September 3, 2024 • 54 mins
Madeleine Peyroux is a jazz-inspired singer songwriter who got her start singing in street bands in Paris as a teenager. In 1996, Atlantic Records released Madeline’s debut album where she covered tunes from the ‘30s and ‘40s by artists like Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday—and then later she recorded songs by Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen.
This year Madeleine Peyroux released Let’s Walk, her first album of all-original songs co-written with her long-time touring guitar player, Jon Herington.
On today’s episode Bruce Headlam talks to Madeleine and Jon Herington about their creative process throughout the pandemic and they play a couple songs from their new album. Madeleine also remembers her early days busking with a bohemian ex-pat named Dan William Fitzgerald who became her musical mentor. And she explains how Dr. Cornel West became her guiding light during a recent bout of personal despair.
You can hear a playlist of some of our favorite Madeleine Peyroux songs HERE.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Madeleine Peyroux is a jazz inspired singer songwriter who got
her start singing in street bands in Paris as a teenager.
In nineteen ninety six, Atlantic Records released Madeline's debut album,
where she covered tunes from the thirties and forties by
artists like Bessie Smith and Billie Holliday, and the later
she recorded songs by Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. This year,
(00:40):
Madeleine Peyroux released Let's Walk, her first album of all
original songs, co written with her longtime touring guitar player
John Harrington. On today's episode, Madeleine and John play through
some songs for the new album, and Bruce Headlin talks
with them about their mutual creative process. Madeleine also remembers
her early days busking with a Bohemian ex pat named
Dan William Fitzgerald who became her musical mentor, and she
(01:04):
explains how doctor Cornell West became her guiding light during
a recent bout of personal despair. This is broken record
liner notes for the Digital Age.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
I'm justin Richmond. Here's Bruce Hedlm's conversation with Madeline Peru
and John Harrington. You've got this new album, Let's Walk,
which is very exciting. It's been what six seven years
I think, yeah, since your last album. Now your last
album at the time, you said the question sort of
(01:37):
driving that album was where do you stand? What was
the question going into this album? What was animating you
going into the studio this time?
Speaker 4 (01:48):
These songs are central to my experience in the middle
of COVID, facing issues, realities, or feeling the need to
be able to really get personal. And you know, I've
always tried to say and I thought I sounded flippant
(02:11):
in the past when I said everything is a little
bit political, and some people would say, no, not everything.
We need to be able to get away from it,
and I'm like, yeah, of course we do. You know,
I was not ever civically engaged in my life to
a degree, So I suppose I was telling myself that
(02:33):
the act of you know, playing live music, the act
of sharing space, sharing vibrations in music is at least
when I was a street musician it felt political in
a way. But this time in twenty twenty that I
spent a lot of time forced to be alone with myself,
(02:56):
and I would have gone mad if it hadn't been
for John Harrington responding to my email saying, Okay, that's
an interesting idea. How about this? And we started collaborating.
I think it was twenty twenty or maybe twenty twenty
one when we first started the throwing things back and forth.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
How did you know each other before? Then?
Speaker 4 (03:18):
Well, we we've been playing music together. I pay him
to hang out with me.
Speaker 5 (03:24):
I've been working for Maddie for at least fifteen years,
we think maybe more like seventeen years.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
Okay, well that's why I thought. I was a little
surprised just in her band on the road when I
reached Oh okay, yeah, all right, so the relationship was
a little different then, is what you are?
Speaker 5 (03:37):
Well, this is new for us, Yeah, to be songwriters,
especially writing all ten tunes on the record. That that
was new for Okay, for me with Maddie, Yeah, no,
I've for a while. So I was new for Mattie too.
She's she's had some you know, records where there have
been other authors, but never like an exclusive writing pair
(03:57):
for all of the tunes.
Speaker 4 (03:58):
I don't think that's true.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Well, absolute and your producer, when he heard the song
said no covers.
Speaker 4 (04:03):
Yes he did. We had a lunch one meeting with
Elliott Shy and the three of us sat there and
I had put together a list that that I thought,
this will make sense, and we can revamp some older
stuff and let's then we'll get this record done sooner.
And Elliott he said, you know, I like the songs
(04:26):
that you two wrote together, and so just do that.
Only songs by you.
Speaker 5 (04:32):
He said. He said, no covers, and none of those
other songs, just the ones that you wrote with John.
And if there aren't enough, write some more, you.
Speaker 4 (04:38):
Know, Is that right?
Speaker 5 (04:40):
Yeah, that's what he said.
Speaker 4 (04:41):
I looked at John and I just went, what.
Speaker 5 (04:44):
What are we going to do?
Speaker 3 (04:45):
Yeah? Are we going to do that? Well, you've you've
been writing for a long time, but you kind of
made your bones as an interpreter of Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen,
one of my favorites, Joe Henry. So what was it
like to say, Okay, I'm ripping off that band aid?
There's no.
Speaker 4 (05:04):
I mean, I was excited to try it, but I
remember thinking, oh God, you know, what have we gotten
ourselves into?
Speaker 5 (05:11):
It felt it felt daunting and overwhelming. I think at first,
looking back at it now, I mean it was. It
was a brilliant idea, I.
Speaker 4 (05:19):
Think, and it made this record.
Speaker 5 (05:21):
The record coheres in spite of the sort of range
of you know, sort of heavy to light, you know,
sort of content, you know, and and different moods. It's
somehow coheres, which which I was concerned about, but glad
to find that that it does.
Speaker 4 (05:39):
I don't think it coheres in the traditional way at all.
I don't think it really. I think it's really weird record.
I remember when we were recording it, sitting in the
booth going what are we doing? This stuff is crazy?
But but it is. It just wanted to let it be,
(05:59):
I feel for me, these songs just came to us
in varying degrees. We worked at chiseling away at them,
but it's all a gift, and the mandate for me
was to make sure that it's something that I really
care about. Even the Mosquito song, Yeah, it's something I
really care about.
Speaker 5 (06:18):
I was going to say that there are ways that
it coheres from me, and that's that's the one I
think that's the most critical. That these are the most
personal collection of songs I think that you've ever put
on a single record together. You know, and that's that's
a big part of it. But I think sonically, thanks
to Elliott, it coheres and thanks to the musicians being
all basically the same same team, guys who'd been on
(06:40):
the road with you and everybody who was in the
studio together. That's true background vocal section that was the
same on the what four or five songs that have backgrounds. Yeah,
And so sonically I think it holds up that way too.
And I think mostly because you weren't going to put
a lyric on, you know, a word on this record
that you hadn't vetted very thoroughly, and and that didn't
(07:03):
ring true to you personally, And that's that coheres to
me in spite of the range of styles, which which
I understand is that's.
Speaker 4 (07:11):
What I'm talking about, you know, just like I don't
think that that a lot of producers would have let
us get away with doing it like that. I think
Elliott might be one of the few people that's truly
still very adventurous, beautiful thing.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
Yeah, I love that about him. Do you think another
producer might have said, Okay, but let's put on a
let's put on a letter co on, let's put on
let's put on something.
Speaker 4 (07:37):
I think that they would have wanted to rearrange the
songs to be more tame in their stylistic breadth and
and say, well, let's let's try to rain this into
sort of a little bit dumb down to be you know,
in a.
Speaker 5 (07:55):
Way, maybe the songs musically are more similar than they are,
you know, far arranging. But you know, the other thing
is another producer, if he were functioning as a real
producer and wanting the cloud and the control, I mean,
we should remind ourselves that you and I and Elliott
were all sharing the producer role. And and for that reason,
(08:17):
I think Elliott was hanging back a little more than
a sort of producer producer who was the only producer
on the record would do. And so it was a
collaborative effort that way as well. And I think you know,
he liked that and wanted it that way. And he's
the kind of reticent guy until it's important to speak up,
and then he speaks. And that's that's that's one of the.
Speaker 4 (08:38):
Only things he said at that lunch was no covers, like.
Speaker 5 (08:42):
Yeah, no, it's he's he's got you know, strength, but
but he waits a long time and He only speaks
up when it when he knows it's important.
Speaker 4 (08:49):
In fact, he's sitting right here and he hasn't said
a word.
Speaker 6 (08:52):
It's not.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
Well, we're waiting for that. He'll he'll finish the episode.
So how did you split up the producing duties? How
did that work?
Speaker 4 (09:01):
Well, John did most of the work.
Speaker 5 (09:04):
Well thing is a funny term, and there's so many
there's so much overlap nowadays in the way most people
put a record together. There's overlap between the songwriting, the arranging,
the producing, the engineering, the recording.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
You know.
Speaker 4 (09:18):
So, John, you had made demos before we met with
Elliott Shiner, and we had made demos too, and then
I had added my vocals to them. But I think
you pretty much were the one that made those demos.
You played everything we recorded. Anything that I recorded, I
came over to your place, and some.
Speaker 5 (09:40):
We didn't have time to really demo, but we but.
Speaker 4 (09:43):
Even Yeah, and then there was the one like the
title track, which you made the whole song and made
a demo so we could hear all these vocal parts,
all the harmonies, the type of bass treatment, the type
of treatment, and the energy. And some of these songs
were I mean could have just been scripted. Obviously, we
(10:06):
didn't do that to the guy who.
Speaker 5 (10:08):
They were pretty well thought before we got to this.
That's what we wanted to be that way.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
The title track, A couple of tracks have it. They've
got like a New Orleans feel to that.
Speaker 5 (10:18):
That one certainly does.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
Yeah, yeah, you've got that kind of New Orleans organ
And a couple other songs. Was that deliberate? Was that?
Did that come from something?
Speaker 4 (10:26):
Or I think Let's walk became a sort of the
drummer was playing that kind of beat. I don't know
if there was conceive of it that way really, but
I think I changed it a little bit.
Speaker 5 (10:38):
We tried it like that in rehearsal, and we sort
of liked that it felt a little more spirited and
not so sort of safe.
Speaker 4 (10:45):
I mean, it's a march, and what is more appropriate
to feeling like you're dancing while you're walking, you know,
feeling music and walking that's American? What's more American? Then? Yeah?
And I think the New Orleans, the New Orleans.
