really just eulogizing her. I'm eulogizing the generation of women. And so I thought that it'd be better to take characteristics from several different women I knew. The women that influenced me at a young age introduced me to yoga, definitely all the books that I've read, films that I saw. The influences are just the air that we breathe. Crystals, chimes, and your moonflower vines Tinctures, teas, and your secret remedies Once I determined that she was a woman who was in her prime in the mid to late 60s, early 70s, I decided I would make some references to some of the music that was popular at the time.

7:17And so the cadence is very much influenced by Dylan. Your tinctures, your teas, your secret remedies in their voice, like Buffy St. Marie. And all the Sister Tillys are into tinctures, teas, and secret remedies. Just put this clove of garlic in your lower lip, Natalie, and you'll be great.

7:44My mother was not a Sister Tilly. My mother was a teenage bride who had four children by the time she was 23. She and my father were separated when I was eight, divorced when I was nine. and she went to work at the art department of the local college. And it was there that she found a group of people who inspired her to think more broadly. And there was a Swedish woman who came to teach for a year. She taught ceramics. She had really long braided hair and wore ponchos and Birkenstocks and didn't shave. And she would help me make pottery on the wheel. And I think she was my first sister, Tilly.

8:27I thought it was amazing that you could earn a living through your creativity. And I couldn't imagine a more successful outcome for life than to be an artist. With your hair in a mess, in your outdated dress, When Houston was all the rage, Back in your Chelsea girl days,

9:09We recorded up in a rural residential studio in Brattleboro, Vermont. I decided I would work with an arranger named Gabriel Kahane. I met Gabriel years ago when he was workshopping his musical. so I asked him if he would be interested in coloring my narrative. We started with a core band of drums, bass, piano, guitar. And that was Tilly's skeleton.

9:49And then the strings.

9:59And it was still the fifth wave of COVID, so we decided that we would keep it to five people in the studio at a time, which meant that these huge arrangements had to be layered. And Gabriel wrote this string part that sounds like it could be a Jimmy Page guitar solo. Your feminist raves in your Didion shades and your Zeppelin So loud, so proud

10:54I give a passing reference to Joan Didion's sunglasses. And the week I did the vocal, she passed away. And that's why I dedicated the album to her, to Joan Didion and all her sisters. And it just shows you just not a moment too soon. That's what I feel about this song. Every day we're losing more of these women. And there's so many aspects of our lives that we take for granted. The fact that I was able to have my daughter in a state-of-the-art birthing center. My mother had a fully, she was fully anesthetized when she had all four of her children and was handed some formula as she walked out the door.

11:41And it would have been considered, quote, perverse if she had suggested, maybe I'd like to breastfeed when I was born in 1963. But by 1979, completely acceptable to have an unmedicated birth. But those are things that the women of my mother's generation fought for. Here's to your days at the barricades. Here's to the girls in the fray.

12:19Alex Sopp came in with alto flute, and she put on five tracks at least. And then came the oboe.

12:33And then came the brass section.

12:48It's unusual in pop music to hear a lot of oboe and alto flute and flugelhorn these days, but it makes it a richer texture, richer fabric.

13:07I always make sure, even if it's just someone coming in to do a single instrument overdub, everyone had to understand what the song was about. And so the cello line in, but you're gone, is just an octave, but you're gone.

13:29I remember just telling Eleanor, the cellist, this is the moment when people realize that she's passed away. And she started crying. Her mother's a sister, Tilly. But you're gone

13:48You've gone so far away But you're gone, gone, you're gone so far away More with Natalie Merchant after this. Thanks so much to Wayfair for being a sponsor. Wayfair came up big for me the other day because one of my long-term dreams has been to replace all of the old-school light switches in my house with smart switches. It's one of those upgrades that I thought, okay, someday I'm going to tackle this. Well, I've gotten rugs and home decor accessories from Wayfair, but actually they have a huge variety of products. And one day I was browsing on the site and I remembered this idea. So I searched for smart light switches and they had exactly what I needed.

14:39And then they were delivered really quickly. And now I'm that much closer to making my house my dream home. So transform your space with pieces that hold up to real life. Join Wayfair Rewards today and get 5 % back on every purchase. Just head to Wayfair.com or shop the Wayfair app for all things home. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R dot com. Wayfair. Every style. Every home. Today's episode is sponsored by the ASPCA Pet Health Insurance Program. I just had an extremely stressful week last week dealing with my dog's health issues. The poor guy had to have a battery of tests to try and figure out what's going on with him.

