Tone Glow 044.5: Ashley Paul
An interview with Ashley Paul for a special midweek issue
Ashley Paul
Ashley Paul is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, and recording artist currently residing in London. Her latest full-length, Ray, was produced in the time since lockdown began due to COVID-19 restrictions. Ray is her first album to feature instrumentalists Otto Willberg and Yoni Silver. Her recent Window Flower (May, 2020) was included in the first batch of releases in Cafe OTO’s Takuroku imprint (which “aims to provide a way to help sustain both Cafe OTO and the artists involved” in the immediate presence of COVID-19 and related restrictions). It was written, produced, and performed with her partner Ben Pritchard and her daughter Cora Ray. Leah B. Levinson talked with Ashley Paul on November 15th, 2020 to discuss her parents, drawing, her 2020 releases, and more.
Leah B. Levinson: Hey!
Ashley Paul: Hi! Hold on, I’ll turn my camera on.
Ok!
Uhhhh, there.
Hey!
Hey.
How are you?
Good, how are you?
I’m good, I’m good.
It’s awesome you get to be outdoors
I know, it’s beautiful out here. I’m so lucky. I always have these Zoom calls with my family on the east coast and they’ll be freezing in the evening and I’ll just be hanging out outside. It’s really nice.
Yeah, it’s black outside in London [at 4PM] and it has been raining for weeks.
Oh no. Well on the other hand, we’ve had basically a single day of rain since maybe March.
Yeah, that’s not very convenient.
And we had, maybe ten miles from my house, these wildfires that were a-hundred-seventy-thousand acres…
Oh, I think I read about this like a month ago or something.
Yeah. They lasted a month. It was surreal. We had just moved into this house so it was just really strange.
Yeah, I bet.
But how are you doing? How’s your day been?
Pretty good actually. I’m hanging out with my family and we did get a walk in, there was about an hour of sunshine so that was nice (laughter).
Oh nice, cute. Oh, how much time do you have? Do you need to…?
I’m not in a big hurry but, yeah… We’ll probably eat dinner in like an hour.
Sweet. I’m sure this is a part of any time constraint you might have, but I wanted to ask about your daughter, Cora. I noticed from Window Flower her last name is listed as Ray.
It’s, well, Ray is her middle name actually (laughs). I think I like to use it because it sort of feels like she—it’s not having either of our surnames, and it also gives her a little bit of anonymity in case as an adult she doesn’t want to be connected to these recordings she did with us. Before she can choose to have her name out there publicly.
Ok, so then I will also preface… if I ask anything about her and you don’t want it included—I can run it by you, like whatever I might print.
Yeah. That’s alright, I think in general I’m comfortable with talking about her, but thanks for asking!
Ok, cool. Well, her name’s so beautiful and I was just curious where those two names come from. I noticed the new album is also named Ray.
Right. Cora is actually a name of a character in a Richard Brautigan book called The Hawkline Monster. A man—he’s a taxi driver—in the book is named Cora. It was a story that my partner and I read when we first met, and I think we always really liked that name, Cora. We didn’t live in the same country at that time, and we were reading a lot of books together and talking about them over whatever—I don’t even know how we used to talk in those days—Skype or something. And Richard Brautigan was sort of an obsession of both of ours. And that book, I think when we found out we were having a baby we were sort of looking; we tended to like older names, but that name kept coming up, Cora, which you know had some sentimental meaning, and it’s not a very common name, and it was sort of an older sounding name and we liked that.
And then Ray… well we kind of wanted names that were a bit, like, gender neutral, or could be, you know. And we liked Ray for that reason. It’s like an old man’s name but also like “Sister Ray,” obviously we’re massive Velvet Underground fans. So I think there were those… both with Cora and with Ray we sort of thought they were good open possibilities for how the name could be interpreted and how she wanted it to be interpreted.
Yeah! That’s really nice. I feel like that’s maybe part of what I got from it. I was like this is such a wonderful soft name, but I didn’t even think about “Ray” as a male first name. The way they go together is really nice.
Thanks! (laughter).
Your latest work! Cora Ray.
Yes.