Speaker 5 (11:05):
It's a natural part of all of these musicians, you know,
sort of repertoire, you know, in terms of styles, you know,
because it's music. We always we've all loved so much
for so.
Speaker 4 (11:13):
Long, you know, and it's at the heart of what
do you think, because like to me, I have decided
that American music is one of the main important things
that we have to offer the world, and we don't
even know what we have. We don't necessarily recognize it
(11:36):
very well. We don't understand stylistically how much crossover there is,
how much like how blurry that is, and yet how
also steeped really in different like cultures that are identities.
It is. At the same time, you don't think to
(11:57):
say I'm more country and I'm more bluegrass and I'm
more People still do that, which is so odd because
there is no those things were never separate.
Speaker 5 (12:07):
And musically well, you know, anytime money gets involved, you know,
the categorizations help sell it.
Speaker 4 (12:14):
So that's why they're yeah, but I'm trying to I'm
trying to step even further back. You know.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
Now most people, of course think you're French right, you
are American right, But you did live in France and
that was your kind of musical education. Do you think
you have got that kind of outsider's view of American culture?
Does that help?
Speaker 4 (12:37):
It helps immensely There's several things about it. There's being
American in another country and realizing and listening to people
talk about del Vandos and you know, Kulan Zogong and
like who's cool and Zagong and who are Zabita's Who's
(12:58):
what is that? I've never heard of that band before?
Oh the Beatles? Oh okay okay. So like just like
realizing what people talk about, how people talk about America
that were my age at the time, when I was twelve,
thirteen or older, you know. And then secondly, what happened
when I became a teenagers I met American ex patriots
who I would have never met. That's something that Dan
(13:21):
Fitzgerald said. He was from Kingston, New York, so upstate
New York, but he used to hang out in the
Bowery and I used to take the train over to
Canal Street over and Broadway. I would have been in
New York City at the same time as him, but
I was a young, like maybe adolescent or teenage white
girl from South Brooklyn and he would have been a
(13:46):
middle aged black man from Kingston. We would have never
spoken to each other, even though we might have had
all of these cultural affinities. That were hard to find.
But because we saw each other in Paris, we became,
you know, like family eventually, and of course it changed
(14:07):
my life to be there because of that. So it
was interesting. It's one thing to try. It's very hard
to try to understand another culture. I mean, you know,
I lived in France for a long time. My mother
has lived there ever since nineteen eighty seven. She's still
learning and we're still talking about attitudes and different types
(14:28):
of like sayings that you might have to describe something.
And like just today she said, there's a French saying.
Women talk about French men, they say, you know, they're
only interested until they have killed the beast. That's the
literal translation of they catch you a woman is the
(14:52):
wildness has to be beaten out of you. You have
to be tamed, I think, is what it's kind of saying.
And then then they're interested and they'll move on to
other things.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
But I'll try I'll try that on my wife.
Speaker 4 (15:04):
I don't suggest it, you see American.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
I'm not an American. She is an American, and don't
I don't think I would survive that conversation. I think
there would be some killing. But it wouldn't be her.
So but we should back up because we haven't talked
about Dan. There's a song about him on this record.
Can you just back up and explain how you met
him in Paris and who he is.
Speaker 4 (15:30):
Daniel William Fitzgerald was born in nineteen thirty three in Kingston,
New York. Dan went to ministry school, he went to
law school. He became disillusioned by both of those things.
Joined the army in the fifties and that's what brought
him over to Europe. And then he just started going
(15:51):
back and forth and creating his life. And apparently in
nineteen seventy eight he was hanging out with some friends,
some American friends he had met ex patriots in Paris
find each other right, and he said, I want to
go to JazzFest this year in New Orleans, and let's
start a band in order to go down there. Somehow
(16:13):
he knew all these old Bessie Smith and My Rainey songs,
he knew them by heart. And there's a Ma Rainey
song called The Loss and Wandering Blues. And he started
a band called the Lost Wandering Blues and Jazz Band.
He made a washtub, he turned it into a washtub base.
He painted it and he started this band. They went
around from that time on. They went to Europe, and
(16:34):
if there was an American who was going to wander
around Paris and they bumped into him, they would bump
into him on the street and they'd recognize him, and
then he'd make friends and we'd stay at somebody's house
that night. We'd go play near a restaurant. The restaurant
would come out and say, come inside and have a meal.
You can hang out with us. And it was a
(16:56):
lifestyle that he created. I come along to Paris and
about twenty years later, eighty nine ninety, I was about fifteen,
joined a different street band that was in the same scene.
Speaker 3 (17:12):
At this point, you played ukulele or guitar or what
did you I had.
Speaker 4 (17:17):
A guitar, but I couldn't play any of the songs
that we were singing. You know. People said, oh, what
songs do you want to sing? I said, well, first
I was passing the hat for somebody, and then I
heard these guys singing and I said, you know, I
could probably do better than them. So I volunteered myself
(17:37):
as singing and they were like, oh, she wants to
sing a song. Okay, sure, what do you know? And
so it was Georgia in Summertime and that's it. And
then I thought, well, I know all these other songs, but.
Speaker 3 (17:49):
I your mother taught you songs? Is that?
Speaker 4 (17:52):
Yeah? We used to play ukuleles together, and she sang
all the time. She sang every morning, she sang all
over the house. And it was really the only time
that my father was not being kind of tyrant was
when we would sit down, the two of us and
(18:13):
sing together. He would just stop and be quiet and
listen and say, oh, I guess I can't. I can't
do anything better than that. But the rest of the
time he was telling us what to do.
Speaker 3 (18:24):
But he was gone by the time you were in Paris.
Speaker 4 (18:27):
Yeah, we moved to Paris. Right after they divorced. He
moved out. He was living somewhere in the city for
the rest of his life, somewhere in New York. Eventually
he moved out to Corona, Queens in the end, Yeah, what.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
Made you want to start busting?
Speaker 4 (18:43):
The first thing that I remember was that I was
because I was in France and I couldn't speak the language,
and I wanted to make friends. I would go around
I would wander around the neighborhood with my guitar and
just sit around and play while other people were talking
to each other kids. And one day somebody threw some
money in the case and I remember going, wait, what
(19:06):
just happened here? So that was the revelation for me.
It was like, oh, hey, you think I could actually
make money doing this? This would be amazing. And then
I did wander into Paris, I saw street I somehow
we saw street musicians at one point, and I remember thinking,
I've got to go back here to find these people,
and I did. I did a like a trek through
(19:27):
the city trying to find them, and that's when I
saw Danny's band. And I didn't speak to him that day,
but it was absolutely memorable because they all had hats on,
they had microphones and amps, and it was so weird.
It was a weird type of hybrid of American music,
like it bring kind of full circle to what we
(19:48):
were talking about, because he had this sort of Black
American musical culture that I had never heard. I had
heard some early blues from my parents' records, but it
was mostly like stuff that had gone into universities, like
Robert Johnson, Like there was a certain group of black
(20:10):
artists that were part of the folk movement, but then
there were all these other blues jazz artists that I
don't know, Like that wasn't my experience. I didn't hear
some of that stuff. I knew fat Swaller, I'd heard
a lot of Fat Swaller, a lot of some Louis Armstrong.
(20:32):
So but Danny was playing early early stuff, early jazz
almost like rag time stuff, or if you listen to
Bessie Smith records, it's right in the middle. It's after ragtime,
because I think ragtime, I think of ragtime is like
Scott Joplin, So that's eighteen nineties basically. And then if
(20:55):
you think of swing, I think of the nineteen thirties,
it's post depression. But then like there's this period in
the through the twenties where even the rhythm is like
not absolutely sort of the approach to how the shuffle
feels is sort of like still in between those two spaces.
(21:16):
It's not completely laid back yet, but you kind of
feel it's starting to lay back. But Billie Holliday's first recording,
when she was sixteen, was in the thirties and you
can hear that the bands, the dance bands are now
starting to do that thing where I suppose the Great
(21:38):
Migration is influencing that too, right, because you have country
blues becoming urbanized. And if you listen to Bessie Smith,
like Ma Rainy is really country, you don't have a
lot of harmonic changes. Really is sort of the in
a folky world. It's a folk thing. But with Bessie
(22:00):
you've got piano players and guitar players and they're playing
all these passing chords and there's like diminished chords, and
we're like little changes in tempo and these verses that
never repeat or these sections that never repeat that are
quite complicated. And I believe that that's more of like
because of the urban influence where they go to the
(22:23):
cities and you're hearing a lot of a lot more
different kinds of music.
Speaker 3 (22:26):
What grabbed you about that music.
Speaker 4 (22:29):
Well, it's harmonically accessible to me, Like it's a pop,
you know, dance type of music with some more complexity
to it, but not to the point where it's ethereal
and atonal. Yet it hasn't really gone over crossed over.
(22:50):
So for me to learn music, to learn chords because
I was so fascinated by hearing like, you know, some
cool song like across the Universe from the Beatles. Like
I remember thinking like, how are you supposed to play
that on a ukulele? This is really hard. That was
my biggest problem, was like, well, where's the harmony coming from?
(23:11):
I just don't get it.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
Well, you know the key there is you only play
the George Harrison songs because he used to write onles.
Speaker 4 (23:17):
Oh really yeah, definitely, Here Comes the Sun. It's like
one of the first ones that I was like, yes.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
Yeah or something. I think he yeah, he used to.
Speaker 4 (23:26):
He used to use a oh that's beautiful and then
he would just play sound like that.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
He would just play with the kpo right when he
played it in the guitar, so it would be in
the same Yeah.
Speaker 4 (23:34):
I mean I'm not that I wasn't that good a
ukulele player either.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
Let's get a ukulele out here right now?
Speaker 4 (23:39):
Not no, no, And I.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
Heard you like when you start a guitar. You liked
Freddy Green.
Speaker 4 (23:44):
Well right, because he was in the small group with
Billie Holliday and those incredible recordings that they made with
Teddy Wilson Lester Young, Freddy Green, Philly Joe Jones maybe
on drums and some of those those recordings. So I
think they made like one hundred records, you know, during
(24:09):
those two years, maybe two or three years, thirty nine forty.
