Ian Doreian for melophobe
We’re really excited to have you play the Boston Museum of Fine Art at the end of the week. But it can be an odd experience; between each song you can hear everything! How do you prepare as a performer for such a live and intimate space?
Shara Worden
I have some magic tricks up my sleeves: one is I have a secret box that plays six or seven samples to cover over the tuning between songs. Actually, every time I play in Belgium there’s this really intense silence before each song starts. They’ll clap really, really all together then it goes completely silent. I take that as a high compliment from an audience--that they’re engaged. Silence is also a nice break for your ears.
melophobe
Still, do you need feedback from the audience?
Shara
As a performer, I think, your job is about reflecting the energy in the room. Most come to the concert with anticipation and a willingness to be open, yet you have to be generous even if the audience is distracted. I feel it’s a matter of recycling their energy, to stay out of your own way, and that creates a circle. The job of the songwriter is to have the right song for the moment, to be receptive to the different things happening in the room. It sounds weird, this esoteric description of playing, but for me it is what performing is all about right now.
melophobe
How does this idea of reflecting energy work when cutting your albums?
Shara
Recording is a whole other ball of wax; it’s a thrilling process! For All Things Will Unwind, we had played shows with all the material before we recorded it. So the process was very much a live experience, using the same musicians from rehearsal to recording. With this, we tracked the album in fourteen days because we already knew how it went and just tried to capture a live document. The previous albums were much more a studio creation, and then we tried to figure out how to play it live.
melophobe
In working your songs with yMusic, how did you handle the collaboration?
Shara
With producing and arranging all the songs, I need a system of checks and balances that comes by trusting the people that I work with. Even if I am scoring the music, the musicians need to have an investment. When they feel a certain way of how to phrase a note, then I need to honor their solution. I tend to say very little to the rhythm sections; bass and drums need a certain autonomy. The ego and our culture would like us to be competitive; the higher self knows that we need to trust other people.
melophobe
Has your music always featured a community aspect?
Shara
When I first starting doing string arrangements I put up a Craigslist posting that said, “String Players Wanted: if you like P J Harvey and Pierre Boulez please contact me, and I can’t pay you.” Rob Moose, the violinist who has been working with me for seven years, he was in college and responded to that ad. Of course, now I’m paying him for his work. It’s interesting to serve other people, and then allow other people to serve you.
melophobe
I heard thatDM Stith thinks of you as a mentor. How do you see this part of your work as a musician?
Shara
David? I am so committed to him and believe in him. He’s gold, one of those artists that I want to do anything for. People have done that for me, too. Bryce Dessner, from The National, has given me so many opportunities because he believes in me. I call him my champion. And Sufjan [Stevens] has been very generous to me, so I want to return this to other people. We all need to help each other, right?
That was something completely shocking when I moved to Detroit from Brooklyn. I was so used to paying for everything; it was unexpected that people would give extra soil, or help with making some raised beds for my garden, all without expecting anything.
melophobe
How did you make the decision to move?
Shara
Coming to Detroit on tour, I would visit one of my best friends from high school who lives in this place where there’s a fruit orchard right in the middle of the neighborhood. I would be eating their peaches, drinking coffee, thinking this was amazing. It’s a community that is intentional about organic farming, caring for the Earth, but is also five minutes from downtown Detroit. We moved onto the same block as my friend, so right behind my house there are ten beehives and tractors bailing alfalfa.
melophobe
What place does Detroit have in the new songs?
Shara
I do a lot of listening and asking questions, attend community meetings when I am in town. There can be quite a division in the neighborhood, people who dislike the farming. For some it reminds them of what they escaped from the South. They were proud of being factory workers, and to them gardening represents slavery or poverty.
“High, Low, Middle” and “There’s a Rat” were built from a 2-hour talk on the history of Detroit, details about race riots. Here’s one Detroit story about Dr. Ossian Sweet. After moving into an all white neighborhood, several hundred people with very ill intentions surrounded the home, and Dr. Ossian’s brother ended up shooting into this mob, killing someone. The whole family was arrested; they were in jail for a while. Even as the Doctor was acquitted, a virus contracted in jail caused the death of his wife and daughter. Much later, he committed suicide having never escaped what happened to his family. His story is so sad; he never caught a break. Today we see so many people who are losing their homes, not just from foreclosures, but also not being able to pay taxes. In the song, the woman standing on her porch is protecting it from invaders; the animals are metaphors of these forces that seek to destroy their homes.
melophobe
Do you see more themes of social justice coming into your music?
Shara
For the first time in my life I am able to look at music from a “we” vocabulary, whereas the other albums were centered on my own experience--especially the grief of dealing with a death of a friend who was very close to me. Because time has softened that pain, my eyes are able to look up and out. Also, with having a child, suddenly you have to look outside of yourself in a new way.
melophobe
Your lullaby that closes All Things Will Unwind shows this, but it is sadder than most children’s rhymes. It’s almost a twisting of the mockingbird song where papa buys all these things for the child, but in “I Have Never Loved Someone” the love is sacrificial.
Shara
Pain is always going to be there. When you have someone die, you’re marked forever; when you are separated from someone, there is an immense absence. A Thousand Shark's Teeth ends with “The Diamond,” a vision of that person sharing that they could feel love like heat in death. Love was a physical expression. Rather than just saying, “I love you,” it was reaching between universes, a warm light that shines. There’s a connection with that person; even while they are not on this physical plane, the warmth remains.
I wanted to communicate this to my child: beyond the loss of physical presence in death, there exists love. It’s hard to talk about these things; it is about our ability to turn on our receptors to this love. The message of that song is even as we’re so physically oriented, that we feel good or sad because of the weather, no matter what the situation, love is available.
melophobe
There’s this sense that in all the corruption, greed, failure of financial institutions there’s something beyond the veil?
Shara
I sure hope so, since that stuff is real. For “In the Beginning,” I was thinking about the big stories of mankind, starting with the two cells at the birth of time and going forward: “This glorious day the Earth is shaking.” That’s definitely a reference to Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” and it is about finding a way to be thankful even though shit is hard. We were practicing that song during the earthquake in Japan, and as thousands of people were dying, I started bawling. On that day the song made sense in a very different way.
melophobe
That brings us back to your idea of having the right song for the moment.
Shara
Nina Simone said that when singing songs in the Civil Rights moment, she had a reason. But when the movement changed, she didn’t know her purpose for singing. We all long for art and music to be meaningful, personally and culturally. Since we feel so alone as human beings, we need to share in a community of people. When we can connect through art, it cuts the ego. Music lets us be together.
This player (Vimeo) didn’t survive.
My Brightest Diamond - All Things Will Unwind: High Low Middle from Asthmatic Kitty on Vimeo.
Unless you live in Europe, the MFA show on 3/2 will be the last chance to see Shara until the summer. Buy tickets here.
Be sure to visit My Brightest Diamond's official web site for tour updates.