So, talking about that I also wanted to ask: the cover of Ray, as well as the cover of Lost in Shadows, are both by Gayle Paul.
My mom. Yeah. She’s incredible. She’s a painter. She lives in Asheville, North Carolina, and she shows her work there. She’s been an artist her whole life, but sort of put her career on hold when she had children. And then I was the youngest, and when I went to conservatory she got really seriously back into it and the last twenty years or whatever it’s really been incredible to kind of watch my mom establish a painting career.
I’ve always liked using her artwork. I’ve used drawings of hers before in different capacities, like the little imprint I used to run [Wagtail Records]—well still run, but don’t do as much—the drawing for the logo for that is something that she did. I love her paintings but also want to share them with the world, I want people to see them.
They’re so wonderful. It’s kind of uncanny how well they match your music.
I think actually she paints to my music a lot. And I send her mixed CDs, so things like that.
Oh cool!
She’s really open to music and, so, I think there is a kinship in the visual aspect of her work and the sound aspect of my work.
Yeah! Can I ask what you put on those mix CDs?
(laughs). Uh, a lot of Morton Feldman. I think I put um… Oh, it depends, there were different phases. So there was a phase of a lot of Cage and Feldman and that kind of stuff, and then I’ve done… She didn’t know Nick Drake so I did Molly Drake and Nick Drake, and she’s definitely had some Captain Beefheart and different things like that. Duke Ellington always ends up on a mix from me. Yeah, I’m not sure—I can’t remember what else but…
That’s a really wonderful array of music. And so, I was looking at an old Wire feature and it mentioned your father was a rhythm guitarist, or is?
Yeah, my dad plays guitar. Yeah, he’s a really good rhythm guitar player. And my sister’s a vocalist and pianist also, so there’s quite a lot of music and art in our family.
Creativity. Did he do rock or…
No, like jazz, like Wes Montgomery-style guitar.
Oh, cool!
So growing up, I got into jazz from my dad. So he was always playing, like, Paul Desmond and Jim Hall records. And my grandfather played saxophone and clarinet, so I think when I was about five years old, I started announcing to the world that I was going to be a saxophone player.
Whoa.
I remember going to art classes and had probably never even seen a saxophone and was telling people I'd be a saxophonist when I grew up. And then, by the time I was ten, when they started us in band it was just like I went in and I was like, this is what I’m going to do. And my dad was always really great. I mean, I was always very jazz-focused. I was probably the only ten-year-old girl around who only wanted to listen to Paul Desmond and Miles Davis. I didn’t have any pop culture references at all, but…
Whoa!
Yeah, I know. So that’s basically where I started. And my dad and my Grandpa taught me songs by ear before I even knew the notes on the saxophone and stuff like that.
Yeah. And then you did study jazz in a conservatory.
I did, I went to New England Conservatory, also in Boston, and did my undergrad in jazz saxophone performance. I got really disillusioned with music from doing that. I think because about halfway through, I sort of felt like jazz was dead, I guess, in the way that I understood it and I couldn’t figure out how to have a place in that idiom, and then I kind of stopped playing music completely for a year and did a lot of art. I always did drawing and jewelry-making and various things along with music.
And then I was living in New York and had a job which I got fired from and decided I’d start busking in the subways and started doing it like five hours a day, and that sort of rekindled my desire for music. Then, really last minute, I applied for a master’s degree at NEC again and got in, and went back and then did a second degree in contemporary improvisation and composition.
I, so, full disclaimer: I am also the child of two musicians, and I studied jazz and then had a big like… I very similarly moved away from it.
Yeah. What instrument do you play?
Upright bass is what I studied but I’ve kind of not touched it much in years. So, I’m really curious about what you’ve released over the past decade. Ray is maybe the work I’ve heard that makes it most obvious that you have a background in jazz, musically. And so I’m just curious if that’s been a conscious change—or where that’s coming from—of it kind of reemerging.
Yeah, it’s weird. It definitely wasn’t a conscious—I mean I think I’ve been increasingly wanting the saxophone to be more present in the music. And especially during the last, you know, since 2020—however many months this has been, with everything that’s been going on—saxophone has always sort of felt like my home and I think, just in the way I’ve been playing it and practicing, I wanted that more at the forefront.