It was all wartime too. I wonder if it wasn't
like FDR grants that made that happen. Those records are
absolutely like, they're just so good.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
We have to take a quick break and then we'll
be back with more from Madeline Peru and John Harrington.
We're back with more from Madeline Peru and John Harrington.
So tell me then, how how did you and Dan
then connect?
Speaker 4 (24:42):
You heard him, Well, he taught me a lot of
this music. I heard him, and then I couldn't find
him again because apparently he had a car and he
would leave town. I thought that was the most amazing
thing ever, that the big Mercedes that would like just
barely fit in the walking street where we were all
hanging out in those days. So whenever he came to town,
(25:04):
you knew it because he was parked in front of
the cafe. But I didn't see him for a couple
of months. I joined another band, I sang with them.
We actually got a job singing in a club, and
apparently I was very badly behaved, and I drank because
I only had two songs to sing per set, so
(25:24):
I just sat and drank alcohol the rest of the time,
and by the end of the night they said I
wasn't behaving, so I can only imagine was just basically
everything looked bad at the point at that age, I
think it was still only fifteen or something, and I
had dropped, and I basically the high school told me,
(25:46):
you know, if you ever don't show up anymore, that's it.
You're out. So I took the gig, and I didn't
show up, and I just assumed I was out, and
then I was out, and then I ran out of
money from that gig. And then there was a rainy day.
Of course, if you're a street musician, you watch in
the weather all the time, and it was a rainy
day and there was no one anywhere, and I had like,
(26:07):
you know, seven francs or something, which was enough for
me to buy half a beer. Whatever it was I had.
I literally decided, at ten in the morning, I'm going
to buy a drink with this. So I sat at
this bar with this beer and looked out the window
and I said, what have I done to myself? And
at that moment I saw Danny across the street, standing
under a covered walking passageway, just standing there. I'm just like,
(26:35):
what in the world. So I was just ran over
to him. I said, Danny, you said I could sing
in your band. He said, okay, go ahead, you have
to audition first. I said, sure, no problem, He said
go ahead. And then I said, I what here now?
And of course I couldn't play any of these songs
(26:57):
on guitar, so I snapped my fingers and I sang jeepers,
creepers right in his face, and he stared me down
the entire time, and it was so embarrassing, and I
just just nervous, you know. I thought, Oh, this is it,
you know. And then he was so nice. He just
turned to be He went from like making me dread
(27:20):
every minute to just being completely warm and said, okay,
you're in the band, but you have to audition for
the other guy as well. He's our musical director and
he's in Holland and we're going to go there tomorrow.
So come back tomorrow and we'll go to Holland. We're
(27:42):
going to go to Holland together, and then I didn't
have anywhere to stay that night, so I was really,
he was your mother, not My mother had told me
if I didn't go to school that I couldn't stay
at home anymore. But I'd dropped out of school several
times by this point, right, so we had gotten to
(28:04):
a point where she was just like, well, you're not
allowed to do that anymore. You can't be like this anymore.
And she was right. But I got Danny to let
me join the band, and I still didn't have any
anywhere to stay that night, and I didn't tell him,
and I didn't know him. I didn't know if he
would have helped me out. But I had this other friend.
(28:26):
I went to the guy and he said, yeah, okay,
you can sleep on my fortnight if you're joining Janny's band.
It's cool. It's gonna be great because he knew Danny.
But then the next day, Danny just sat around drinking
coffees all day long, and I sat outside the cafe
with my guitar, just wondering, like, I hope we're leved.
We didn't leave.
Speaker 7 (28:45):
I had to go back to my friend and he
opened the door and said, what the fuck are you
doing back here?
Speaker 4 (28:49):
Oh, Danny, you know, okay, you can spend another night here.
And it's happened three or four times. Guy cussed at me.
Speaker 6 (28:59):
What the fuck went?
Speaker 4 (29:00):
Is Danny gonna leave? Then we did leave. I got
and I joined the band and I started learning this music.
The musical direct or, quote unquote was a wonderful guitar
player named Chris Monin, who was actually also a teenager himself.
He was studying guitar at the Conservatory, the Jazz Conservatory
(29:23):
in southern Holland.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
So how long did you play with with Danny's band?
Speaker 4 (29:27):
I played with Danny's I tried to leave his band
a couple of times, and then I ended up coming back.
But I mean, I think I was about seventeen, Yeah,
seventeen when when we got to the end of this,
there was a documentary. This film student was making a
documentary about us, and he said, come on, you guys
need to play in Harlem. And I remember thinking, why
(29:52):
on earth would we go and play this play in Harlem?
And Danny took it as a challenge, I think, and
so we did and people threw bottles at us. They
said you better not you know, set up your amps
in front of my house. What do you crazy? Which
you know, that was crazy, It was bad idea. But
(30:15):
we ended up finding a place that we could set
up and it was out in the court building there
on one twenty fifth. Anyway, when the documentary was over,
the people that had funded this documentary were suddenly had
no money to pay us anything at all, and so
everybody had to fall back on their own. Drathers and
(30:37):
I had nothing to fall back on. So I left
the band at that moment because I had absolutely nothing,
and I hitchhiked from wherever we were in Denmark back
to Paris. So I played in the subway after that
and tried to do like with my guitar, tried to
use some of the stuff I learned being in the band,
and didn't do too well, but I learned some a
(30:59):
little bit of discipline. And then Danny would see me.
I would turn around. This is how Danny went. He
was so such an amazing because I'd be playing in
this subway and everything, and I'd feel somebody staring at me,
and I would look and way at the back of
the car. He'd be over over in the corner and
he had been following me, just listening to me, trying
(31:22):
to see what I was doing, and I just remember,
what are you doing? But it was so sweet. He
actually just we were family, and that's just the way
it was always going to be, you know, with his
potato salads, that he'd make these incredibly huge tubs of
food for parties, and he would throw parties on his boat.
(31:44):
And he had kept let me live on his boat
for a while when I was in the band too.
He had a boat outside of the seine.
Speaker 3 (31:51):
Were you writing at this point or are you just?
Were you just performing?
Speaker 4 (31:55):
I wanted to write songs and Danny told me I
shouldn't do that. You know, I certainly didn't know what
I was doing. Basically, my approach to songwriting was like
everything else at that time. It was like close your
eyes and wish, make a wish and see what happens.
(32:15):
And I really don't think I could ever figure out
writing until this record. I feel like I had a
breakthrough because for the first time I decided before sitting
down to finish a project or to write it and
say this is what I'm going to stand by, this
(32:37):
is what I believe is the song I want I
decided I need to find out what's already there that's
not being said, and just try and say it. And
if I'm not saying it, if it's not clear, then
the job's not finished.
Speaker 3 (32:50):
You've written lots of songs in the past. How is
that different?
Speaker 4 (32:55):
I suppose in the past, I've always felt like I
was looking to discover what the song was, that it
was already that it was somebody else's song. Now it's mine,
even though it was obviously it was still me doing it.
But I think that COVID, all of the things that
matter in the world became so pronounced. And I'm gonna
(33:21):
borrow Carnel West's furbiage on this. It's the catastrophe that
we had to face. Just how to how to deal
with catastrophe. Now, I didn't suffer any catastrophe during COVID,
but I just as most of my life I've witnessed it.
Speaker 3 (33:42):
I wouldn't much do a song. Now, what do you want?
Speaker 4 (33:44):
Let's play a song.
Speaker 5 (33:46):
You're gonna play Fine True Love. Yeah, this is the
opening track on the record. Okay, you got it?
Speaker 3 (33:53):
Just me.
Speaker 6 (34:00):
Oh, let's go down to the.
Speaker 4 (34:02):
Vayume Fine True Love.
Speaker 8 (34:08):
Listen to the blue booze, the Gospel.
Speaker 9 (34:11):
Of Jeesus, feel the summer sunshine in the sun.
Speaker 8 (34:18):
Breazees, hear the little baby bees whimper and cry, make
a little promise, Learn how to die all.
Speaker 6 (34:32):
Let's go on to the levee.
Speaker 10 (34:36):
Find true love. Listen to the brass bands, do.
Speaker 8 (34:42):
The second line, pick a little guitar, spill a little
wine here the little.
Speaker 9 (34:52):
Babies whimper and cry, Make a little promise, learn how
to die.
Speaker 4 (35:03):
All have proms to be open.
Speaker 8 (35:10):
To feel the joy and pain.
Speaker 6 (35:16):
The only way to make a life is to face.
Speaker 4 (35:28):
Try again.
Speaker 10 (35:31):
So let's go on to the hilltop to find true love.
Listen to the seasons from above the tree line.
Speaker 9 (35:45):
Pick a little fresh con spell little moon shine.
Speaker 10 (35:52):
Hear the little babe bae whimper and cry, Make a
little promise.
Speaker 4 (36:01):
Learn how to die.
Speaker 7 (36:03):
Oh yes, let's go on to the shoreline and find
(36:24):
too low.
Speaker 9 (36:27):
Listen to the ocean thunder in the sky. Feel a
little empty and run a little.
Speaker 4 (36:38):
Dry, give a little baby bees.
Speaker 10 (36:43):
Whimp and cry, make a little promise, Learn how to die.
Speaker 8 (36:51):
All a promise.
Speaker 6 (36:55):
To be all open, to feed the jaw pain, be all.
Speaker 4 (37:06):
Only way to me good life.
Speaker 8 (37:11):
It's too face. Try again.
Speaker 4 (37:20):
Let's go down to the bayou, find true love.
Speaker 10 (37:28):
Listen to the blues, the Gospel of Cheesees.
Speaker 8 (37:34):
Feel the summer sunshine and the sudden.
Speaker 9 (37:38):
Breathe, see the little babies whimper and cry.
Speaker 10 (37:47):
Make a little promise, Make a little promise, make a
little promise. Learn how to die.
Speaker 3 (38:04):
Beautiful. A little feedback there right at the end. So
tell me about writing that song. Do you remember how
it started?
Speaker 4 (38:14):
Uh? Yeah, John, and I remember very clearly because we
worked hard. I think the title and those three words
find true love were the hardest part of the whole song,
which now seems like the most obvious choice. But at
the time I was using the phrase eat, pray love
from the book, Right.
