Guitarist and songwriter Karen Haglof has released her fourth full-length solo album, One Hand Up, which was Produced by Haglof and Mario Viele, and recorded at Cowboy Technical Services and Excello Studios in Brooklyn. While Viele mixed most of the songs, three were also mixed at the Fidelitorium in Kernersville, NC by Mitch Easter. The packed collection, featuring 14 songs, not only ranges widely in genre but ranges widely in combining those elements within songs, taking you for a wild sonic ride.
Haglof, who has been a guitarist and performer since the 80s, but then took a more than 20-year detour through working in medicine, has also recently renewed her interest in visual art, and has been personally creating hand-drawn 2D animation, motion graphics and video clips that you’ll see coming up to enhance the world of each song. For Haglof, there often is a strong visual element in her compositions, even if they might be surreal in nature, and working in multi-media is helping her bring a more complete artistic vision to life. I spoke with Haglof about her perspective over time in music, her return to making music via solo work, and why making multi-genre music has always been natural to her.
Hannah Means-Shannon: I heard that you’re working on animation videos and I wondered if you think there’s something of a visual component to your music, generally?
Karen Haglof: I definitely feel like for a lot of what I write, I’m seeing the narrative as I’m writing. Or I’ll get a song back and feel like, “I know what this looks like.” Whether it’s a surreal narrative, like a couple of the songs on the album are, or whether they are more straightforward. “Girl Vs Guitar” is clearly an animation, and that’s ready to be animated. It’s probably the most straightforward cartoon-based visual of anything. That came to life in my mind as this whole story of what’s going to happen to this girl who’s playing guitar in the meadow, then winds up in a kind of dream state and is awakened from it. It’s a lot of work to make animation!
Even a few seconds of animation is a lot of images!
It’s a lot of images. You think, “This song is four minutes?? Oh no!” [Laughs]
Do you feel like doing the illustrations is another way of engaging with that music? Does that make it a fuller experience for you to create that world of the song?
I think it is. It wasn’t at the beginning, probably because some of the songs on this album were from 2019, but the later stuff has a stronger connection to the visual side, thinking about what would look good and sound good at the same time. It’s developed into its own world, and I can’t wait to get the visual side out there because I think it will lead to a fuller experience for audiences.
Sometimes artists avoid visuals because they don’t want to limit the interpretation of the audience. Is that a consideration for you?
Some songs don’t really lend themselves to animation, but for others I do think it will add to the experience. I know what you mean, though. I’ve had experiences where I’ve listened to a song, then I’ve gone to YouTube and looked at the video and been disappointed. I’d rather ignore that video because it doesn’t add to what I was picturing for the song!
It’s also been about ten years since your first big solo album, so I feel like I should congratulate you on that anniversary.
Yes, it’s been about ten years. After working in restaurants, I did a hard left and went off to medical school. Then, while I was working in medicine for about 25 years, I saw a movie called It Might Get Loud with Jimmy Page, and Jack White, and The Edge. They are all talking about their experiences. When I saw that, it hit home, “Wow, I’m a guitar player! Why am I not playing guitar?” That led to me picking up the guitar again, which led to the first record coming out around 2014. There was a little lead time for that.
At that time, I was thinking, “I would like to pick up some things that I enjoy doing.” For a lot of people who go into medicine, that’s something that they’ve wanted to do since childhood, but I had a different pathway to it, through music and working outside of medicine. I think it was a good choice, but at the same time, there are other things I’d like to do in life as well. Then the music came back, and I moved forward from there.
Everyone’s story with music seems to be different. There’s not just one way to do it.
No, there’s not.
Most of the time, there’s a lot of weaving in and out. You have those needs for survival and connecting to a community, and there are different ways to do that.
I would agree. It’s been great since I’ve been back, and going to the studio, and seeing some of my friends who I’ve known since the 80s and 90s and I had lost touch with because I was busy being a doctor all the time. It’s nice to have longevity in something, but I have this gap in music. It’s nice to see these people who I know who have kept going, but things have moved forward, too.
When you came back to music, did you go back to helping with their projects, too, or did you just pursue solo work?
I have helped people with their projects, but just if it’s a little thing here or there. Mostly, it’s just been my own project here, with the help of people who I’ve worked with for the past ten years now. The ecosystem kind of fell apart around 2020, but it’s settled back down a little in terms of people and places I’m able to work with.
You were so active getting music out there before 2020, I think in retrospect that was a great idea! You made a lot of music before the world shut down.
