Blue on Blue, the new album by renowned singer, writer and ukulele-player Sylvie Simmons might be her second release but it hasn’t put her in in cruise control by any means. As an accomplished music journalist who has written biographies on Serge Gainsbourg, Neil Young, Leonard Cohen, and had the privilege of documenting Johnny Cash’s last recording session (Johnny Cash: Unearthed). Simmons has played a vital in sharing legacy and story of rock and folk through its most accomplished creators. Now, why would she dare jump to the other side and become the artist?
“When Sylvie my debut, was released in 2014, to be honest, I was terrified what the critics would say. Because the first rule of rock journalism is to never cross over to the other side. I suppose it would be weird for anyone who’s done something that means a lot to them to put themselves out there with a target on their chest. But miraculously no-one said a bad word about it. All the reviews were great – though reading about myself and my music did feel very unreal. Not this time around though. After all the touring with the first album, my rock writer side and my musician side seem to have become pretty good at taking turns and butting out when the other one is busy,” recalls Simmons to Glide.
It was after touring around the world for more than a year behind I’m Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen (her 2012 book which now has over 25+ translations), singing his songs and accompanying herself on a ukulele, that Sylvie did the near-impossible and crossed over into writing and recording her own songs, with the encouragement and accompaniment of Howe Gelb of Giant Sand.
“Howe’s role and his musical instincts can’t be underestimated. A ukulele on its own, unless you’re Jake Shimabukuro, would find it hard to sustain a whole album on its own,” says Simmons about the Giant Sand visionary. “Howe somehow seems to be able to read my mind when it comes to arrangements. He also works – in Giant Sand and beyond – with excellent musicians, who played on my albums, and that didn’t hurt any.”
In 2017, when Simmons returned to Tucson to make what would be Blue on Blue, Gelb not all went according to plan. That first evening, after recording first takes of five of the songs, Simmons suffered a dreadful accident that left her with multiple broken bones, nerve damage, and an unusable left hand. Following a long and painful period of surgeries and rehabilitation, Simmons’ hand was still not what it was. Finding herself unable to play several of the songs she’d written for the album, Simmons wrote some new songs and recorded them in different studios in-between treatments and her writing work. Aside from Gelb, the other musicians featured includes Thoger Lund, Gabriel Sullivan and Brian Lopez from Tucson, plus Australian Matt Wilkinson and Jim White (Wrong-Eyed Jesus) from Athens, Georgia.
Yet her voice is one instrument, her lyrics another and the third is her trusty ukelele – an instrument that will never be confused for its searing solos or crushing riffs, but instead, an immediate intimacy not found with its electric guitar sibling as Simmons explains…
“I understand the misconceptions about the ukulele because I had them myself. Before I was given one, I thought it was a toy. As a toddler in London, there was a hugely popular singer/actor named George Formby who played the uke and sang songs with cheeky sexual innuendos. And then came Tiny Tim. But, when I got a ukulele, what I appreciated most was its modesty and intimacy. Despite its bouncy reputation, I found it perfect for reflective, even darker songs. I think I was able to write much more honest, authentic songs on my ukulele than I could on my guitar. Of course, there is still a prejudice among music critics against ukuleles. But for me, their only downside is you play a note on a uke and it disappears like a snowflake in a heatwave.”
Simmons’ book I’m Your Man The Life of Leonard Cohen serves as the definitive account of the acclaimed singer-songwriter’s life. Cohen’s mixture of touching such personal themes of pain, regret, sorrow serves him as a hugely influential artist who just in the past 15 years has received his long-overdue praise from a younger generation of artists.
“I have long held a really deep love for Cohen’s music. I first heard him on a cheap compilation album released in the UK in 1968, The Rock Machine Turns You On. I was a young kid, sitting in my bedroom in London with my portable, battery-powered record player with one speaker. He sang ‘Sisters of Mercy’ and something about his voice, its intimacy, its knowledge, mesmerized me. Still does,” says Simmons. “But as to his artistry, Leonard might work for 15 years on the same song, recording, deleting, rewriting. Only once have I had a song that I spent years on – ‘Carey’s Song’ , the first track on side two of my second album had been an instrumental since before my first record, since no words would ever come, however hard I tried. But they turned up just before my last day with Howe in the studio, and we recorded it together, the two of us, in one take.”
While Simmons won’t be able to tour in the immediate future, she hasn’t been too keen on live streaming routinely and indeed misses her live band. But she’s been hopeful about new releases and appreciates the strong music we’ve heard in 2020, particularly the sounds coming from the Americana side and counts the new Bob Dylan album Rough and Rowdy Ways and Neil Young’s new-old album Homegrown as two of her favorites.
“What the future holds for live shows I don’t know, but I hope it’s not going to just be Nick Cave playing a one-off, ticketed show in a beautiful old palace in London to watch online, however brilliant and beautiful it was. Though I’ve nothing to base it on but sheer optimism, I’m hoping there’ll be a vaccine by Christmas. Then maybe next year we’ll be back in those clubs, onstage or in the audience, feeling the music reverberate through us and yelling at the guy next to us who just spilled his beer on our foot,” explains Sylvie.
Glide is proud to premiere the video for Sylvie Simmons’ “The Things They Don’t Tell You About Girls” a sparking composition that radiates with the twee indie charm of Yo La Tengo and the whimsicality of Leslie Feist. The video made by Ryan Sarnowski revolves around the idea of the karaoke ball and gathering footage from old movies and cartoons of girls having fun, girls going wild, but on the darker side too.
“This is a song about love gone wrong. A song about a girl trying to explain to a guy what it’s like to be her. A sad song that came out sounding upbeat and celebratory. Songs do that sometimes; they have no respect for the people that write them,” says Simmons.