Speaker 3 (38:35):
Did you think that was going to be the song
or were you like, I'll just fix that later.
Speaker 5 (38:39):
It was the whole song. I mean, you wrote the
whole song using with that, with that as the title.
But we threw lyrics back and forth quite a lot
on that, and at some point we chucked it, you know,
because it wasn't working with.
Speaker 4 (38:53):
Yeah, it wasn't necessarily the right thing.
Speaker 5 (38:57):
I know, but it was the springboard for you.
Speaker 4 (38:59):
Yeah, the idea of eat pray Love is very powerful
because there are three distinct sounds, three distinct one syllable
words that are actions and nouns and worlds unto themselves.
It's great writing, and I read the book and everything,
(39:21):
but I wanted the meaning of the song to have
its own life, and so I think on some level
we knew that it probably wasn't going to survive scrutiny.
It was sort of can you do better than that?
And then I was like, well, I'm not as good
as you know, Elizabeth Gilbert on this, so.
Speaker 5 (39:38):
I don't know what to say no, But sometimes you
need that to just to continue working on it. Just
having any words, you know, the blank sheet of paper
is the terrifying thing. When you have anything down, then
it's editable, you know. And so it wasn't a big
jump to go from Eat Prey Love.
Speaker 4 (39:57):
Yeah, that was my It was the banks.
Speaker 1 (40:00):
It helps.
Speaker 3 (40:01):
One of the obvious word choices to jump out in
that song is learn how to die. Just about anybody
else would say learn how to fly, learn how to
do all these other things because it's a very joyful song.
What brought that on?
Speaker 4 (40:15):
Well for me? That's a direct quote from Cornell West
and I'd been listening to Cornell West quite a bit.
Speaker 1 (40:20):
Now.
Speaker 4 (40:20):
I don't know who Cornell West might be quoting when
he says, in order to learn how to love, you
have to learn how to die, but he says it
quite a bit in a lot of different contexts, some
of his lectures that he's done and some of his
speaking engagements that he's done. But whatever I could find
mostly on YouTube during that time when for a good
(40:41):
couple of years after George Floyd, but even yeah, even
before that, you know, I was just following him because
he had a voice. It was a voice of reason
on television, you know, if you needed somebody, if you
wanted to hear somebody on television on the news speak
to you. It was slim Pickens for me, like I
(41:03):
felt a direct mirroring of my childhood with my alcoholic
father and the violent, tyrant tyranny in that world, and
the escape or rather the survival of that environment as
a child at playing music with my mother was like
a mirror image for me in twenty twenty of seeing
(41:25):
police brutality and the search for solace consolation, a path
forward using the tools that I still to day are
the only tools that really I've acquired, which is listening
to intuitively to poetry and music and being trying to
(41:49):
be part of that tradition.
Speaker 2 (41:52):
After this last break, we'll be back with the rest
of Madeline Peru and John Harrington. We're back with the
rest of Bruce Hellum's conversation with Madeline Peru and John Harrington.
Speaker 3 (42:06):
You said in the past about how particularly love songs
are political. Is it because for you it takes you
into a kind of a different place in your life,
or it's like being relieved of a feeling of tyranny,
a feeling of oppression that's political as well. It's not innotonus, Yeah,
(42:29):
not in a cynical, terrible way, in a very profound way. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (42:33):
And also just the desire to be heard if you
need help, or to feel like you could be heard,
you know, if you're going to need help because something
is going to come down the pike at you and
you're going to need to survive that. And it's just
a technique that I think a lot of kids of
alcoholic parents have are aware of that they was part
(42:55):
of their way of growing up. But I think when
I hear somebody like Cornel West turn around and say
we need to talk about justice is what love looks
like in public, and tenderness is love in private. And
it's like, yeah, that's These are not, you know, radical ideas,
(43:17):
they're loving ideas. They might be radical in a sort
of Christian way, but I don't think you have to
be Christian because I'm not going to go for it
that way. I needed to say the words the Gospel
of Jesus in the song, and that was an interesting
moment because I wanted to talk about the message without
the religion, and I'm not sure if that's even possible
(43:40):
for some people to grasp what.
Speaker 3 (43:41):
I'm interested with. The feeling you get from Cornell West,
which is someone saying true, sometimes messy things out loud,
is that this is a stretch. Is that the same
feeling you got listening to those great old records you
love so much, like Ma Rainey and Billie Holliday. Is
it the same kind of truth telling in a way.
Speaker 4 (44:06):
Well, it's interesting that you say that. A very interesting
question because it's definitely still taboo right now to open
the discussion on violence within a relationship, within a romantic relationship,
and it can ruin the feminist message that, for example,
(44:30):
Billie Holliday or Bessie Smith or mal Rainie would have
when they sing about being having a man that mistreats
them and how much they still love him. But you
know that's the point. I mean, love is messy. We
are human. Nobody ever says I'm always right and they're
(44:52):
always wrong unless you're not really looking at finding the
truth because you've got to listen to more than one
perspective to find the truth, even if you don't want
to agree with it, you have to be aware that
it's there.
Speaker 3 (45:07):
Your breakthrough album was Careless Love. The reason it's called
careless Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4 (45:12):
That was the WC. Handy song when Bessie smith recording
was the one that influenced me. And then I met
Odetta and she was singing it in her own way
with her different lyrics and discussing the meaning of that song,
and we perform it all the time, and it's definitely
been one hundred years now.
Speaker 3 (45:30):
I think, tell me about how I wish on this record?
Speaker 4 (45:34):
So how I wish? I think that's a song that
I chiseled at like it felt like like maybe what
sculptors do when they see a shape inside of another
shape and they remove what's in the way of that,
And I feel like that was my job, especially with
(45:54):
the lyrics.
Speaker 3 (45:55):
Okay, let me ask you first, then what was in
the way.
Speaker 4 (45:59):
I had to accept that I wanted to be able
to say something to somebody that didn't know me or
anything about me or anybody else. I wanted it to
be a blank slate starting point, but a direct conversation
was a lot of my songs tend to be like that.
(46:19):
I'm talking to somebody.
Speaker 3 (46:21):
Do you always have somebody in mind when you're No?
I don't think so, did you?
Speaker 4 (46:27):
In this one, I'm probably talking to myself. Okay, well
that's making it making somebody else suffer, you know, the
conversation the monologue?
Speaker 3 (46:36):
Is that one of the ones you wanted to play
very much?
Speaker 4 (46:39):
Yeah? Okay, please one two three, one two?
Speaker 10 (47:01):
How I wish I could bring.
Speaker 8 (47:09):
And slavening and to bear.
Speaker 4 (47:19):
The fat of each chaininess at to which.
Speaker 8 (47:33):
I've been a pot.
Speaker 6 (47:37):
All my Blackmerican hot.
Speaker 8 (47:48):
Wol I'd give and a learn.
Speaker 9 (47:55):
Should some pea and concern.
Speaker 10 (48:03):
Fils empty dread.
Speaker 1 (48:11):
On the world.
Speaker 8 (48:14):
We tread between fear and disgrace all my red American face.
Speaker 1 (48:35):
Would my life.
Speaker 8 (48:39):
Be in vain.
Speaker 4 (48:43):
Pifffin strove.
Speaker 8 (48:46):
Some small pain.
Speaker 1 (48:52):
I gave up the road to this screen.
Speaker 4 (49:02):
And spa.
Speaker 8 (49:05):
Then would my it bigga?
Speaker 6 (49:12):
Oh my white American.
Speaker 11 (49:21):
Skied no more, no more, endlessly.
Speaker 1 (49:58):
Journeying.
Speaker 8 (50:02):
Yet to he freedom.
Speaker 4 (50:12):
Must we all be taught a.
Speaker 8 (50:19):
No name shuns cross before the truth is whole?
Speaker 1 (50:32):
Oh, my lost.
Speaker 8 (50:37):
American.
Speaker 1 (50:41):
So no more, no more, no more.
Speaker 3 (51:17):
You may have to upgrade your opinion of your songwriting.
And I think that's a great song.
Speaker 4 (51:23):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (51:24):
I loved everything you were doing on the low strings
and the accompaniment. It's very uh, it was very Freddy Green,
I thought, using that D string.
Speaker 5 (51:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (51:33):
Actually John arranged it with a with a different tuning
for the for the record, you did a love got
the low D in there, and it was beautiful arranging.
And uh And I'm glad. I'm glad that that it
turned out to be a beautiful arrangement because I remember
John telling me, what are you doing. I was like,
(51:55):
there's something wrong, there's something missing, don't change it. It
was good.
Speaker 5 (52:00):
Now, this was one that needed very little and we
were you were working out for quite what while you're working.
Speaker 3 (52:09):
Quite a while.
Speaker 4 (52:09):
He was trying to teach me how to play the song,
and he said, well, you wrote it. I said, no,
I didn't do that.
Speaker 5 (52:15):
You would send You would send stuff like, because you
were working for quite a long time on the lyric.
You would send newer versions, you know, with different lyrics,
so I could hear them and I would notice that,
well she changed the melody there, or she changed that
chord progression. They're like, no, what are you doing. I
loved what you did early, so I mean so I
had to sort of keep cracking the whip so you
(52:37):
would just not lose what was great about in the beginning.
The first version of this basically had all the music
and you know, melody and chords and mostly the form too.
And there's no single version of a song in any
former incarnation that that was just yours alone or just
mine alone that was better than the collaboration turned out
(52:59):
to be. So yeah, in all cases, the collaboration I
think helped, and I find that's almost always true.
Speaker 3 (53:06):
We should end there. I've got a million other questions,
but I've taken a lot of your time and it's
been fabulous. You real treat.
Speaker 2 (53:16):
Thanks again to Madeline Peru and John Harrington for talking
about the making of their new album Let's Walk. You
can hear it along with other songs from Madeline on
a playlist at broken record podcast dot com. Subscribe to
our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash broken record Podcast,
where you can find all of our new episodes. You
can follow us on Twitter.
Speaker 3 (53:36):
At broken Record.
