Austin-based guitarist and singer/songwriter Jenny Reynolds released her new album, Willow & Stone, in June, following on her previous release of Any Kind of Angel. The 11 original tracks on the album have a story-song feel, taking you inside emotional worlds, with plenty of physical details to hold onto, in the vein of deftly crafted short stories. But it’s the questions that the songs raise that are particularly diverting: Why do people take risks in life? How do we connect across the the emotional and physical distances that keep us apart? Do we change over time and can we choose to change if we want to?
The new album was recorded at Cedar Creek Studio in Austin, TX, and it was produced by Mark Hallman (Ani diFranco, Elyza Gilkyson) and engineered by André Moran. The album is wide-ranging sonically, touring through the possibilities of Americana while adding Jazz and Folk accents, and also features multinstrumentalists Michael Ramos (John Mellencamp, Bodeans), BettySoo (James McMurtry, Chris Smither), Noëlle Hampton, and Chip Dolan. I spoke with Jenny Reynolds about the multi-year process of writing and recording these songs through a period of change in her life, and about some of the questions raised in her songs dealing with the complexities of being human and how we choose to live our lives.
Hannah Means-Shannon: I saw that you played some shows recently. Are these new songs ones that you’ve played live yet?
Jenny Reynolds: They don’t have a huge live history, but I did play some songs from the new record. I played “Learning To Be Yours”, and I also played “If I Hadn’t Waited So Long.” I also played the first song that we recorded.
The record took six years to record, mostly because I finance these things myself. Also because I needed a full record. The first song that we recorded for this record was “The Night, The Moon, and The Sea”, and I also played that.
HMS: The ones that you’re mentioning are making me think, “You didn’t hold back on the emotional ones!” You choose some pretty intense songs there. Is that intense for you, to be playing new songs, and also such emotional ones?
JR: Yes, you’re right! As a writer, as far as the emotional level is concerned, song that I write teach me about my feelings. Sometimes when I’m playing the songs in a live setting, I start realizing where it comes from, and how it makes me feel, and that can be emotional.
I think that has a way of making performances better. You should sing it through the emotions as you’re discovering them. The song will never be the same each time if you are still discovering the emotions.
This record is a follow-up to one that was pretty emotional, too. I don’t really write silly stuff, but I do write limericks. When I fail at writing songs during the day, I write a limerick because I want to feel like I finished the day writing something. I like the goofiness of limericks, so they make me laugh. My own songs don’t make me laugh that much. I think my own songs are really just a coping mechanism for dealing with shit. But the truth is, I love playing guitar even more than I like writing or singing. Maybe the music is its own catalyst, too.
HMS: Oh, sure, because there may be a level on which the guitar playing is also helping you discover your feelings and work through them, just not in a verbalized way.
JR: Yeah, I suppose. If you’re just always learning something, whether it’s a part, or a new song, I like that a lot. I think it keeps me feeling like my brain is going. This is what I tell myself, anyway!
HMS: It stops atrophy. I’m definitely the same as that, as a person, so it seems normal to me. But I know that not everyone operates that way. If I don’t learn new things, I feel like I’m shriveling up inside. Even if it’s something totally random, I need to learn new things. I can see how being a guitarist is like being a shark. It does need to be in motion to be real, alive.
JR: That’s important. I like the image of a shark because they are programmed to do certain things. There’s a line in Jaws that all they do is swim, eat, and make other sharks. I think I really just want to read books, too, and until someone is willing to pay me to go to graduate school, I think this is how I’m wired. I think a lot of people are wired this way, and the world’s a better place for it, because we get to hear Elvis Costello’s latest song. We get to model our lives on people who are always thinking. And these people who are always thinking, I think, have a robust life. They are always living because they are always thinking.
HMS: If you need material from your life to write from, it sounds like you’ve had a lot in the past few years. I read that your life has changed a lot in the last few years, so that’s stimulus.
JR: Yes! On my very first record, there’s a song that I wrote inspired by a story in a newspaper. I used to read the newspaper looking for stories, and sometimes I still do that, but the last two records, I’ve gotten enough out of my life to do them. There are also occasions where, as Mary Gauthier says, if I’m not writing about my own truth, I’m writing about what I believe someone else’s truth is. Like “Shadow and Sin” isn’t about me, it’s a story-song. “A Little Lie” is another story song.
I’ve always wanted to write a song like “A Little Lie.” What is the motivation of someone who cheats? I got cheated on once, and I think I got about five records out of it. But I think that telling someone else’s truth is okay, too. The canvas is the story, and you add your own truth to it.
HMS: I was thinking about that song “A Little Lie” and it’s such a mood.
