It’s no surprise that personal tragedy is one of the main motivating forces behind the singer-songwriter genre, because the chance to explore hardship through unadulterated rawness and vulnerability is often just the coping mechanism needed to deal with such strife. But, what artists do for us is create worlds in which these explorations take on a wide variety of meaning, and in which we can project ourselves and hopefully process our own troubles as well.
Martha Wainwright is no exception, but there’s something about taking difficult experiences and weaving beautiful art out of them, and that’s what she does on her new album Come Home To Mama. After a very difficult labor and birth of her son Arcangelo, who then spent the first few weeks of his life attached to an incubator for sustenance, Martha lost her mother, the renowned Canadian folk singer Kate McGarrigle to aggressive sarcoma- a rare soft tissue cancer. Obviously shaken from these experiences, Wainwright poured her trauma into the songs, which she then took to Yuka Honda, a fantastic Japanese musician based in New York who then produced the record.
What resulted: ten exquisite songs that are surprisingly upbeat, but still carrying the burden of melancholy and heartbreak. It’s a true return to form for Wainwright, and proves that not only does she have a place in contemporary music, but she deserves one. Glide Magazine recently spoke with her about this new album, what it was like working with a 3 year-old and her love for LCD Soundsystem.
It’s been four years since the last studio record (2008’s I Know You’re Married But I Have Feelings Too). Are you excited to be back at it again with this new one?
Yes–I’m very excited. I was thinking about it for a long time, you know. I knew I wanted to make a record, but knew I had to get ten solid songs that were all good enough to be on an album, and I also wanted to take the time to make it right.
I took a while to write the songs, and I demoed them all in order to try and find a record deal, but then I really handed it over to Yuka [Honda, the producer] on the artist level. Of course, we would make decisions together about, you know, what to do, but she really sailed the ship and I could go and track a little bit and then she would have me leave, and I felt like I was playing hooky! I would go to lunch, a movie or something because I had gotten a babysitter. And then I would come back the next day and she would have already put down some amazing sounds and some cool programming, or Nels [Cline], her husband, would have played like 20 guitar tracks that were fantastic, so it really made it easy for me.
So what was your writing process like? Are you writing all the time, or do you really consciously have to separate yourself from the world to sit down and write?
I have really etch out the time, to sit down and do it because I’m not someone who is always playing the guitar. I don’t see everything as a song, you know, which is probably because I’m not that intelligent in that I write songs that sort of are about how I feel all the time. Sometimes I write some sort of weirder thing, but mostly they’re how I feel, so it’s not that clever in terms of drawing a picture of a simple scene that is outside of my life.
I do get bogged down with a lot of other things, though. I’m not an artist who only is centered on their work. I’m always cooking, cleaning, paying bills, making phone calls and going to the park with my son and performing errands for family members and myself, and then I start to get nervous, and I wonder why I’m nervous, and then I go, “Oh my god, wait a minute! I have something I have to do,” which is to go upstairs, pick up the guitar, and try and work.
For a long time after my mother died, every time I picked up the guitar I would fall apart into a puddle. Also, I had a very small, young baby, and that was taking up all of my time– and I was very happy for that. But I really knew that I wanted to make a record soon, after my son was born just because I know that for women who have children and who are artists, sometimes it can really stall record-making (for obvious reasons), and so once I saw that the baby was strong enough and also I had my husband to help me a great deal, I hired a babysitter to come in for a few hours every day for a few days a week, and I would go upstairs and I would be the person I used to be. You know, I would smoke a cigarette or something, or have a beer…you know what I mean, be in my little studio and be the kid I was, you know – with the context of everything having changed completely, of course.
Your mother must have gone through that process, as well, in terms of holding on to who she was artistically but also being open and available as a mother. Did you reach out to her for advice on how to make sure your career didn’t stall? Is that something you were very aware of while going into pregnancy?
Hmmm, you know I was aware that it could stall, and I knew that going into it, but I think the case with my mom was a bit different. She made her first record right afar I was born, and so that was kind of a good example– I knew it could be done. That said, while she and her sister only made a couple records, when their children were toddlers they stopped for years to be with their kids. Also, lots of other people sang their songs that were more famous, like Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt, so that created an income. But I’m not really in that position, because I write songs with swear words in them and that aren’t as perfectly crafted, I would say. And so I am in a position where I have to work.
Of course, if my son Arcangelo had had any physical disabilities, everything would be different. I would not be able to go out on the road and make a record because I’d need to be focused on the most important thing. But, because I can go out and work, and with the fact that I honestly don’t have many other work skills beyond being a musician, this was really a time that I could not afford to lose, in terms of trying to make the best record I have made so far and trying to make a quick basis of a more viable career, you know?
