Minnesota-born songwriter and vocalist Pamela McNeill is releasing her new EP Wave After Wave today via John Richardson’s (Badfinger, Gin Blossoms) Farm to Label Records via 12-inch vinyl, digital, and streaming. The album was recorded at Soul Train Studios in Nashville and produced by Richardson and Adam Ollendorff. McNeill has been a sought-after songwriter and vocalist throughout her career, working with artists as diverse as Yanni and Rick Astley, but has also released seven solo records and performs her own work live. The new EP draws on some of her previous songwriting for “reimagined” versions of her songs and also features songs that have never been released before.
Glide is excited to offer an exclusive premiere of the album (listen below).
In the studio, McNeill was joined by Tom Bukovac on guitars, bassist Rachel Loy, Billy Justineau on keyboards, Sarah Buxton on backing vocals, and co-Producers Ollendorff and Richardson on acoustic and electric guitar. During that time, McNeill found a new level of synergy that recreated more fully the energetic atmosphere of her live shows, and for that reason, she’s particularly proud of Wave After Wave. I spoke with Pamela McNeill about how significant one of the new tracks, “The Ocean” is in reflecting her current life, looking back on older work, and the ways in which hindsight can provide us with a positive outlook.
Hannah Means-Shannon: I know that you have been looking back through your catalog a little, as well as doing some new songwriting after your previous album. How did the mix of “reimagined” tracks and original songs on this EP come together?
Pamela McNeill: We were in the Neon Lightning mode, and we started talking about things. John Richardson, who’s the head of Farm to Label Records, is the drummer in my band, too. He said, “You know, you have so many great songs in your catalog. It would be fun to redo a few of them.” I said, “Go ahead and look through and cherry-pick what you want.” They picked a few, and I loved the ones they picked.
The rest of the EP was a couple of songs that I’d written that were some of my favorites, but I just hadn’t released them for whatever reason, mostly because they didn’t fit on an album. I knew that this time, they would. I also wrote a brand-new song called “The Ocean,” and that was really exciting for me. It was a real heart project. I’m really excited about the EP, and everyone who’s heard it seems to really find themselves in certain songs, which is cool.
I love the fact that all the same players were on this group of songs because it suggests new relationships between the songs and creates this total package. Sonically, they all fit together well.
I think so, too. With those people who played on the record, those sessions were so special and so great. A lot of times in Nashville, you go in, and they play it one or two times, and that’s it. They may do a great job. But this time, making this record, the care and thought that went into everything brought different areas of expertise together with mine and melded with the Producer’s vision. It was a thing of beauty. Actually, “The Ocean” was one take, and they just kept going. It was magical. That’s how the EP closes out. It was something to feel that and be in the middle of it. I’ll never forget that.
Did that experience with recording “The Ocean” feel more like your experiences performing live to you? I know live performance is really important to you.
Yes, it really was. When I wrote the song, I was in Florida, and I would walk up and down the beach, and I would see people standing there. You could tell that they were giving their emotions, pain, sorrow, or joy, and stood there to have their moment connecting with nature, or God, or something they needed. I really felt that way, too. I was walking up and down, too, and I felt like, “I need to write this song. I need to write a song that’s as big and epic as this moment.” In the studio, to have them understand it, and for us to just ride the waves together was one of those moments when the song became epic. It was very emotional and powerful.
I was thinking of the word “epic” when I was listening to that song. There’s so much to that song, but the emotion of your vocals and the power of your vocals express so much. It’s almost like Arena Rock! Though it’s more subtle than that. You go further as someone might live.
Thank you for saying that, because it’s never been easy to capture who I am live. I think that we really got it on that song. I’m a very dynamic singer. I might write songs that look “normal” on paper, but I really have a lot of emotion live. [Laughs] I wanted it to be like a Stevie Nicks song. I wanted it to be big and epic. When someone told me that this song reminded them of Stevie Nicks, I said, “Thank you!” I know what you mean by Arena Rock.
It’s the confidence you hear on vocals with Arena Rock. When people do vocals in an arena, they know that thousands of people are looking at that stage and want something big. You deliver on that.
Yes, it’s like, “I’m here to go all out!” That’s totally what it is.
And that’s the song that the EP title comes from as well, right?
Yes! “Wave after wave.”
Something that’s cool about the lyrics on this song, and many of your other songs, is that you physicalize or embody ideas in a concrete way. You say, “I took my heart down to the ocean.” As if it’s something you’re holding in your hand. Then, when you handle the ocean, it’s not just an idea, it’s a very real thing. The sound reflects that. We’re somewhere between the idea and the physically real.
