Winter 2012 marks the U.S. release of singer/songwriter Chelsea Crowell’s second album, Crystal City. To mark the upcoming release, Crowell was kind enough to do another interview with me. And her frequent collaborator/producer Loney Hutchins jumped in with his perspective. Crowell is giving folks plenty of places to give a listen (or watch a video) to her new music. My thanks to Crowell and Hutchins for their time on this email interview.
Tim O’Shea: I love the video for I’m Gonna Freeze, where did you find the archival footage to use for the video? Or was that present day video made to look vintage?
Chelsea Crowell: I don’t know, ask my favorite person to work with Colm O’Herlihy. I entrust him with whatever and he never fails. Plus part of it is that it’s a surprise for me too. He is one of about one I would let take over full control of something like that.
Hopefully folks remember when I interviewed Chelsea Crowell about her music. Back in that interview in June, I intentionally did not mention who she was related to, out of respect of the fact the mere mention of the names could easily derail the focus on the musical discussion we had. But now, thanks to a tweet by her mother (and the fact I double-checked with her mother to make sure it was OK I wrote about it here), it’s of interest to discuss here relations, at least partially.
Currently Crowell is in the studio, recording her next release, and as you hopefully know, music does not get made for free, people.
If you look to your right, this is just one of the items that Crowell has inherited from her family and has decided to sell to help defray the costs of her next release. When you visit the itemsthat Crowell has for sale at 1stdibs.com, you will see that they are things she has inherited from her late step-grandmother, June Carter-Cash as well as from her mother, Rosanne Cash.
Again, I don’t mention the family connections to minimize Crowell’s efforts, but in fact to hopefully help fund her musical pursuits.
Speaking of Crowell’s music, in her August newsletter to fans she discussed how the recording process has gone so far:
“Last we left I was high on the hog of a promising endeavor. Damn that hog, though I remain a vegetarian, that tall swine decided that hard work is best done sitting ground level. L.J. Hutchins of Cleft music and I have been working very literally sitting on the floor since June. Two mics, one for the gut string Gibson I refuse to part with and one for my vocals sitting cross leg-ed on his studio floor, hammering out sometimes hammered s**t and sometimes concluding a day with ‘did we get that one? I think we got that one…’ Every song so far has been live takes of the straightforward way in which they were written. Alas, embarking on a sophomore solo record means you just might be embarking on a career instead of a hobby. But let’s be honest, we have not been feverishly wiping our brows at the end of every seven day week. In short, this record is taking longer than expected because of a few incidents of the unexpected (love it when you can make it work using the same word twice in a sentence) . Rest easy to all three of you that care, all the material is there, either not fully mixed or just still a demo waiting to be flushed out.”
Here’s hoping these items for sale help her to get her music to the masses in a timeframe and a format that works best for her and her growing audience. (And if I’m lucky, I’ll get to interview her again when it comes out).
I broaden my musical knowledge in various ways. In the case of Chelsea Crowell, I found out about her music via Twitter. I recently e-mail interviewed Crowell on the eve of her entering the studio to record her second solo effort (she entered the studio on June 8). Her first solo effort, Chelsea Crowell(also available from Amazon and on iTunes), was released last year, while her earlier collaborative band effort, Jane Only (also available from Amazon and on iTunes), was released last month (both from Cleft Music). Before jumping into the interview, here are snippets from her bio: “Chelsea Crowell is an American songwriter, singer, artist and author. She has lived in New York, Baltimore, Memphis, Charleston, Colorado and Nashville. Having grown up in a musical family, she began writing and playing guitar as a teenager … Her real start in music began when she moved back to Nashville in 2004 with guitarist, Stephen Braren. They lived together on the top floor of a now bulldozed, pre war walk up apartment building on 31st Ave called Maberta. It had a clear view of the Nashville skyline at the time. It was there they would shoot fireworks from the window towards the Parthenon but always hitting the neighbors across the street. The two eventually formed the band “Jane Only” with Lincoln Kaufman. The group became Stephen, Chelsea, Marty Linville and Fletcher Bangs Watson the Sixth … In ’08, Chelsea began her first solo project with producer and fellow generational conduit, Loney John Hutchins. … Originally meant to be an experiment while band mate Braren was on tour with band, Cheap Time, by early ’09 a full length record had taken form. It is being released on vinyl, cd, and online through Hutchins’ Cleft Music imprint … She is currently working on an opera as well as her sophomore record.” My thanks to Cleft Music‘s Hutchins for putting me in contact with Crowell, and to Crowell, most importantly, for her valuable time and thoughts.
Tim O’Shea: What was the inspiration for “Where the Hell is Robert E. Lee” (Cut 10 from your solo release)?
Chelsea Crowell: Aside from being from the south and having a bit of an American civil war history fetish, I wanted to write a song that was historically accurate. Aside from the line in the song about Sal T, who was my ancestor Sal Taylor Willoughby, the song can be fact checked. I have a note book of biography songs I wrote that I hope to make an entire record of when I am done with the projects I am working on now. For the sake of my first debut album, there was plenty of love-lorn-lost and low down emotion, so it was between ‘Robert E Lee’ or a song about ‘typhoid Mary’ just to throw off the singular heartbreak. The civil war was a different sort of heartbreak.