Also, I think my mom was always worried about me – when she was alive – because, you know, I was kind of a fuck-up, and my career has been sort of good in some places but then really not strong, like in the U.S. and other places, and sort of like, creeping along in a weird way. And I think she was really…you know, I wanted her to feel like it’s moving in the right and in a better direction.
This album definitely feels to me like a return to form, if you will. It has the distinctive sort of Martha sound that I think a lot of people fell in love with at first, but I think with the sounds that Yuka brought to it, this sort of really kind of experimental sound, it also expands outwards and still shakes things up a bit. I heard you play "Four Black Sheep" solo back in 2010, but on the record there’s all these electronic flourishes and pretty daring production. Do you hear those embellishments when you write, or was that something that Yuka contributed?
Well, I trusted her taste, and I mean it’s also interesting that you mentioned that song, because that song was actually produced by – although Yuka finished it – the initial production was by Anna McGarrigle, my aunt. And so all the – not so much the programmed drums and the live drums – but all of the keyboards are Anna. And Anna always loved keyboards. You know, Kate and Anna, in that time that they were at home with their kids, they had a studio in the basement and they had their ‘80s sound, which was the Juno-60, and they made all of this crazy, fun synthesizer music. Anna loves the synthesizer and the arpeggiators, so that was really her kind of thing of “don’t play the guitar, let’s make it like a pop thing,” but a kind of weird pop.
Because of playing an acoustic guitar and writing songs and being really just a singer/songwriter that’s steeped in a folk tradition, it’s very hard to get away from that. Oftentimes what happens is when you start to add instrumentation onto songs, it can be sort of Americana or Alt-country, or you know, it kind of goes into that direction, which is not really necessarily what I listen to (laughs). It’s not really what I like, necessarily: singer/songwriter records with shit on. It is sometimes what I do like when it’s something like, you know, Warren Zevon or Nick Lowe, or whatever, I think that really works well. But I have a sort of secret love for music that I don’t do, which is, you know, kind of ‘80s pop, or something that’s a little bit more kind of fun and upbeat.
Are there any contemporary bands that you have been drawn to as well?
You know, I really was enjoying listening to LCD Soundsystem. I asked James Murphy to produce Come Home To Mama, but he didn’t want to (laughs). So I knew that I wanted a keyboard sound on some of these songs, and then – I don’t know if it was because my mother died or what happened – I was stuck on working with a woman. I was meeting with these male producers, because they’re always good, and they had like, horn-rim glasses and bowling shirts, and I knew that they were going to do something that was more, sort of, standard and I was really afraid of that. It was actually Brad, my husband’s idea – he produced my previous records for the most part, and it was actually his idea to work with Yuka, because I knew that she could do something different.
It is something that is sort of upsettingly vacant– the amount of female producers that there are working. I was really excited when I saw that you were working with Yuka, because I’ve loved her stuff for a long time, and it makes a lot of sense being in New York. You mentioned that Anna really brought out the instrumentation of "Four Black Sheep," which is a pretty dark song, so I’m wondering if writing upbeat songs are something that comes naturally for you, or if it’s something that you have to structure, like sitting down and saying "let’s put the BPM higher than the usual mid-tempo." The songs on Come Home To Mama– did they start out as ballads and transform into upbeat songs?
They started off – and they’ll be released on the digipak and on iTunes, there will be four of them that are just voice and guitar, so as they were written, which will be helpful to hear where they came from. Sometimes I write slower songs, you know, which are sadder ballad songs, but I have a tendency to be very, kind of, on edge and high-strung and nervous. And depending on what I’m writing about, I can totally bash on the voice and guitar pretty quickly! So the tempos were pretty much set the way they were going to be. It’s not all one way, no. Because the songs are quite different, one from the other, too. But yes, I like to play and tap my foot and drive the downstairs neighbor crazy.
What was the hardest song to write on this record? What took you the longest?
Well, for me, the songs that are hard are often the ones that are not as obvious to the listener. Sometimes, though, I don’t want everything to be so transparent and autobiographical because I find it becomes boring. So then I try and write things that are more esoteric or something, like “Leave Behind” or “Radio Star” – those are songs that are not exactly clear so much in their meaning. For those two, they’re both sort of about the end of the world and the apocalypse, so there was the level of identifying a meaning in those songs while also giving them the science fiction/surrealist mystery. That said, I wanted to have some concreteness, so it’s kind of finding the meaning in what it is…why am I saying these weird things? You know, why am I pretending I’m on a starship enterprise heading toward planet earth, and it’s the end of the world, and like…how do I go with that because that’s what I want to say, and then make it clear – at least clear to myself, not necessarily clear to the listener – as to why I would be doing that. I don’t know what that’s about…
It’d be remiss if we didn’t spend a little bit of time talking about “Proserpina.” It feels like quite the decisive move to record your mother’s last song that she wrote before she died. How did you come to that decision?