I thought, “What am I waiting for? Maybe the people who want it will find it.” And I think they do. There’s so much vastness in music out there, it’s like the ocean, and you put out your project, hoping it will resonate with a few people. There’s a satisfying feeling, though, to be able to create a project, and put it out there, and be proud of what you did.
But this music here would have come out a couple of years ago if it hadn’t been for the world intervening. But things happen when they happen.
My feeling is that even though you’ve had time away from music and come back, the time and experience that you gained in music previously is still really valuable now. Your perspective is valuable. You have a vantage point, and especially as a guitarist. It’s rarer that I hear from female guitarists.
That’s true. When I stopped playing music in about 1999, between then and 2012, when I started to think about putting music out, there had been a sea-change. It took a while to gain a vantage point, actually. It was all different and I had to learn how people were doing things. In some ways, things were more accessible, in terms of getting studio time, and putting things out there through SoundCloud or Spotify. In a lot of ways, that’s easier to do now, though in other ways it’s harder to make a large impression. That’s not why I’m doing it anyway.
The independent route was opened.
Yes, the indie route. There’s some freedom in that, for sure. I’m just doing this because I want to do it.
Do you find that your sound has changed over time? This album is quite a combination of influences.
I’ve never found it easy to categorize what kind of musician I am. I’m indie, that’s for sure. I like minimalist, but I’m not really minimalist. I like cowboy songs, and I like Country, and I like Disco, and I like Pop. You can probably get those feelings out of these songs here and there, but it’s not that easy to say, “I sound like such-and-such artist.”
You’re not alone in that. I think it’s becoming more common. There’s a hybrid-genre climate growing through internet access.
I think so. When I grew up, you’d buy the album, and listen to the album, side A and side B, in track order. But that doesn’t really happen so much anymore, I don’t think. It’s a smorgasbord now that people pick from. They pick one song from one artist, then a song they’ve heard in a movie. I’ve got playlists with soundtracks, Hard Rock, the ending theme song from the film Paprika. None of it goes together, but it’s all awesome and great! I would think that most people do that now.
Yes, just because it’s hard to describe, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it!
[Laughs] Absolutely not!
I wanted to ask you about recording with Cowboy Technical Services. Do you usually record there?
Yes, when I started working with Steve Almaas back in 2010 and 2013, I got to know Eric Ambel, who’s one of the co-owners of the place. He has a long history in the music biz, but has been a friend of Steve’s forever. It’s a very comfortable, nice place to record, they’ve always done a great job, and I feel like it’s a second home. My Marshall amplifier is living there right now! Mario Viele, the co-Producer, has been my engineer all along. They had to move to a studio upstairs because there was some work being done on the floor they were on, but we’re back in the Cowboy Technical now!
That’s great. I was wondering about that, because I know from speaking to Eric before that he’s very open to mixing genres. It sounds like that’s the right environment for you.
Yes, whatever works, or whatever you think might work, why not? A good visual comparison is the animation called Mind Game. It’s an anime from around 2004. When you think about anime movies, you think of Miyazaki, but Mind Game is completely different in that the style varies all the way through the feature. They use some actual footage, too, and it’s a really trippy experience. It’s from Studio 4C. I like the idea of mixing different influences, aspects, and genres. Visually, that’s my sensibility right there.
How seriously should we take the fact that the album is called One Hand Up? Is the feeling of the song “One Hand Up” important to the album as a whole?
The song itself is kind of like, “Okay, this is what I do. I take a standard song, and add a cowgirl loop where my niece is riding a mechanical bull and won’t put one hand up.” She’s got both hands down and won’t put one hand up even though we’re telling her to. So, I don’t think I’d be too literal about it, but the song does say, “Let’s let it all out! Let’s not hang on so tight! Let it go!” It seemed like a really appropriate metaphor for the way the tracks were going.
That’s kind of like a preamble that prepares the audience for being brave.
That’s right. We’re going on a wild ride. The song has got some free sax at the end, and there are background vocals by great people, and it’s a little bit of a selection of the things that go through my mind. We start with one tempo, then we double time it, then we break it down and turn it into a Jazz thing. We do it all within one song that’s also kind of a cowboy song. Why wouldn’t that work? [Laughs]
There’s a little bit of a thematic thing there that made me think of the ups and downs of the last few years, and it also works as a metaphor for making music. You never know what’s going to happen. You want to be brave, but you’re being cautious, as you say in the song, too, because you don’t know what’s coming next.
It does work, you’re right! You’re being brave but cautious all the same. You don’t know what’s coming down the pipe that’s either a disaster or a happy accident. That’s a lot of life, right there.