I was working with Otto [Willberg], who plays bass on it, and Yoni [Silver]. Both do separate things, but right before the lockdown here in London, we’d been getting together and doing duos together and just improvising and playing. Originally I had imagined this album being much freer: little cells of melodies going with this language that we had been working on separately in duos to bring it together as a trio. And then when the lockdown happened, obviously that wasn’t possible because I wanted it to be recorded live.
But I think it’s really funny on this album because I feel like it’s come a bit full circle—it’s not so different from music I used to do. I had a group my last year of my master’s and it’s not so different from the music I was writing for that group at the time. I didn’t plan it that way (laughs). I find it interesting that it’s gone there. I sort of just… I always let the moment guide me and try not to overthink things.
Yeah.
This one just happened to be this way. But I do think having a trio lends itself in a different way for that sort of sound to come out.
Yeah.
As far as like… the bass gives it a different pulse that I wouldn’t necessarily have in my solo music, but yeah.
I imagine that Ray would sound very different if it weren’t recorded in this lockdown style of sending recordings over to each other. Do you think you’d continue to work with the two of them?
Yeah, definitely. I mean, we’re actually… assuming lockdown gets lifted in London, we’re doing a release show on the 3rd of December.
Oh whoa.
So we’re about to start actually rehearsing live because technically we’re allowed to do it since it’s work.
Whoa!
Yeah, I’m really excited to see because I’ve played with each of them. Yoni used to play in the band that I had for Lost in Shadows. He’s really great because he dabbles in everything and he would do crazy things like playing piano and bass clarinet at the same time to fill out parts. I‘m really excited. I think the live versions of it will have a different sort of looseness and space and energy.
Yeah, I don’t know if this is a result of where you’ve been creatively heading or this process of how you built up this new album, but I feel like there’s a lot of clarity in the songs—between the songs on the album and the recording itself compared to Lost in Shadows or Line the Clouds or your others.
As albums, those kind of wash over, like going through a mist. There’s not a lot of definition to each song or even each part—it’s more textural. So I’m wondering if that’s something you’ve been heading towards or if it’s a result of this process of building it up. This difference that I’m hearing in Ray but—Sorry! I feel like I’m saying a lot!
It’s okay, keep going! (laughter).
I guess I ask because it would be easy to say it’s just because of the recording process, but on Lost in Shadows you have these little vamp parts. There’s the tuba vamp and there’s these moments that are more strictly songlike so I’m curious.
Yeah, I think it’s interesting you point it out and actually I didn’t think about it at all until just now, but I do think it’s totally true. Those albums, as I was making them, I thought of them more as a complete work, and this album, when I was making it, I did think of it as individual songs that were happening.
Each song was very specific because… I don’t know what the experience has been for you since the coronavirus and, also, there’s been so many things that have been so tragic going on in the world, and the world feels like it’s been exploding. But I think for me it’s been very emotional, lots of things like reading the news. We think we had the virus in March, so being ill, being worried, having beautiful weather in London, spending lots of time in the garden. And so day-to-day I think I was either very joyful, very happy to be with my family, or totally depressed, or just in shock and awe with Trump and America, and I think maybe it’s a reflection of that.
I think with the other albums there was sort of an overriding emotional context, and one feeling that I was probably in during it. And this one… I think each song is a reflection of the different emotions that were happening day to day, because yeah, I was really all over the place while I was doing it. I think the fact that it’s the trio probably didn’t have as much to do with it as much as the way I approached it, which was much more from track to track and song to song rather than thinking of it necessarily as one big piece of music.
Yeah. It’s so interesting. I personally tend to more naturally hear things as a gestalt rather than hone in on details, and one of the last artists I interviewed, Angel Marcloid, has this project called Fire-Toolz and she had a very similar answer about an album of hers relating to an especially challenging personal life event, that her latest album was more cohesive because she hadn’t experienced a dominating feeling for a long period of time like that. But I could see how COVID and the lockdowns and everything that followed could be experienced by an artist as a long-lasting overarching feeling like that. So I wonder if you typically experienced things more consistently before everything hit?
