New Orleans-based singer/songwriter Lynn Drury will be releasing her album, High Tide, in various formats on April 5th, 2024, via Nolamericana Music. It was Produced by Papa Mali (Ruthie Foster), and recorded mostly live over three days last year at Dockside Studio in Maurice, Louisiana by Justin Tocket. Drury prefers to record in a studio versus working at home, and planning towards these sessions galvanized her songwriting, even leading to a new song written during the recording period, the title track “High Tide.”
Working with Papa Mali was a particularly positive experience for Drury, someone who she’d known for some time and who felt an instinctual connection to her musical direction. Working at Dockside was also the fruition of many years of hearing about the beloved studio and she found it to be as welcoming and as calming as she’d hoped. I spoke with Lynn Drury about the period surrounding the recording of the album and, in particular, the unusual experiences she had writing the song “High Tide.”
Hannah Means-Shannon: How was it recording at Dockside for this album? I’ve seen the “Dockside Sessions” video and it’s a great way of introducing the album and the space. It captures you at a time when you haven’t heard the album yet!
Lynn Drury: We had three full days and I gave it everything I had. I knew that we only had three days of everybody in the studio. But right after that time, I completely lost my voice! And that’s never happened to me. It was odd. It was a super-emotional time, though. Sometimes I need something like that to force me to perform. I need a deadline! I was always a crammer on exams. When I have that goal and set that studio date, that’s when I’m inspired to finish things up and write new things. I wrote a whole new song while I was there, too, and that became the title of the record.
No way! That’s neat.
“High Tide” was a song that I wrote the first night after recording, stayed up until about two in the morning finishing that, and then woke up the next day and recorded. That’s never happened to me. I’ve always wanted the luxury of recording at my house, but I’m not very technical. I loved that, that I could write the song, and then record it immediately. Usually, it’s a year between writing and recording for me, but I think there’s something special about it. You get that nugget of inspiration, and you don’t play it yet. You just record. That was beautiful.
It’s exciting but it’s also brave and different to do that. A lot of people feel reassured when they’ve been able to play songs for a while and make changes. It’s brave to just follow inspiration in that way and keeping that mood, that dream of the song.
A funny aside is that when I wrote the chorus, I went ahead and did that, and we recorded it as “high times.” The following day, we did a couple of vocal overdubs and I thought, “I missed a golden opportunity to tie the water in here!” Who’s to say, if I had only had one day, it might have stayed “high times.” It was cool to be able to go in and change that. That’s when self-editing actually works! [Laughs] Sometimes it doesn’t.
There are a lot of stories about lyrics being really close to their final version, having a similar sound, but the lyrics not becoming clear until the last minute. That comes from working with fill-in-lyrics a lot. Do you do that too?
Oh, yes! Placeholder lyrics. You think, “I’m just going to use these placeholder lyrics and then I’ll change them in the studio.” With the “Live My Life” single that came out in October, those were total placeholder lyrics that went to recording. My songwriting partner, who played drums for me for 20 years, Chris Pylant, said, “Actually I kind of love those lines.” So I thought I’d keep them. My bassist said, “And now you can never do it again!”
This is when, in “Live My Life”, you sing, “I don’t have any words that go right here?” [Laughs] That brings some humor. It also goes on to say that there are no more words to express this thing. You have to rely on the music sometimes. That’s quite a long song, with lots of instrumental sections, and that’s part of it all.
Yes, we were concerned about some of the dynamics of it, but I got really excited that Doug Belote was going to be on drums, so I sent him a recording via my iPhone, and he said, “I can’t wait to play that!” That was one of the last recordings that we did and it’s unlike anything I usually do. But I get inspiration from everywhere and it just kind of came.
But that’s totally recorded live! You hear the guitar when I’m kind of thinking, “Where am I going?” I was with the band, but I was in an isolation booth, and then Papa Mali, I could hear and feel it, took the solo a beat past where he thought I was going to sing. He thought I was going to sing, but then he caught it, so eloquently and perfectly. It gives me goosebumps to think about it, that energy that we had there. It was so real. That transfers to the music, I think. We overdubbed the “woo-hoos”.