Speaker 2 (53:38):
Broken Record is produced and edited by Leah Rose, with
marketing help from Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer
is Ben Tolliney. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries.
If you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider
subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription
that offers bonus content and ad free listening for four
(54:00):
ninety nine a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple
podcast subscriptions. And if you like this show, please remember
to share, rate, and review us on your podcast. Staff
are theme music's by Canny Beats. I'm justin Richmond.
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Madeleine Peyroux is a jazz inspired singer songwriter who got
her start singing in street bands in Paris as a teenager.
In nineteen ninety six, Atlantic Records released Madeline's debut album,
where she covered tunes from the thirties and forties by
artists like Bessie Smith and Billie Holliday, and the later
she recorded songs by Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. This year,
(00:40):
Madeleine Peyroux released Let's Walk, her first album of all
original songs, co written with her longtime touring guitar player
John Harrington. On today's episode, Madeleine and John play through
some songs for the new album, and Bruce Headlin talks
with them about their mutual creative process. Madeleine also remembers
her early days busking with a Bohemian ex pat named
Dan William Fitzgerald who became her musical mentor, and she
(01:04):
explains how doctor Cornell West became her guiding light during
a recent bout of personal despair. This is broken record
liner notes for the Digital Age.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
I'm justin Richmond. Here's Bruce Hedlm's conversation with Madeline Peru
and John Harrington. You've got this new album, Let's Walk,
which is very exciting. It's been what six seven years
I think, yeah, since your last album. Now your last
album at the time, you said the question sort of
(01:37):
driving that album was where do you stand? What was
the question going into this album? What was animating you
going into the studio this time?
Speaker 4 (01:48):
These songs are central to my experience in the middle
of COVID, facing issues, realities, or feeling the need to
be able to really get personal. And you know, I've
always tried to say and I thought I sounded flippant
(02:11):
in the past when I said everything is a little
bit political, and some people would say, no, not everything.
We need to be able to get away from it,
and I'm like, yeah, of course we do. You know,
I was not ever civically engaged in my life to
a degree, So I suppose I was telling myself that
(02:33):
the act of you know, playing live music, the act
of sharing space, sharing vibrations in music is at least
when I was a street musician it felt political in
a way. But this time in twenty twenty that I
spent a lot of time forced to be alone with myself,
(02:56):
and I would have gone mad if it hadn't been
for John Harrington responding to my email saying, Okay, that's
an interesting idea. How about this? And we started collaborating.
I think it was twenty twenty or maybe twenty twenty
one when we first started the throwing things back and forth.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
How did you know each other before? Then?
Speaker 4 (03:18):
Well, we we've been playing music together. I pay him
to hang out with me.
Speaker 5 (03:24):
I've been working for Maddie for at least fifteen years,
we think maybe more like seventeen years.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
Okay, well that's why I thought. I was a little
surprised just in her band on the road when I
reached Oh okay, yeah, all right, so the relationship was
a little different then, is what you are?
Speaker 5 (03:37):
Well, this is new for us, Yeah, to be songwriters,
especially writing all ten tunes on the record. That that
was new for Okay, for me with Maddie, Yeah, no,
I've for a while. So I was new for Mattie too.
She's she's had some you know, records where there have
been other authors, but never like an exclusive writing pair
(03:57):
for all of the tunes.
Speaker 4 (03:58):
I don't think that's true.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Well, absolute and your producer, when he heard the song
said no covers.
Speaker 4 (04:03):
Yes he did. We had a lunch one meeting with
Elliott Shy and the three of us sat there and
I had put together a list that that I thought,
this will make sense, and we can revamp some older
stuff and let's then we'll get this record done sooner.
And Elliott he said, you know, I like the songs
(04:26):
that you two wrote together, and so just do that.
Only songs by you.
Speaker 5 (04:32):
He said. He said, no covers, and none of those
other songs, just the ones that you wrote with John.
And if there aren't enough, write some more, you.
Speaker 4 (04:38):
Know, Is that right?
Speaker 5 (04:40):
Yeah, that's what he said.
Speaker 4 (04:41):
I looked at John and I just went, what.
Speaker 5 (04:44):
What are we going to do?
Speaker 3 (04:45):
Yeah? Are we going to do that? Well, you've you've
been writing for a long time, but you kind of
made your bones as an interpreter of Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen,
one of my favorites, Joe Henry. So what was it
like to say, Okay, I'm ripping off that band aid?
There's no.
Speaker 4 (05:04):
I mean, I was excited to try it, but I
remember thinking, oh God, you know, what have we gotten
ourselves into?
Speaker 5 (05:11):
It felt it felt daunting and overwhelming. I think at first,
looking back at it now, I mean it was. It
was a brilliant idea, I.
Speaker 4 (05:19):
Think, and it made this record.
Speaker 5 (05:21):
The record coheres in spite of the sort of range
of you know, sort of heavy to light, you know,
sort of content, you know, and and different moods. It's
somehow coheres, which which I was concerned about, but glad
to find that that it does.
Speaker 4 (05:39):
I don't think it coheres in the traditional way at all.
I don't think it really. I think it's really weird record.
I remember when we were recording it, sitting in the
booth going what are we doing? This stuff is crazy?
But but it is. It just wanted to let it be,
(05:59):
I feel for me, these songs just came to us
in varying degrees. We worked at chiseling away at them,
but it's all a gift, and the mandate for me
was to make sure that it's something that I really
care about. Even the Mosquito song, Yeah, it's something I
really care about.
Speaker 5 (06:18):
I was going to say that there are ways that
it coheres from me, and that's that's the one I
think that's the most critical. That these are the most
personal collection of songs I think that you've ever put
on a single record together. You know, and that's that's
a big part of it. But I think sonically, thanks
to Elliott, it coheres and thanks to the musicians being
all basically the same same team, guys who'd been on
(06:40):
the road with you and everybody who was in the
studio together. That's true background vocal section that was the
same on the what four or five songs that have backgrounds. Yeah,
And so sonically I think it holds up that way too.
And I think mostly because you weren't going to put
a lyric on, you know, a word on this record
that you hadn't vetted very thoroughly, and and that didn't
(07:03):
ring true to you personally, And that's that coheres to
me in spite of the range of styles, which which
I understand is that's.
Speaker 4 (07:11):
What I'm talking about, you know, just like I don't
think that that a lot of producers would have let
us get away with doing it like that. I think
Elliott might be one of the few people that's truly
still very adventurous, beautiful thing.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
Yeah, I love that about him. Do you think another
producer might have said, Okay, but let's put on a
let's put on a letter co on, let's put on
let's put on something.
Speaker 4 (07:37):
I think that they would have wanted to rearrange the
songs to be more tame in their stylistic breadth and
and say, well, let's let's try to rain this into
sort of a little bit dumb down to be you know,
in a.
Speaker 5 (07:55):
Way, maybe the songs musically are more similar than they are,
you know, far arranging. But you know, the other thing
is another producer, if he were functioning as a real
producer and wanting the cloud and the control, I mean,
we should remind ourselves that you and I and Elliott
were all sharing the producer role. And and for that reason,
(08:17):
I think Elliott was hanging back a little more than
a sort of producer producer who was the only producer
on the record would do. And so it was a
collaborative effort that way as well. And I think you know,
he liked that and wanted it that way. And he's
the kind of reticent guy until it's important to speak up,
and then he speaks. And that's that's that's one of the.
Speaker 4 (08:38):
Only things he said at that lunch was no covers, like.
Speaker 5 (08:42):
Yeah, no, it's he's he's got you know, strength, but
but he waits a long time and He only speaks
up when it when he knows it's important.
Speaker 4 (08:49):
In fact, he's sitting right here and he hasn't said
a word.
Speaker 6 (08:52):
It's not.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
Well, we're waiting for that. He'll he'll finish the episode.
So how did you split up the producing duties? How
did that work?
Speaker 4 (09:01):
Well, John did most of the work.
Speaker 5 (09:04):
Well thing is a funny term, and there's so many
there's so much overlap nowadays in the way most people
put a record together. There's overlap between the songwriting, the arranging,
the producing, the engineering, the recording.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
You know.
Speaker 4 (09:18):
So, John, you had made demos before we met with
Elliott Shiner, and we had made demos too, and then
I had added my vocals to them. But I think
you pretty much were the one that made those demos.
You played everything we recorded. Anything that I recorded, I
came over to your place, and some.
Speaker 5 (09:40):
We didn't have time to really demo, but we but.
Speaker 4 (09:43):
Even Yeah, and then there was the one like the
title track, which you made the whole song and made
a demo so we could hear all these vocal parts,
all the harmonies, the type of bass treatment, the type
of treatment, and the energy. And some of these songs
were I mean could have just been scripted. Obviously, we
(10:06):
didn't do that to the guy who.
Speaker 5 (10:08):
They were pretty well thought before we got to this.
That's what we wanted to be that way.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
The title track, A couple of tracks have it. They've
got like a New Orleans feel to that.
Speaker 5 (10:18):
That one certainly does.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
Yeah, yeah, you've got that kind of New Orleans organ
And a couple other songs. Was that deliberate? Was that?
Did that come from something?
Speaker 4 (10:26):
Or I think Let's walk became a sort of the
drummer was playing that kind of beat. I don't know
if there was conceive of it that way really, but
I think I changed it a little bit.
Speaker 5 (10:38):
We tried it like that in rehearsal, and we sort
of liked that it felt a little more spirited and
not so sort of safe.
Speaker 4 (10:45):
I mean, it's a march, and what is more appropriate
to feeling like you're dancing while you're walking, you know,
feeling music and walking that's American? What's more American? Then? Yeah?
And I think the New Orleans, the New Orleans.
Speaker 5 (11:05):
It's a natural part of all of these musicians, you know,
sort of repertoire, you know, in terms of styles, you know,
because it's music. We always we've all loved so much
for so.
Speaker 4 (11:13):
Long, you know, and it's at the heart of what
do you think, because like to me, I have decided
that American music is one of the main important things
that we have to offer the world, and we don't
even know what we have. We don't necessarily recognize it
(11:36):
very well. We don't understand stylistically how much crossover there is,
how much like how blurry that is, and yet how
also steeped really in different like cultures that are identities.