I definitely think I was probably more level. I mean, I am an emotional person, but in general, the rollercoaster of emotions was much less intense and varied than probably the extremes of what I’ve been going through. There have been so many factors and so many changes because there’s a lot of uncertainty. I don’t do very well in general with not having answers to questions, and not being able to see how things will play out. I have anxiety and I get quite anxious if I can’t sort of control a situation. And that, especially for the first month or so, it just felt like a total loss of control. All my family was home suddenly. Everything was just so different from what it had been for years. Acclimatizing to that was tough.
Yeah, I mean it’s so strange. It sounds like if y’all might be doing concerts next month, you’re in a very different shape than US. But I actually am not super familiar with how it’s going over there.
We’re in a lockdown right now and everything’s closed. We’re keeping hopeful that it’ll happen on the third. It would be a very small audience. It’s at Cafe OTO so I think they would only have twenty or thirty actual people but then it’s going to be livestreamed. So we’ll see if it goes down. Hopefully it will because I’m desperate to play. I was in Riga like a month ago, which was totally surreal, playing a festival there, and I think we just lucked out with the timing I got out in between lockdowns…
Oh wow.
For five days and it was, it was amaaazing. It was so great just to be with people and playing music and talking about music and hanging out, and I think there’s a part of me that so deeply misses that. The last concert I had played before that was at the end of February, so… It’s just—it’s really difficult to not be—I mean it’s the longest I’ve ever gone in my whole life without playing music with people or for people.
Yeah. It’s such a weird time because, like you’re saying, there’s been this sense, I think for a lot of people, that we’re also kind of learning how to live in a new—not in a new way—but how to kind of live at all. Slowing down and doing that. And you were saying there’s days where you’re spending a lot of time in the garden or spending a lot of time with family, and it’s kind of like all these new things that are happening.
At the same time, it’s just the future. Here the future is just so… We don’t even have a sense that a year from now anything’s really gonna be under control, because there’s really no trust of the government and even the people around us. It’s just very strange. It’s forced us into this kind of ultra-present tense.
Yeah, it’s definitely that. It’s hard to... I mean six months ago it would have been hard to sort of imagine that this would, I think at least for me, still be going on. I haven’t been back to the United States in a year, which is the longest I’ve ever gone without seeing my family.
Yeah.
And I think it’s so much harder to not be able to go back. That’s a big difference: knowing I could hop on an airplane at any time in the past—even though I can’t because of work or money—but now it’s like I just am not allowed to leave. In some ways I’ve gotten used to those restrictions. And in others, maybe I have put up a wall and am sort of just going through the motions of dealing with it now. Like, nothing’s surprising me and it doesn’t feel like there’s any end in sight and it just, it’s such a strange new reality. Walking down the road and if someone walks too close to you without a mask on, you feel… you know?
Yeah.
Like, what? You know? And then you’re like, why am I feeling—that’s such a horrible thing to be thinking and feeling and having to teach my daughter, not to get too close to strangers, you know? And I’ve never been in my daughter’s school. She started school this year and they don’t let parents go in. It’s just really surreal that she’s there and she spends her whole days there and other than some blog post with photos, I don't know about that part of her life. It’s all of those things. I think when it started everything was raw and emotional. Maybe things now… There’s a sort of cover, a front, I’ve had to establish to just get through days. And lots of wine.
Yeah (laughter). I imagine it’s a really intense time to raise a child.
It is a really intense time. I mean I feel really thankful that she’s not older than she is and hasn’t missed out on parts of her education, but it’s also, you know, really formative years. When the first lockdown happened, she wasn’t even allowed to go to the playgrounds. She’s an only child and she couldn’t be with other children. It was so, at first she was so happy to be with us, and then by the end you could just see how important socialization is for children of that age, and it’s very much the same for us, you know?
Yeah, definitely. I didn’t really plan to go into COVID stuff, but obviously it’s a huge part of everything right now.
Yeah.