I’m very affected by storms and water. You’ll find that in a lot of my songs. I don’t know why that is, maybe because I’m a Scorpio. I will think, “I need the water. I need to go stand on the edge of the water so that I can work this out.” I think that’s where I exhale.
Since you come from Minnesota, I wouldn’t have necessarily guessed that.
Well, Minnesota is the land of 10,000 lakes, and I grew up on the Mississippi River, too. I do write a lot about water. I’ve been to the ocean many times, but my husband and I got a place recently in Florida, right on Clearwater Beach, and that’s been a huge part of my life right now. It’s so healing and spiritual for me to be able to be there, and I wanted this album to reflect that. Even though this album also contains pieces of my past, this EP is also my future and my “now.”
Can you tell me more about the phrase from the song, “sacred memories”? I think that would mean different things to different people, but seems like a key idea in the song.
Sacred memories would be memories of moments that you can’t really talk about and maybe can’t explain to anyone. But it’s the times that something moved you and brought you internal, intense emotions or maybe made you see yourself in a different light. There could be times when you realized that you were this, or you were not this. Those are sacred moments that we don’t talk about except with maybe a best friend of two. That’s what it meant to me, though I like it when people interpret songs in their own way, too.
I got that kind of sense from the context that these are moments of realization or understanding about oneself. They happen when you are often by yourself, and they become integral to who we are going forward and can actually change us. And even if you do try to tell people about it, there’s no real way to convey what you’re talking about. But you can remember those times.
That’s right. For me, putting myself into the song, I had all these sacred memories stored up, and then I took them down to the ocean, and I let myself feel them. A lot of times, we have to compartmentalize in life, but this is your chance to take it to the ocean, to run down there and let yourself feel it. It’s a very powerful, healing space to be in, if you let yourself.
I think that is part of the attraction of the ocean and going for walks on the beach. It seems meditative for a lot of people. My grandfather, who was a poet, used to write that way.
It helps you work out things, whether it’s from yesterday, or this moment, or whether it was something from when you were a kid. I think we need that in our lives, whatever that place is for you, where you can go, and feel safe, and think or feel the things that you’ve kept inside or hidden.
I see a kind of link with the reimagined version of “Give Back My Love.” I almost feel like that song has to have existed for “The Ocean” to exist.
That’s a great way to say that. To me, “Give Back My Love” was, and is still is, about being on the road and traveling. You’re in your car, it’s raining, and that’s where I would work stuff out, too. I think we really nailed the feeling on this version. It feels like a driving song. There’s a lot of space and room for energy. They are good bookends, starting with “Give Back My Love” and ending with “The Ocean.” A lot of people have said that it feels like a summer album, and I think that it does. I think it has that feeling of driving to the ocean.
For me, “Give Back My Love” has these little peaks that get bigger and build-up and really power through to a realization. That’s the part that’s so important to the song, where the new idea begins, “Come back sweetness, come back faith.” With “Give Back My Love”, one of the surprising things is that something that’s sweet and kind is not usually perceived to be powerful. But here it is.
Right! That’s so true. My favorite poem when I was growing up was called “The Windflower.” It talks about a fragile flower being out in the wind, and the Windflower basically says, “The strong can be delicate, too.” I was always so affected by that. As a child when I was little, I thought, “Just because I’m small doesn’t mean that I can’t be strong.” I loved that. We expect something fragile to not be strong, but that’s not true, necessarily.
It’s part of the message of that song. The speaker recognizes that reflection on childhood, too, saying that they have no grown-up. They recognize their own strength.
Yes. The phrase, “Come back sweetness, come back faith,” is about facing a kind of death and trying to get back to who you are. When I wrote that song in 2000-2001, I was heartbroken, and then I had a chance to resolve things. Now, all these years later, the song feels like it has more sunshine in it for me. That’s the good thing about getting older is the wisdom that you gain. There are things you may not have understood for many years, but you can say, “Now I see.” That’s probably the most powerful thing you can do to solve that puzzle and put those pieces together.
What about “Needle and Vinyl”? What’s the origin of that song?
That’s one of my favorite songs that I’ve ever written. It was very personal to me and about the whole music business. The business itself is so hard when you’re in the middle of it, and people are telling you who you should be. I was always a very independent person. You have to be so tough. I get that, but I said, “I don’t want to be that person. I want to go back to who I was before, when it was just me in my room, putting my records on and rocking out!”
I wanted the message to be, for all my friends out there and anyone else who needs to hear it, “Just sing what you need to sing, do what you need to do. Forget about the rest of it. Just be true to who you are.” As trite as all that might sound, sometimes you have to go through all that stuff just to get back there. It’s okay to be who you are and share your message. That’s what this is all about. In music, people want something that feels real, and they want to feel it with you.