Initially, I recorded the basic vocal, piano and choir parts, but not the screaming. I recorded that just a few months after Kate died in Montreal. Christy Turlington had asked me to come up with some music for a film that she was making about women and children who die in child labor around the world, and trying to create some awareness about the dangers of not having proper healthcare for people in death and birth. The movie’s called "No Woman, No Cry," and the only thing I could come up with was that this song is, to me, the perfect song.
So I recorded it. It never got placed in the film, I think because it was just too intense, but I sort of sang it and did it in a daze, and it was still at a point where I’m singing it very much as she sang it, because it’s not the kind of song that you want to reinterpret, you know, it’s sort of such a perfect song. You just want to try and do it as she did it.
And then it was still at a point where, you know, as I was singing it and closing my eyes, I sort of hoped that maybe when I’d open them, she would be in the room. That kind of feeling at the beginning, like, maybe this hasn’t really happened. And so then I sort of put that aside. I don’t want to say I forgot about it, but then I moved into doing other things, and we actually went on the road to do Edith Piaf, and then I started the record, and near the end of making Come Home To Mama, we needed another song, and I knew I wanted to cover something of my mother’s but I didn’t know what, because others songs of hers, like “Tell My Sister” were kind of too jazzy for this album, and then I remembered that I had done “Proserpina” and that it could be just the thing.
"Proserpina" is very different sounding, though, because it was just piano for a while, with the choir, and so I added some of those screaming things to try and sort of incorporate it into the rest of the album. As we were mixing, it because obvious that it was the best and most important song– the centerpiece or crux of the album, you know? So in many ways this song presented itself to me, almost like I wasn’t paying attention.
Obviously that song was a great gift– my mother’s last gift to the world, and unto my brother and I, and it just presented itself again as another gift for me on this album because it’s sort of like the most perfect song, and it’s sort of like her giving me this one other thing to just sort of put some more wind in my sails in some way. And that’s how it feels, you know?
Absolutely. I can imagine there must have been so much emotion wrapped up in the recording and mixing. The music video is equally moving. It seems like it was shot in one take, no?
Yeah, it was.
Was that something you pitched to the video director?
No, Matthu Placek, the director, is a friend of mine, and he does these things in one take– that’s what he likes to do. He’s more of a photographer, but he started making videos and he wanted to do it in one take. I came up with the idea of the seasons. Originally, I had wanted a bird hat sits on my shoulder and sings into my ear, but we were like, "that’s going to be really expensive!" (laughs) so we went with water being poured over a glass! We did what we could.
Nothing in the video was done after the filming or in special effects. We were doing it literally, so there’s little people holding leaves and changing the color of the lens slowly and all that kind of stuff. But it was great, it was fun to do, and we got it. It was kind of painless. I think we did it, maybe, ten times and we got it the tenth time. It wasn’t terrible.
We’re nearing the end of our time together, and since you mentioned earlier liking LCD Soundsystem, I’d love to know if someone were to go to the record store with you right now, what do you think you might pick up? Do you listen to a lot of new music?
I don’t listen to a lot of music, to be honest. I wish I listened to more. II don’t have much time to consume the arts, only because I always spend a lot of time with Arcangelo. I usually just like to peruse and see if something pops up. I think the last time I was in a record store I picked up some Hüsker Dü because I was curious about it because I like Bob Mould. I think I picked up some…what is it called…not Incubus…that’s crazy…no I picked up some…what is the word that starts with a C and it has Yuka who drums…Cornelius, right? Yeah, because Yuka drums on the record and I know she drums in that band, so I was curious about that. And then, someone had told me to listen to Jonathan Wilson, because I thought – and he certainly does – have a beautiful voice. Oh, and then I heard something recently which I really liked (I mean the guy is from forever ago) but it’s beautiful guitar music from Mexico, but it’s Guty Cárdenas. So, I probably would mix and match a lot of things.
Keeping up with new music can be tough, too. Sometimes you just want to turn it all off and listen to what you know.
Yeah, but then other times I get really bored with what I have, so I like to listen to the radio to hear new things. So I’ll put on WFMU or WFUV or you know, just wait until something sort of pops out and then I try and write down the name. My friend and I, we went to a very popular band recently who were pretty good: Gang Gang Dance – so they’re super popular, sort of like a fun performance band. And that was great because we were with the beautiful people in Williamsburg…but we had our shit together, we were fine. We fit in.
It’s funny, though, because it can be tough to try and keep up. I mean, I can’t even find time to Facebook, which I know my manager and my husband are always haranguing me about, saying: “your online presence sucks!” I don’t know how to get the likes, I don’t know how to do it! But anyways I’m working on it. I’ll find a way.
Martha Wainwright is currently on tour, supporting her latest album Come Home To Mama. You can find more about the tour via her official website, as well as on Facebook and Twitter.