This kind of goes back to where we were before we started all of this but I am curious about this, which is a collaboration with your partner, Ben [Pritchard], on Heat Source.
Oh yeah, does he play—I can’t even remember! (laughter).
I don’t know! It was on—well, okay, then, I was going to ask about this song but…
Which one was it that Ben was on?
It said “Drop Me.” This was on Discogs.
Oh! Yeah!
And it’s listed that it’s written with him as well.
Yeah, we wrote a bunch of songs together, actually, right when I first moved to London. And that was one we had kind of done together in sort of a session. Honestly, other than the place… I can remember actually recording it and that’s about all I remember about it now.
Well it was kind of interesting to me, because you don’t have many collaborators on those albums but that one is listed to be written with him as well, but then I listened to it and was like, “This sounds just like an Ashley Paul song!”
I do kind of tend to take over things. He probably started the guitar. I did a track with Anthony Coleman too, who I used to play with in New York. So people might record something and then I would take it and write the melody and then rearrange it all. I do tend to do that, and I really like working that way.
A couple of the ostinatos on Ray, Otto had just sent me some bass parts without anything else, and then I made them into this song. And for Window Flower, a lot of it was Ben, Cora, and I just sitting with a bunch of wild drums and jars of nuts and other odd household objects, playing. That foundation is like a springboard for my creativity, so sometimes, yeah that’s sort of my favorite way to work in a lot of ways. It leads to new pathways. Thinking back, that’s probably how we did it.
Got it. And was that a similar process you often had with Eli Keszler?
Eli, well it depends. With Aster, which was the duo we did, that was pretty collaborative, except for, because we did so much improvising together, I would say most of it was more 50/50 except for the parts that have melodies. And so the ones that have more singing and melodies I would arrange those a little bit more. But then, when Eli played on my tracks, like on my albums, the tracks were usually pretty much done and he added to them. So that was more like an after or middle thing that he would add into the tracks.
Talking about Window Flower… I love that album, it’s so sweet. It reminds me of this thing one of my friends, Logan Hone—he’s this really wonderful musician—he did this Community Band that was held in a park around here [Los Angeles] before lockdown hit. Anyone could come play any instrument and he would just bring in chord charts or little songs. He has a really good knack for incorporating anyone’s musicianship, and helping anyone at any skill contribute meaningfully. And Window Flower gives me a similar sense to that. It feels like Cora is really a part of the album, and it feels so truly collaborative.
That’s really nice! Yeah, she was really a part of it. I think. I mean, it was really fun for us to make. She’s always been very musical, but it sort of inspired a different thing because it was the first time she’s sort of ever been able to be there, be part of the process. So at first she was like, “Ugh, what?”
She was really excited about having the microphones set up and then like playing for the microphones, and initially it was a lot of banging as loud as she could, but then when we all started playing together she got really into it. It was really great to see. Sometimes I would be in here mixing a track and she would just be out in the hallway singing, and I would just be like, “Cora, come in!” And then she would just sing whatever she had been singing in the hallway, like record it, and she absolutely loved doing it. Then she started walking around the house with her instruments.
For a long time afterwards, after I had sort of completed it, she would be like, “Can we do more recording mommy? Let’s go do this!” But it was really nice to sort of… it was a different… because I am really controlling about recording and about my music. Typically I’m really controlling about the actual space I’m in when I make music and not having any outside sort of stimulus and it was such a different process, to kind of invite my family in.
And I think maybe because when I had been approached about doing it, Fielding Hope, who is the curator of Cafe OTO, who asked me about it was like, “You know you can do it with your family?” And I was like, “Yes! That’s what we’re going to do!” And I approached it with that in mind and I think it gave me a different kind of freedom and playfulness, knowing that I was going into it with that. I think I was more receptive and more open than I may typically be.
Yeah. That’s really interesting.
I think I also kind of had a little bit more of like a “Fuck It!” attitude with it in a certain way, like in a good way, where I’m just playing around with the drum beats or having fun with it. I used to have this band with a girl called Sakiko Mori in Providence when we lived there. It was really playful and we had a lot of fun. It was called Paul & Maurey. I think this reminded me of what Sakiko and I used to do, because we used to just get together in a room with a bunch of instruments and toys and different things and record lots of fun stuff, and then I would kind of make it into songs. It very much has a similar spirit to that.