JR: I don’t think that song would have the same mood if it didn’t take place in a city kind of like New York. But I feel like it takes place in New York. I keep these Moleskin books, since someone gave me one in middle school or high school. In college, it was always in my back pocket. I always write stuff down in the them.
There’s a line in “A Little Lie” about a “bodega rose.” You can’t buy a bodega rose in Chicago. I wrote “bodega rose” in a Moleskin five or six years ago, and I finally got it into a tune! It’s a good detail in a story, and I think that story has a location, and that it has to be New York. We don’t have bodegas in Austin, though we have cute little convenience stores, but they don’t have a cat!
HMS: What you’re describing is a bit like being a short story writer.
JR: The perspective in the story also has a little bit of a safe distance, too, which allows for some humor.
HMS: I grew up in the suburbs, and the story made me think of all the things I’d learn years later about the neighbors, that I never suspected. There is this American life that can be very “picket fences” and it’s often glossing over a lot of truths. Every family and situation has its issues.
JR: It’s kind of a Mad Men thing, too, where there’s always the requisite station wagon, the suburban home. If you like the station wagon, and the home, and the fence, then I’m glad you have those things. But if you want to be different than that, I think that is greater. I think we can really be measured, as a society, by the number of ingredients in our succotash. I’m told from a culinary perspective that succotash has to have lima beans in it, and I think those are gross, so I don’t put those in. But I think we’re better if we get rid of things with a purpose, rather than following a desire to become a stereotype. That’s a more authentic society, that isn’t merely going through the motions.
But a home, a car, a life, is something that I saw my parents struggling to achieve. I have a step-son now, and I can tell he’s nervous about getting older, and I don’t blame him. Because these days, a home, a car, and a life is expensive, which he can see. Even just basic living. The person in that song has all of those things, and look at the risk they are taking. They are taking a massive risk.
HMS: That’s a really good point. Like you, I’m aware that for some people, their dearly held dream is to have a little house. It’s about intention. Don’t glide through life, have intention. The risk taking in this song is interesting. Sometimes people do that so unconsciously.
JR: I think that some people find energy from the risks that they take more than the security that they have. That’s a bad generalization, but we can, at different points in life, find that we have different motivations. Sometimes people in a mid-life crisis experience it. In my own life, I miss driving a big road trip with my dog, and doing a bunch of gigs. This dog in question is one that we had to put down last Fall, and I swear to God, it killed me.
HMS: I’m so sorry to hear that.
JR: Thank you. Well, we got a puppy, but she’s not ready to get in a car and drive to Chicago. That life I miss, but it’s not the steady life you might expect from someone who wrote that song. I’m a little more homebound now than I’ve ever been, but I like it, and I also have the freedom to do things. I’m lucky.
HMS: I agree that if there’s never any risk in your life, and you never challenge yourself, you’re not going to be happy as a person. Human beings need challenges.
JR: I completely agree.
HMS: I really like the sound variation that I find on the album, and how each song has its own thing going on. Did the songs suggest their sound to you?
JR: It might be a result of the amount of time that we had to do the project, over six years. But all the songs also have one Producer, and he always stays in touch with what we’ve done on the other songs. Sometimes, we just do basic tracks on a bunch of songs, and then we talk about what we’re going to do with them afterwards. The only song that had a basic plan, the minute we got in the studio, that was almost entirely realized in the same day, was the co-write with Gabriel Rhodes, “I’m Not The One.”
But all the others, we started with the basic of guitar, and vocal, and maybe added bass, a little percussion, and we kind of let it tell us what it needed. So some of it is topical, based on what the song is about. The song “Imperfect” has a pattern of a melody that has a very clear opening and a very clear ending. It’s almost a circle. The irony is that the lyrics is about how perfection isn’t what you want, authenticity is what you want, and authenticity isn’t clean and pristine.
It’s often what’s not clean. It’s often like broken-in blue jeans more than it is perfectly pressed cotton or silk. I think sometimes the sound comes from the topic, and sometimes it comes from other things. Each song is its own thing. I can’t speak for Mark, but any kind of similarity might be accidental.
HMS: I think there is a sound unity among the songs from a Production standpoint. I never would have known the recording process was so long based on listening to the album.
JR: Mark has done a lot of work with Eliza Gilkyson, and she’d done this record called Land of Milk and Honey, which I like a lot. I feel like Mark is one of these Producers who listens so much that his work is the result of the intensity with which he listens to music. It’s not about him flexing a muscle or being strident, or bold, or wanting to further his name in the industry.
It’s strictly, “What does this song need, and how can we do it?” In my opinion, he has a particularly good way with women’s voices. He did Ani DiFranco’s first studio record, and between that and Eliza Gilkyson’s records, I think he’s a genius, and now I’m lucky enough to call him a friend.