It is. At the same time, you don't think to
(11:57):
say I'm more country and I'm more bluegrass and I'm
more People still do that, which is so odd because
there is no those things were never separate.
Speaker 5 (12:07):
And musically well, you know, anytime money gets involved, you know,
the categorizations help sell it.
Speaker 4 (12:14):
So that's why they're yeah, but I'm trying to I'm
trying to step even further back. You know.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
Now most people, of course think you're French right, you
are American right, But you did live in France and
that was your kind of musical education. Do you think
you have got that kind of outsider's view of American culture?
Does that help?
Speaker 4 (12:37):
It helps immensely There's several things about it. There's being
American in another country and realizing and listening to people
talk about del Vandos and you know, Kulan Zogong and
like who's cool and Zagong and who are Zabita's Who's
(12:58):
what is that? I've never heard of that band before?
Oh the Beatles? Oh okay okay. So like just like
realizing what people talk about, how people talk about America
that were my age at the time, when I was twelve,
thirteen or older, you know. And then secondly, what happened
when I became a teenagers I met American ex patriots
who I would have never met. That's something that Dan
(13:21):
Fitzgerald said. He was from Kingston, New York, so upstate
New York, but he used to hang out in the
Bowery and I used to take the train over to
Canal Street over and Broadway. I would have been in
New York City at the same time as him, but
I was a young, like maybe adolescent or teenage white
girl from South Brooklyn and he would have been a
(13:46):
middle aged black man from Kingston. We would have never
spoken to each other, even though we might have had
all of these cultural affinities. That were hard to find.
But because we saw each other in Paris, we became,
you know, like family eventually, and of course it changed
(14:07):
my life to be there because of that. So it
was interesting. It's one thing to try. It's very hard
to try to understand another culture. I mean, you know,
I lived in France for a long time. My mother
has lived there ever since nineteen eighty seven. She's still
learning and we're still talking about attitudes and different types
(14:28):
of like sayings that you might have to describe something.
And like just today she said, there's a French saying.
Women talk about French men, they say, you know, they're
only interested until they have killed the beast. That's the
literal translation of they catch you a woman is the
(14:52):
wildness has to be beaten out of you. You have
to be tamed, I think, is what it's kind of saying.
And then then they're interested and they'll move on to
other things.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
But I'll try I'll try that on my wife.
Speaker 4 (15:04):
I don't suggest it, you see American.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
I'm not an American. She is an American, and don't
I don't think I would survive that conversation. I think
there would be some killing. But it wouldn't be her.
So but we should back up because we haven't talked
about Dan. There's a song about him on this record.
Can you just back up and explain how you met
him in Paris and who he is.
Speaker 4 (15:30):
Daniel William Fitzgerald was born in nineteen thirty three in Kingston,
New York. Dan went to ministry school, he went to
law school. He became disillusioned by both of those things.
Joined the army in the fifties and that's what brought
him over to Europe. And then he just started going
(15:51):
back and forth and creating his life. And apparently in
nineteen seventy eight he was hanging out with some friends,
some American friends he had met ex patriots in Paris
find each other right, and he said, I want to
go to JazzFest this year in New Orleans, and let's
start a band in order to go down there. Somehow
(16:13):
he knew all these old Bessie Smith and My Rainey songs,
he knew them by heart. And there's a Ma Rainey
song called The Loss and Wandering Blues. And he started
a band called the Lost Wandering Blues and Jazz Band.
He made a washtub, he turned it into a washtub base.
He painted it and he started this band. They went
around from that time on. They went to Europe, and
(16:34):
if there was an American who was going to wander
around Paris and they bumped into him, they would bump
into him on the street and they'd recognize him, and
then he'd make friends and we'd stay at somebody's house
that night. We'd go play near a restaurant. The restaurant
would come out and say, come inside and have a meal.
You can hang out with us. And it was a
(16:56):
lifestyle that he created. I come along to Paris and
about twenty years later, eighty nine ninety, I was about fifteen,
joined a different street band that was in the same scene.
Speaker 3 (17:12):
At this point, you played ukulele or guitar or what
did you I had.
Speaker 4 (17:17):
A guitar, but I couldn't play any of the songs
that we were singing. You know. People said, oh, what
songs do you want to sing? I said, well, first
I was passing the hat for somebody, and then I
heard these guys singing and I said, you know, I
could probably do better than them. So I volunteered myself
(17:37):
as singing and they were like, oh, she wants to
sing a song. Okay, sure, what do you know? And
so it was Georgia in Summertime and that's it. And
then I thought, well, I know all these other songs, but.
Speaker 3 (17:49):
I your mother taught you songs? Is that?
Speaker 4 (17:52):
Yeah? We used to play ukuleles together, and she sang
all the time. She sang every morning, she sang all
over the house. And it was really the only time
that my father was not being kind of tyrant was
when we would sit down, the two of us and
(18:13):
sing together. He would just stop and be quiet and
listen and say, oh, I guess I can't. I can't
do anything better than that. But the rest of the
time he was telling us what to do.
Speaker 3 (18:24):
But he was gone by the time you were in Paris.
Speaker 4 (18:27):
Yeah, we moved to Paris. Right after they divorced. He
moved out. He was living somewhere in the city for
the rest of his life, somewhere in New York. Eventually
he moved out to Corona, Queens in the end, Yeah, what.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
Made you want to start busting?
Speaker 4 (18:43):
The first thing that I remember was that I was
because I was in France and I couldn't speak the language,
and I wanted to make friends. I would go around
I would wander around the neighborhood with my guitar and
just sit around and play while other people were talking
to each other kids. And one day somebody threw some
money in the case and I remember going, wait, what
(19:06):
just happened here? So that was the revelation for me.
It was like, oh, hey, you think I could actually
make money doing this? This would be amazing. And then
I did wander into Paris, I saw street I somehow
we saw street musicians at one point, and I remember thinking,
I've got to go back here to find these people,
and I did. I did a like a trek through
(19:27):
the city trying to find them, and that's when I
saw Danny's band. And I didn't speak to him that day,
but it was absolutely memorable because they all had hats on,
they had microphones and amps, and it was so weird.
It was a weird type of hybrid of American music,
like it bring kind of full circle to what we
(19:48):
were talking about, because he had this sort of Black
American musical culture that I had never heard. I had
heard some early blues from my parents' records, but it
was mostly like stuff that had gone into universities, like
Robert Johnson, Like there was a certain group of black
(20:10):
artists that were part of the folk movement, but then
there were all these other blues jazz artists that I
don't know, Like that wasn't my experience. I didn't hear
some of that stuff. I knew fat Swaller, I'd heard
a lot of Fat Swaller, a lot of some Louis Armstrong.
(20:32):
So but Danny was playing early early stuff, early jazz
almost like rag time stuff, or if you listen to
Bessie Smith records, it's right in the middle. It's after ragtime,
because I think ragtime, I think of ragtime is like
Scott Joplin, So that's eighteen nineties basically. And then if
(20:55):
you think of swing, I think of the nineteen thirties,
it's post depression. But then like there's this period in
the through the twenties where even the rhythm is like
not absolutely sort of the approach to how the shuffle
feels is sort of like still in between those two spaces.
(21:16):
It's not completely laid back yet, but you kind of
feel it's starting to lay back. But Billie Holliday's first recording,
when she was sixteen, was in the thirties and you
can hear that the bands, the dance bands are now
starting to do that thing where I suppose the Great
(21:38):
Migration is influencing that too, right, because you have country
blues becoming urbanized. And if you listen to Bessie Smith,
like Ma Rainy is really country, you don't have a
lot of harmonic changes. Really is sort of the in
a folky world. It's a folk thing. But with Bessie
(22:00):
you've got piano players and guitar players and they're playing
all these passing chords and there's like diminished chords, and
we're like little changes in tempo and these verses that
never repeat or these sections that never repeat that are
quite complicated. And I believe that that's more of like
because of the urban influence where they go to the
(22:23):
cities and you're hearing a lot of a lot more
different kinds of music.
Speaker 3 (22:26):
What grabbed you about that music.
Speaker 4 (22:29):
Well, it's harmonically accessible to me, Like it's a pop,
you know, dance type of music with some more complexity
to it, but not to the point where it's ethereal
and atonal. Yet it hasn't really gone over crossed over.
(22:50):
So for me to learn music, to learn chords because
I was so fascinated by hearing like, you know, some
cool song like across the Universe from the Beatles. Like
I remember thinking like, how are you supposed to play
that on a ukulele? This is really hard. That was
my biggest problem, was like, well, where's the harmony coming from?
(23:11):
I just don't get it.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
Well, you know the key there is you only play
the George Harrison songs because he used to write onles.
Speaker 4 (23:17):
Oh really yeah, definitely, Here Comes the Sun. It's like
one of the first ones that I was like, yes.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
Yeah or something. I think he yeah, he used to.
Speaker 4 (23:26):
He used to use a oh that's beautiful and then
he would just play sound like that.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
He would just play with the kpo right when he
played it in the guitar, so it would be in
the same Yeah.
Speaker 4 (23:34):
I mean I'm not that I wasn't that good a
ukulele player either.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
Let's get a ukulele out here right now?
Speaker 4 (23:39):
Not no, no, And I.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
Heard you like when you start a guitar. You liked
Freddy Green.
Speaker 4 (23:44):
Well right, because he was in the small group with
Billie Holliday and those incredible recordings that they made with
Teddy Wilson Lester Young, Freddy Green, Philly Joe Jones maybe
on drums and some of those those recordings. So I
think they made like one hundred records, you know, during
(24:09):
those two years, maybe two or three years, thirty nine forty.
It was all wartime too. I wonder if it wasn't
like FDR grants that made that happen. Those records are
absolutely like, they're just so good.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
We have to take a quick break and then we'll
be back with more from Madeline Peru and John Harrington.
We're back with more from Madeline Peru and John Harrington.
So tell me then, how how did you and Dan
then connect?