Do you feel like any of that carried over to Ray? Like that sort of relinquishing?
Definitely. I think there’s a playfulness in Ray that hasn’t necessarily been in other albums. I had been wanting to make this trio album for a really long time and when the lockdown happened I was so discouraged about making it, feeling kind of grumpy. I felt like I had the album in me and it was pent up and I needed to get it out, but I couldn’t. Having done Window Flower, again, I think I was like, “Fuck It, I’m just going to do it, let’s just start it.” And then I don’t know.
I think Morton Feldman has some quote about having the “perfect chair.” If only he had the “perfect chair” he would write a symphony, or I don’t know—that might not be totally right, but it’s something along those lines. And I definitely feel like having the space totally right and everything in the right place, and I finished Window Flower and I rearranged my working room, and I was like, “I’m gonna get it right!” And then I actually just started in. And I think both that playful feeling that’s in Window Flower, but also, like, I’m just gonna do it and I’m gonna try to have fun with it, and it’s going to be… definitely a lot of saxophone. I really went into that album with saxophone in mind in a different way.
Yeah, that intro’s so great. I was just like, “Whoa, this is so different!” It’s really nice!
Yeah. It’s weird because I really disassociated with the saxophone for such a long time and then I’ve really fallen in love with it again and I think I’m much more comfortable sort of having it back (laughs). And going for it with the really saccharine Johnny Hodges thick bravado and things like that.
Yeah, it’s this really dense, stacked arrangement too.
Well, it’s so much fun with Yoni because the bass clarinet is such a beautiful instrument, and just being able to play with the possibilities of our instruments together was really fun. I would send these parts to Yoni and I would have an idea of what they would sound like but when I would get them back I was like, it’s so spot on. He nailed everything, always. It was really a satisfying experience.
That’s really beautiful having those working relationships. It’s such a strange thing. I’m thinking about two things: instruments can be so personal, like your relationship with an instrument, and then, collaborators, it’s just like, their personality and how they play and just having someone you can—
Trust.
Yeah, who does the right thing or understands the weird thing you’re trying to get at. It’s just so weird to find.
Yeah, I think I probably didn’t ever think I’d find people. For a very long time I wanted to stop playing solo. I wanted to be playing with other people.
Like during—
In performance, mainly. And the idea of putting a “band” together so that there was something on an album that I could also play live with has been something I’ve wanted to do for years, for a really long time. But this was sort of the first time it became clear, and I was scared. I was scared about starting it. I was scared because I thought it wouldn’t really work, or I was really frightened to try just in case it failed and I’m really happy that it didn’t.
Yeah, in your, oh my god, I keep wanting to say “Line the Shadows,” what’s the—Shadows?
(laughs). Line the Clouds or Lost in Shadows.
I’m sorry, I’m just mixing it all up right now. Lost in Shadows was recorded… or, you wrote it at a residency.
Mhmm.
And then it has seven other musicians on it.
Yeah, it was a residency called FUGA which is in Zaragoza, Spain. And Santiago, who curates it, actually wrote me. Cora was about nine months old and I hadn’t really been able to do any music since she had been born, and he wrote me and was like, “We’ve got this opening in the residency. Do you want to come in a month for as long as you want?” I was like, “Oh my god how am I going to do this?” But then it worked out. My partner Ben was able to take a month off work and we all just moved into the residency and lived in Spain.
The building is this massive building, and I think the studio was built with it being an orchestral recording studio, so it’s got housing above it. If orchestras were to come in they could live there for a month and record. So it’s basically got apartments in the top. We were living in those, and I would just get up every day.
It was like the most brilliant thing that ever happened ’cause I was so desperate to make music after Cora was born, and it was such an incredible outlet. I got there and it was like (emphatic mouth sound *phwooo*). And we had the best time. I was in the studio at eight every day, I would write and record until like two or something when we would go have a huge lunch. We’d have lunch for two hours and then I’d go back to the studio and work until like ten o’clock at night and then sometimes have breaks in there to see Cora in between before she went to bed.