There are some little textural electronic elements in that song that I thought were really cool.
That’s all Papa Mali. He had these ideas, and he brought his Omnichord. He got it to sound like a computer. That was a really great addition.
By the way, you play a lot in and around New Orleans, right?
I do! I play Wednesdays at MRB, a little oyster bar and local hangout. I started doing that during the pandemic, calling it “Lynnsdays”. I have a few shows during Jazz Fest and French Quarter Fest, hopefully when all the music lovers are in town.
I heard that your launch show is at a venue that I’ve heard of before, The Maple Leaf. I know it’s a place that locals like to go. Do you have a history there?
In the last few years, yes. It’s one of those really local places, where, when you go there, you think, “Okay, this is why I fell in love with New Orleans.” They do national acts and it’s a great room to play in. I would love to play there more. When I go there, with the vibe and the hang, I think, “This is old-school New Orleans.”
You have had a long relationship with Papa Mali, haven’t you? You’ve known him for a while.
He moved back to New Orleans 10 or 12 years ago, I think, and one of my best friends plays bass with him. I’d be hanging around, but it was only a few years ago that he and I were at Maple Leaf and started talking about working together. Maple Leaf is where it all started! He said, “You know, I think I get you. I know I can play guitar for you.” That started us hanging out a few times. Then he said, “I want to Produce your record!” We had such a good rapport from the get-go and I’ve never had that ease of the relationship. The ease comes with saying, “This is what I think should happen, but I defer to you.” He left that open to me, which not all Producers do.
This was all done live, and we talked about it. It was much easier for me. I can be difficult because I want certain things, and sometimes I don’t know how to say it.
This is a big issue, coming up with language that everyone understands in the studio. That’s why it’s amazing to find that language with a Producer.
Yes, exactly. I’ve had experiences that were difficult, even with amazing musicians and Producers. I tend to blurt things out. I think me and Papa Mali figured it out and would work together again.
I mentioned the “Dockside Sessions” video because it seems like such a cool place to record, a very calm place to be working. Several people have told me that.
Basically, you walk through this canopy of oak trees every morning just to get to the studio. While we were there, there was this lightning storm. It was a gorgeous place, and you could feel the calm. I had been hearing about it for 20 years.
To circle back to the song, “High Tide”, I had wanted to ask you about the song because it has that watery, drifting feeling and it is a different vibe to the other songs on the album in its own way. It has a feeling of acceptance.
What happened is that I went to the pool house after recording on the first day, when we’d been setting up, and recording two or three songs. The studio is a barn, and above it, there are all of these rooms, with a kitchen and five bedrooms down a hallway. The very back one is the room of Bobby Charles’. The story goes that some of the musicians won’t stay there because it’s haunted.
I heard about the ghosts at Dockside!
Yes! Me and Doug stayed in the poolhouse. I walked right in there and the song started coming to me, with the words “on the water, on the water”, with a melody. Then I sat down and started writing it when I was looking at the Vermillion River outside. I couldn’t get through writing it, I was just crying. Every line made me cry. I didn’t know who it was about, whether it was me, or some other energy that came to me, but it was a calming thing. I was really happy that it came out. The drums and the bass were added the next day, and they came up with this soulful groove.
I’m ashamed to say that I can’t play the guitar the way they were playing, and sing it at the same time. I had to go afterward and pick a rhythm that would work. But that rhythm went with my vocal. The way it came out, though I’m really happy with it.
I really like the song “Blue”, too. It’s very mysterious. It doesn’t tell you the narrative, you have to make up your own story.
I love that! That’s what I’ve always wanted. I want people to make up their own stories. I’ve always tried to write songs in an image-based way. I want to show you the picture and let you make up your mind. That’s sort of a song about my life. A lot of people love that song. Not everybody loves “Blue”, but some people really, really love it. Some people really love “Love Bomb”. Everybody’s got their own favorite, which is cool.
Those are almost written in two different styles of songwriting and depending on how people see the world, they might connect with one song more closely or the other. “Blue” makes you write the story, whereas “Love Bomb” lays it all out, line by line, and is super-honest.