Speaker 4 (24:42):
You heard him, Well, he taught me a lot of
this music. I heard him, and then I couldn't find
him again because apparently he had a car and he
would leave town. I thought that was the most amazing
thing ever, that the big Mercedes that would like just
barely fit in the walking street where we were all
hanging out in those days. So whenever he came to town,
(25:04):
you knew it because he was parked in front of
the cafe. But I didn't see him for a couple
of months. I joined another band, I sang with them.
We actually got a job singing in a club, and
apparently I was very badly behaved, and I drank because
I only had two songs to sing per set, so
(25:24):
I just sat and drank alcohol the rest of the time,
and by the end of the night they said I
wasn't behaving, so I can only imagine was just basically
everything looked bad at the point at that age, I
think it was still only fifteen or something, and I
had dropped, and I basically the high school told me,
(25:46):
you know, if you ever don't show up anymore, that's it.
You're out. So I took the gig, and I didn't
show up, and I just assumed I was out, and
then I was out, and then I ran out of
money from that gig. And then there was a rainy day.
Of course, if you're a street musician, you watch in
the weather all the time, and it was a rainy
day and there was no one anywhere, and I had like,
(26:07):
you know, seven francs or something, which was enough for
me to buy half a beer. Whatever it was I had.
I literally decided, at ten in the morning, I'm going
to buy a drink with this. So I sat at
this bar with this beer and looked out the window
and I said, what have I done to myself? And
at that moment I saw Danny across the street, standing
under a covered walking passageway, just standing there. I'm just like,
(26:35):
what in the world. So I was just ran over
to him. I said, Danny, you said I could sing
in your band. He said, okay, go ahead, you have
to audition first. I said, sure, no problem, He said
go ahead. And then I said, I what here now?
And of course I couldn't play any of these songs
(26:57):
on guitar, so I snapped my fingers and I sang jeepers,
creepers right in his face, and he stared me down
the entire time, and it was so embarrassing, and I
just just nervous, you know. I thought, Oh, this is it,
you know. And then he was so nice. He just
turned to be He went from like making me dread
(27:20):
every minute to just being completely warm and said, okay,
you're in the band, but you have to audition for
the other guy as well. He's our musical director and
he's in Holland and we're going to go there tomorrow.
So come back tomorrow and we'll go to Holland. We're
(27:42):
going to go to Holland together, and then I didn't
have anywhere to stay that night, so I was really,
he was your mother, not My mother had told me
if I didn't go to school that I couldn't stay
at home anymore. But I'd dropped out of school several
times by this point, right, so we had gotten to
(28:04):
a point where she was just like, well, you're not
allowed to do that anymore. You can't be like this anymore.
And she was right. But I got Danny to let
me join the band, and I still didn't have any
anywhere to stay that night, and I didn't tell him,
and I didn't know him. I didn't know if he
would have helped me out. But I had this other friend.
(28:26):
I went to the guy and he said, yeah, okay,
you can sleep on my fortnight if you're joining Janny's band.
It's cool. It's gonna be great because he knew Danny.
But then the next day, Danny just sat around drinking
coffees all day long, and I sat outside the cafe
with my guitar, just wondering, like, I hope we're leved.
We didn't leave.
Speaker 7 (28:45):
I had to go back to my friend and he
opened the door and said, what the fuck are you
doing back here?
Speaker 4 (28:49):
Oh, Danny, you know, okay, you can spend another night here.
And it's happened three or four times. Guy cussed at me.
Speaker 6 (28:59):
What the fuck went?
Speaker 4 (29:00):
Is Danny gonna leave? Then we did leave. I got
and I joined the band and I started learning this music.
The musical direct or, quote unquote was a wonderful guitar
player named Chris Monin, who was actually also a teenager himself.
He was studying guitar at the Conservatory, the Jazz Conservatory
(29:23):
in southern Holland.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
So how long did you play with with Danny's band?
Speaker 4 (29:27):
I played with Danny's I tried to leave his band
a couple of times, and then I ended up coming back.
But I mean, I think I was about seventeen, Yeah,
seventeen when when we got to the end of this,
there was a documentary. This film student was making a
documentary about us, and he said, come on, you guys
need to play in Harlem. And I remember thinking, why
(29:52):
on earth would we go and play this play in Harlem?
And Danny took it as a challenge, I think, and
so we did and people threw bottles at us. They
said you better not you know, set up your amps
in front of my house. What do you crazy? Which
you know, that was crazy, It was bad idea. But
(30:15):
we ended up finding a place that we could set
up and it was out in the court building there
on one twenty fifth. Anyway, when the documentary was over,
the people that had funded this documentary were suddenly had
no money to pay us anything at all, and so
everybody had to fall back on their own. Drathers and
(30:37):
I had nothing to fall back on. So I left
the band at that moment because I had absolutely nothing,
and I hitchhiked from wherever we were in Denmark back
to Paris. So I played in the subway after that
and tried to do like with my guitar, tried to
use some of the stuff I learned being in the band,
and didn't do too well, but I learned some a
(30:59):
little bit of discipline. And then Danny would see me.
I would turn around. This is how Danny went. He
was so such an amazing because I'd be playing in
this subway and everything, and I'd feel somebody staring at me,
and I would look and way at the back of
the car. He'd be over over in the corner and
he had been following me, just listening to me, trying
(31:22):
to see what I was doing, and I just remember,
what are you doing? But it was so sweet. He
actually just we were family, and that's just the way
it was always going to be, you know, with his
potato salads, that he'd make these incredibly huge tubs of
food for parties, and he would throw parties on his boat.
(31:44):
And he had kept let me live on his boat
for a while when I was in the band too.
He had a boat outside of the seine.
Speaker 3 (31:51):
Were you writing at this point or are you just?
Were you just performing?
Speaker 4 (31:55):
I wanted to write songs and Danny told me I
shouldn't do that. You know, I certainly didn't know what
I was doing. Basically, my approach to songwriting was like
everything else at that time. It was like close your
eyes and wish, make a wish and see what happens.
(32:15):
And I really don't think I could ever figure out
writing until this record. I feel like I had a
breakthrough because for the first time I decided before sitting
down to finish a project or to write it and
say this is what I'm going to stand by, this
(32:37):
is what I believe is the song I want I
decided I need to find out what's already there that's
not being said, and just try and say it. And
if I'm not saying it, if it's not clear, then
the job's not finished.
Speaker 3 (32:50):
You've written lots of songs in the past. How is
that different?
Speaker 4 (32:55):
I suppose in the past, I've always felt like I
was looking to discover what the song was, that it
was already that it was somebody else's song. Now it's mine,
even though it was obviously it was still me doing it.
But I think that COVID, all of the things that
matter in the world became so pronounced. And I'm gonna
(33:21):
borrow Carnel West's furbiage on this. It's the catastrophe that
we had to face. Just how to how to deal
with catastrophe. Now, I didn't suffer any catastrophe during COVID,
but I just as most of my life I've witnessed it.
Speaker 3 (33:42):
I wouldn't much do a song. Now, what do you want?
Speaker 4 (33:44):
Let's play a song.
Speaker 5 (33:46):
You're gonna play Fine True Love. Yeah, this is the
opening track on the record. Okay, you got it?
Speaker 3 (33:53):
Just me.
Speaker 6 (34:00):
Oh, let's go down to the.
Speaker 4 (34:02):
Vayume Fine True Love.
Speaker 8 (34:08):
Listen to the blue booze, the Gospel.
Speaker 9 (34:11):
Of Jeesus, feel the summer sunshine in the sun.
Speaker 8 (34:18):
Breazees, hear the little baby bees whimper and cry, make
a little promise, Learn how to die all.
Speaker 6 (34:32):
Let's go on to the levee.
Speaker 10 (34:36):
Find true love. Listen to the brass bands, do.
Speaker 8 (34:42):
The second line, pick a little guitar, spill a little
wine here the little.
Speaker 9 (34:52):
Babies whimper and cry, Make a little promise, learn how
to die.
Speaker 4 (35:03):
All have proms to be open.
Speaker 8 (35:10):
To feel the joy and pain.
Speaker 6 (35:16):
The only way to make a life is to face.
Speaker 4 (35:28):
Try again.
Speaker 10 (35:31):
So let's go on to the hilltop to find true love.
Listen to the seasons from above the tree line.
Speaker 9 (35:45):
Pick a little fresh con spell little moon shine.
Speaker 10 (35:52):
Hear the little babe bae whimper and cry, Make a
little promise.
Speaker 4 (36:01):
Learn how to die.
Speaker 7 (36:03):
Oh yes, let's go on to the shoreline and find
(36:24):
too low.
Speaker 9 (36:27):
Listen to the ocean thunder in the sky. Feel a
little empty and run a little.
Speaker 4 (36:38):
Dry, give a little baby bees.
Speaker 10 (36:43):
Whimp and cry, make a little promise, Learn how to die.
Speaker 8 (36:51):
All a promise.
Speaker 6 (36:55):
To be all open, to feed the jaw pain, be all.
Speaker 4 (37:06):
Only way to me good life.
Speaker 8 (37:11):
It's too face. Try again.
Speaker 4 (37:20):
Let's go down to the bayou, find true love.
Speaker 10 (37:28):
Listen to the blues, the Gospel of Cheesees.
Speaker 8 (37:34):
Feel the summer sunshine and the sudden.
Speaker 9 (37:38):
Breathe, see the little babies whimper and cry.
Speaker 10 (37:47):
Make a little promise, Make a little promise, make a
little promise. Learn how to die.
Speaker 3 (38:04):
Beautiful. A little feedback there right at the end. So
tell me about writing that song. Do you remember how
it started?
Speaker 4 (38:14):
Uh? Yeah, John, and I remember very clearly because we
worked hard. I think the title and those three words
find true love were the hardest part of the whole song,
which now seems like the most obvious choice. But at
the time I was using the phrase eat, pray love
from the book, Right.
Speaker 3 (38:35):
Did you think that was going to be the song
or were you like, I'll just fix that later.
Speaker 5 (38:39):
It was the whole song. I mean, you wrote the
whole song using with that, with that as the title.
But we threw lyrics back and forth quite a lot
on that, and at some point we chucked it, you know,
because it wasn't working with.