But it was really intense and really great. Everyone was so friendly. As part of the residency, they wanted to involve people from the community and so that was sort of who the people who contributed were. I had written most of the album and recorded most of the album, but I had some instruments that I specifically wanted. So they sent out calls for people to come in to do it. It wasn’t anyone that I had met before.
Then they also opened it up so some people who played other instruments could come in. So some people came in with handmade instruments or weird things, and I recorded them quite a lot. I didn’t end up using everything that people played but it was a really nice opportunity to work with a lot of people.
The idea of having a band had occurred before that album was done, so that was sort of like the stepping stone in bringing people into the music. A whole lot of things between Lost in Shadows and now, were really solidified in my head, like how to notate things for other people, where I want to leave things open and where I want things to be really set and how that all works. So I think this album was a really long time coming, maybe, in certain ways. But there were a lot of steps that had to happen for it to become a reality.
Yeah, mm. Do you happen to have notation or scores for this stuff? Hearing you say this I’m curious if you’d be interested in possibly including that with the interview or something.
Eh, they’re pretty rough right now.
I was just personally curious because I’m interested to see them.
I’ll look around and see if I have some stuff from Lost in Shadows, I’m really bad at keeping… I’m not very organized, I lose things, like I’m really horrible. I’ll have a look.
No worries, it was just a passing thought. I just wanted to wrap up with a question that relates to why I was interested to see scores. You draw as well, and I was wondering about your relationship to drawing.
From my childhood, because my mom’s a painter, I was always doing a lot of visual art. It’s what we did together. Drawing, coloring. I remember I would just sit—we had a front room in my house and I had two older sisters and they would always be busy with activities after school or whatever, and my mom would be cooking, and I was alone and would just spend hours like coloring in coloring books or drawing pictures.
And then as I got older I got really into metalwork and jewelry making and more three-dimensional kinds of art. I think, for as long as I can remember, I’ve had notebooks of drawings and carried a notebook and would just sit and draw as a form of meditation in a way.
It’s sort of slipped away for a few years, since Cora was born I haven’t been able to do it as much as I like or with a kind of regularity, but I’ve been finding time to draw and paint a lot more recently. I used to draw and have the same kind of confidence with it that I do with my music, where I don’t think about it or worry about making it public. But I don’t necessarily have that confidence with art at the moment. But I’m working towards it a little more.
I just did a limited run of drawings with some test presses for Ray, which was fun; it was nice to be able to kind of put some of it out there and I think I’ll likely do a limited run of drawings in a couple of weeks with the release, with a download or something.
I mean there was a point in my life where I thought I would probably be a visual artist, not a musician. And then I, I don’t know, I think music really just overtook it, but even all through conservatory I was making art every day. I think it’s in me. I think my mom has instilled a great appreciation for all things visual.
Yeah, definitely. Are those her paintings behind you, by the way?
No, those are Cora’s! (laughter).
Oh, they’re Cora’s! (laughter).
Although, my mom would probably take that as a compliment. I do have a couple paintings of hers, but I think a really sad thing about moving to the UK was not being able to bring them. Her canvases are really large for the most part, so I haven’t been able to bring her artwork here. Some day when I have unlimited money—whenever that will be—they’re gonna make their way over here.
Unlimited money, the goal!
But it’s great because she’s saved all the paintings that I’ve used for album covers and stuff for me; they’re all waiting for me to eventually have.
God, yeah, Lost in Shadows, that one’s beautiful.
I know, isn’t it gorgeous?
Yeah, that blue. And is the new one a full sculpture, like wooden?
Well I haven’t seen it in person because she did it since I’ve been stuck here, but I think it’s four canvases bracketed, screwed, or something together and then painted on. So it’s on probably a big painted frame but it’s actually four frames, put together.
It’s so cool. That’s so great. I think that’s all I really have to ask you. I appreciate you talking, thanks so much!
Yeah thanks so much this was really fun!
Purchase Ray at Bandcamp. Purchase Window Flower at the Cafe OTO website.
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