15:20And let's be honest, vet bills can add up fast. ASPCA Pet Health Insurance has been around for almost 30 years and has covered over 1 million pets. To explore coverage, visit ASPCAPetInsurance.com slash SongExploder. That's ASPCAPetInsurance.com slash SongExploder. Again, that's ASPCAPetInsurance.com slash SongExploder. This is a paid advertisement. Insurance is underwritten by either Independence American Insurance Company or United States Fire Insurance Company and produced by PTZ Insurance Agency Limited. The ASPCA is not an insurer and is not engaged in the business of insurance. This episode is sponsored by Ethos, who make getting life insurance easy.

16:06When my wife and I first got married, we were trying to figure out how to plan for the future, especially financially. we were starting from scratch. But we got the very wise advice that the most important thing we could do was get life insurance, because it would be a safety net that provided more protection than any kind of savings we'd be able to accumulate in the short term. You can help protect your family by getting fast and easy life insurance coverage through Ethos, 100 % online. On their website, you can get a quote in seconds, apply in minutes, and get same-day coverage. There's no medical exam.

16:37All you have to do is answer a few simple health questions, and you can get up to $3 million in coverage, with some policies as low as$30 a month. Take 10 minutes and get covered today with life insurance through Ethos. Get your free quote at ethos.com slash song exploder. That's ethos.com slash song exploder. Application times may vary and rates may vary.

17:06There's several different movements to the song and I thought it would be great to describe her life with the more dreamy, ethereal approach, this 3-4 feel. And then when she's making her departure, she's got places to go. Oh, you've gone away You gonna wait I did the vocals for almost a full week. Sister Tilly, you're a constellation Sister Tilly, you're a white light vibration now We tried doing it as a gang vocal and it was a great amount of fun to have everyone standing around one microphone but it sounded god awful. It just sounded awful. So I decided that I would go in and sing all those vocals myself.

18:03Tears fall down like rain There's nothing but the big forever There's nothing but a sweet surrender now And then at the very end, it gets kind of mystical when I am ushering her off into the great beyond. Go on without us Don't think about us now That's another aspect of 60s music, the kind of Eastern influence and a kind of Ravi Shankar sitar kind of feel. And, you know, Sister Tilly spent some time in an ashram, of course. So I had to make some kind of reference to that. And who's playing that droning thanpura sound? And the bass player had, it's actually a tone generator that he uses to tune.

19:04And I said, that is great, we have to have that.

19:12I'm becoming a bit of a Sister Tilly myself, to be honest. And there's quite a bit of me in Sister Tilly. The Rilke poems and the stacks of Mother Jones, it's all, I'm a Sister Tilly in training.

19:29Not only was I raised by women of that generation who had Tilly-esque characteristics, I'm a child of the 60s and 70s, so I can't escape the influence of counterculture, because counterculture was my culture. And it is a concern of mine that the work of the Sister Tillys of this country has not been credited to them and has not been fortified and cherished and therefore will be lost. Take, for instance, bodily autonomy for women. That's a right that my mother's generation fought. I can't even talk about it. I can't because I see this image of thousands of women. Because this is my childhood, too.

20:22thousands of women marching in the streets of Washington. The momentum of those women and the power. They fought so hard and we didn't secure it and now we're losing it. And I worry about my daughter's generation.

20:42It's almost like Sister Tilly knocked on the door and I had to let her in. Not many songs come about like that. And now I'm getting to share her. People are seeing themselves in her and they're seeing their mothers and friends. And I think maybe it will fill people with more urgency to appreciate them. I'm being a real softy today. I was just about to start crying again.

21:14And now, here's Sister Tilly by Natalie Merchant in its entirety.

21:21Thank you.

21:53Oh, Miss Tilly, I think you should know Everyone's missing you here With your hair in a mess In your outdated dress When Houston was overage Back in your Chelsea girl days

22:22Oh, Miss Tilly, I think you should know Everyone's missing you here With your bright yellow walls and your pashmina shawls Crystals, chimes and your moonflower vines Tinctures, teas and your secret remedies And your voice like Buffy St. Marie Oh, I just can't believe That you're gone