Speaker 4 (38:53):
Yeah, it wasn't necessarily the right thing.
Speaker 5 (38:57):
I know, but it was the springboard for you.
Speaker 4 (38:59):
Yeah, the idea of eat pray Love is very powerful
because there are three distinct sounds, three distinct one syllable
words that are actions and nouns and worlds unto themselves.
It's great writing, and I read the book and everything,
(39:21):
but I wanted the meaning of the song to have
its own life, and so I think on some level
we knew that it probably wasn't going to survive scrutiny.
It was sort of can you do better than that?
And then I was like, well, I'm not as good
as you know, Elizabeth Gilbert on this, so.
Speaker 5 (39:38):
I don't know what to say no, But sometimes you
need that to just to continue working on it. Just
having any words, you know, the blank sheet of paper
is the terrifying thing. When you have anything down, then
it's editable, you know. And so it wasn't a big
jump to go from Eat Prey Love.
Speaker 4 (39:57):
Yeah, that was my It was the banks.
Speaker 1 (40:00):
It helps.
Speaker 3 (40:01):
One of the obvious word choices to jump out in
that song is learn how to die. Just about anybody
else would say learn how to fly, learn how to
do all these other things because it's a very joyful song.
What brought that on?
Speaker 4 (40:15):
Well for me? That's a direct quote from Cornell West
and I'd been listening to Cornell West quite a bit.
Speaker 1 (40:20):
Now.
Speaker 4 (40:20):
I don't know who Cornell West might be quoting when
he says, in order to learn how to love, you
have to learn how to die, but he says it
quite a bit in a lot of different contexts, some
of his lectures that he's done and some of his
speaking engagements that he's done. But whatever I could find
mostly on YouTube during that time when for a good
(40:41):
couple of years after George Floyd, but even yeah, even
before that, you know, I was just following him because
he had a voice. It was a voice of reason
on television, you know, if you needed somebody, if you
wanted to hear somebody on television on the news speak
to you. It was slim Pickens for me, like I
(41:03):
felt a direct mirroring of my childhood with my alcoholic
father and the violent, tyrant tyranny in that world, and
the escape or rather the survival of that environment as
a child at playing music with my mother was like
a mirror image for me in twenty twenty of seeing
(41:25):
police brutality and the search for solace consolation, a path
forward using the tools that I still to day are
the only tools that really I've acquired, which is listening
to intuitively to poetry and music and being trying to
(41:49):
be part of that tradition.
Speaker 2 (41:52):
After this last break, we'll be back with the rest
of Madeline Peru and John Harrington. We're back with the
rest of Bruce Hellum's conversation with Madeline Peru and John Harrington.
Speaker 3 (42:06):
You said in the past about how particularly love songs
are political. Is it because for you it takes you
into a kind of a different place in your life,
or it's like being relieved of a feeling of tyranny,
a feeling of oppression that's political as well. It's not innotonus, Yeah,
(42:29):
not in a cynical, terrible way, in a very profound way. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (42:33):
And also just the desire to be heard if you
need help, or to feel like you could be heard,
you know, if you're going to need help because something
is going to come down the pike at you and
you're going to need to survive that. And it's just
a technique that I think a lot of kids of
alcoholic parents have are aware of that they was part
(42:55):
of their way of growing up. But I think when
I hear somebody like Cornel West turn around and say
we need to talk about justice is what love looks
like in public, and tenderness is love in private. And
it's like, yeah, that's These are not, you know, radical ideas,
(43:17):
they're loving ideas. They might be radical in a sort
of Christian way, but I don't think you have to
be Christian because I'm not going to go for it
that way. I needed to say the words the Gospel
of Jesus in the song, and that was an interesting
moment because I wanted to talk about the message without
the religion, and I'm not sure if that's even possible
(43:40):
for some people to grasp what.
Speaker 3 (43:41):
I'm interested with. The feeling you get from Cornell West,
which is someone saying true, sometimes messy things out loud,
is that this is a stretch. Is that the same
feeling you got listening to those great old records you
love so much, like Ma Rainey and Billie Holliday. Is
it the same kind of truth telling in a way.
Speaker 4 (44:06):
Well, it's interesting that you say that. A very interesting
question because it's definitely still taboo right now to open
the discussion on violence within a relationship, within a romantic relationship,
and it can ruin the feminist message that, for example,
(44:30):
Billie Holliday or Bessie Smith or mal Rainie would have
when they sing about being having a man that mistreats
them and how much they still love him. But you
know that's the point. I mean, love is messy. We
are human. Nobody ever says I'm always right and they're
(44:52):
always wrong unless you're not really looking at finding the
truth because you've got to listen to more than one
perspective to find the truth, even if you don't want
to agree with it, you have to be aware that
it's there.
Speaker 3 (45:07):
Your breakthrough album was Careless Love. The reason it's called
careless Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4 (45:12):
That was the WC. Handy song when Bessie smith recording
was the one that influenced me. And then I met
Odetta and she was singing it in her own way
with her different lyrics and discussing the meaning of that song,
and we perform it all the time, and it's definitely
been one hundred years now.
Speaker 3 (45:30):
I think, tell me about how I wish on this record?
Speaker 4 (45:34):
So how I wish? I think that's a song that
I chiseled at like it felt like like maybe what
sculptors do when they see a shape inside of another
shape and they remove what's in the way of that,
And I feel like that was my job, especially with
(45:54):
the lyrics.
Speaker 3 (45:55):
Okay, let me ask you first, then what was in
the way.
Speaker 4 (45:59):
I had to accept that I wanted to be able
to say something to somebody that didn't know me or
anything about me or anybody else. I wanted it to
be a blank slate starting point, but a direct conversation
was a lot of my songs tend to be like that.
(46:19):
I'm talking to somebody.
Speaker 3 (46:21):
Do you always have somebody in mind when you're No?
I don't think so, did you?
Speaker 4 (46:27):
In this one, I'm probably talking to myself. Okay, well
that's making it making somebody else suffer, you know, the
conversation the monologue?
Speaker 3 (46:36):
Is that one of the ones you wanted to play
very much?
Speaker 4 (46:39):
Yeah? Okay, please one two three, one two?
Speaker 10 (47:01):
How I wish I could bring.
Speaker 8 (47:09):
And slavening and to bear.
Speaker 4 (47:19):
The fat of each chaininess at to which.
Speaker 8 (47:33):
I've been a pot.
Speaker 6 (47:37):
All my Blackmerican hot.
Speaker 8 (47:48):
Wol I'd give and a learn.
Speaker 9 (47:55):
Should some pea and concern.
Speaker 10 (48:03):
Fils empty dread.
Speaker 1 (48:11):
On the world.
Speaker 8 (48:14):
We tread between fear and disgrace all my red American face.
Speaker 1 (48:35):
Would my life.
Speaker 8 (48:39):
Be in vain.
Speaker 4 (48:43):
Pifffin strove.
Speaker 8 (48:46):
Some small pain.
Speaker 1 (48:52):
I gave up the road to this screen.
Speaker 4 (49:02):
And spa.
Speaker 8 (49:05):
Then would my it bigga?
Speaker 6 (49:12):
Oh my white American.
Speaker 11 (49:21):
Skied no more, no more, endlessly.
Speaker 1 (49:58):
Journeying.
Speaker 8 (50:02):
Yet to he freedom.
Speaker 4 (50:12):
Must we all be taught a.
Speaker 8 (50:19):
No name shuns cross before the truth is whole?
Speaker 1 (50:32):
Oh, my lost.
Speaker 8 (50:37):
American.
Speaker 1 (50:41):
So no more, no more, no more.
Speaker 3 (51:17):
You may have to upgrade your opinion of your songwriting.
And I think that's a great song.
Speaker 4 (51:23):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (51:24):
I loved everything you were doing on the low strings
and the accompaniment. It's very uh, it was very Freddy Green,
I thought, using that D string.
Speaker 5 (51:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (51:33):
Actually John arranged it with a with a different tuning
for the for the record, you did a love got
the low D in there, and it was beautiful arranging.
And uh And I'm glad. I'm glad that that it
turned out to be a beautiful arrangement because I remember
John telling me, what are you doing. I was like,
(51:55):
there's something wrong, there's something missing, don't change it. It
was good.
Speaker 5 (52:00):
Now, this was one that needed very little and we
were you were working out for quite what while you're working.
Speaker 3 (52:09):
Quite a while.
Speaker 4 (52:09):
He was trying to teach me how to play the song,
and he said, well, you wrote it. I said, no,
I didn't do that.
Speaker 5 (52:15):
You would send You would send stuff like, because you
were working for quite a long time on the lyric.
You would send newer versions, you know, with different lyrics,
so I could hear them and I would notice that,
well she changed the melody there, or she changed that
chord progression. They're like, no, what are you doing. I
loved what you did early, so I mean so I
had to sort of keep cracking the whip so you
(52:37):
would just not lose what was great about in the beginning.
The first version of this basically had all the music
and you know, melody and chords and mostly the form too.
And there's no single version of a song in any
former incarnation that that was just yours alone or just
mine alone that was better than the collaboration turned out
(52:59):
to be. So yeah, in all cases, the collaboration I
think helped, and I find that's almost always true.
Speaker 3 (53:06):
We should end there. I've got a million other questions,
but I've taken a lot of your time and it's
been fabulous. You real treat.
Speaker 2 (53:16):
Thanks again to Madeline Peru and John Harrington for talking
about the making of their new album Let's Walk. You
can hear it along with other songs from Madeline on
a playlist at broken record podcast dot com. Subscribe to
our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash broken record Podcast,
where you can find all of our new episodes. You
can follow us on Twitter.
Speaker 3 (53:36):
At broken Record.
Speaker 2 (53:38):
Broken Record is produced and edited by Leah Rose, with
marketing help from Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer
is Ben Tolliney. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries.
If you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider
subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription
that offers bonus content and ad free listening for four
(54:00):
ninety nine a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple
podcast subscriptions. And if you like this show, please remember
to share, rate, and review us on your podcast. Staff
are theme music's by Canny Beats. I'm justin Richmond.
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