Francesca Bay |
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Posted: 19 Jan 2018 11:48 AM PST
Bay Area folk singer Lydia Joy Davis discusses her music, self censorship as a mother and artist, and her soon to be released albumby Kimberly Wainscoat
A Bay Area "busker" since the age of six, Lydia Joy Davis was reared by an Irish guitarist father and operatic mother. She is a folk singer chronicling the stories and troubles of modern day Bay Area life while raising a young family of her own. In her song "Perfect World", she delves into what many here seem to strive for, with our "perfect house, picket fence, perfect life" troubles. But she also crosses over and sings about the adventures of millennial polyamorous relationships and hook up culture in "Poly Wants an Answer."
Lydia is tapping into our modern conscience; a confusing conscience, if the recent #metoo movement and torment of our current leadership is a tell. But here in the Bay Area she's developing a new album that offers the voice of a millennial who is also on the cusp of Generation X. Her timing seems to have placed her at helm of—if I can borrow a title from Jhumpa Lahiri— interpreter of maladies of modern day San Francisco suburbia.
A young mother of three boys under the age of eleven who are homeschooled, she is carving out time in the midst of chaos for her second album, as yet unnamed. Her first solo effort is ethereal, tender and bold as the title of my personal favorites, Life Roulette , written after an evening with friends and talking about parenthood, and Caged Bird. With lyrics such from her other original songs such as Perfect World "I might never be happy/ could be I'm just made that way" and "People say that a heart can love infinitely/you can love another one and it's not gonna bother me," her choice of subject matter is as broad as it is unassuming. Listening to her music you quickly realize her breadth is extraordinary.
Her acoustic guitar is studied and accomplished, as smooth and rich as you would expect of someone playing with serious street creds and who also studied as a classical violinist at Mannes School of Music in New York City.
While not confessional, she offers a mirror to our lives as well as an escape: In her fierce Stealin' Time, "We're just stealing time cause its runnin' out/ So screw the rules and the man/ I'll never buy this fuckin scam" — isn't that what Silicon Valley kind of is? You want to take the ride as far as you can. But she brings you back with her song Touch Me, "I'm not looking for a hero/ Just lend me a hand when I fall down."
Her grandmother was a San Francisco opera singer who worked her way through an unfinished music degree as a nanny for the rambunctious Hallinan family and their young sons, including Terence, the San Francisco District Attorney succeeded by Kamala Harris. Children ruled her grandmother's life. After she left the Hallinan family's employ she was sidelined from a musical career by the birth of her own sixteen —you read that number right— Irish Catholic children. Lydia, it seems, is determined to define herself not only as a mother but as the musician she has always been.
Recently you posted a video of a new song that you released on facebook, where you were in your living room playing, and one of your young sons interrupted —sounded like he was cooking dinner? and another was goofing off—you answer him off-stage but then you continue to share this new song without missing a beat! Most of us would have to lock ourselves in a cave to attempt anything like this.
Well, I am home so much by myself with my boys that I can't lock myself anywhere. I have to be there. As long as I keep my door open and I hear that nobody is screaming, or dying, or...(laughter) that one is not killing the other, then I write my music.
Are you able to create a song then, with kids running around? I would be very distracted.
Creating music versus rehearsing for a show, that requires more attention. I will shut the door if my husband is home!
Tell us how you create music.
The stars have to align, and I have to be available to channel it. The circumstances have to be right for me to do that, otherwise it just goes right on through without you and you just observe and go, ByeBye! (laughter) My life is so busy and full that there are lots of times when I just have to let it go and just know that something else will come. Because it requires your full attention. You are watching it as it comes through and then you are memorizing it as it flows through your mind. So you have to catch it and commit to memory, and then either write it down or just commit the whole thing to memory and then write it down later.
So in your head are you hearing music notes? Or do you see lyrics?
Lyrics are harder for me than instrumental music. It's more new to me. Usually there will be an event that happens, and that will kind of like be imbued with a mood and a certain perspective, and then that will lend itself to a certain musical sound. And that's just the creative impetus. Sometimes I will have a whole set of lyrics and music underneath it, that I think fits it and for the heck of it later on I will change all the music underneath. It might go from a slow song to a fast upbeat swingy song.
How did you go from classical violin and symphonic sounds, to your current instrument, acoustic guitar and a more, for lack of a better description, folksy sound? How would you described your new music?
If someone could describe it that would be wonderful. I am probably the worst person to describe it. One thing I hear people say though— "Oh it's like a folksy, jazzy, bluesy, swingy!" I kind of think of it as Americana. That maybe implies something a little more blue grassy, but really all those music genres are cross-pollinated and grown from the same roots.
What musicians inspire you?
I am not really conscious of it per se, but I do listen to a lot of music. As a kid I listened to Robert Johnson and all those blues guys, and some more like the 30's and 40’s swing groups like Boswell Sisters. Also, singer songwriters, Nina Simone, The Roaches, and Nick Drake. And then I went through more of an acoustic folk phase like in the 90's, and then of course all the classical music, and the bossa nova, and the jazz that I did with my dad.
What was it like to grow up with a serious musician father?
I played every day for at least two hours a day with him. I grew up basically playing for money in restaurants and coffee shops, downtown busking since I was six years old. My parents supported my musical pursuits with every resource they had. My mom drove my siblings and I up the San Francisco Conservatory of Music every Saturday for music classes and symphony practices for years.
I did not know that term, "busking."
Yeah, I did not know it either, apparently it is new! And it was actually lucrative. That was our whole focus. We spent so much time doing it. I had a weekly restaurant gig starting when I was ten, playing the Davenport Cash Store for five years. We toured California, playing schools, retirement homes, restaurants, events, Christmas concerts. It was full on music all the time. Total immersion. My dad is from Ireland so there was a really strong tradition of music in his family and it just continued. My mom is an opera singer but she has terrible stage fright, so you will never see her perform.
Do you think you would be a musician today without your father's influence on you?
That had everything to do with me becoming a musician! Being raised by artists, yes. But then you're getting a little esoteric, asking the nature or nature question, the butterfly effect and quantum ripples (laughter). No, I don't think so. But that's just a philosophical point of view.
How does one put out an album today? The Internet seems to have upended everything.
It's really easy actually! You record, then there is all these distributor warehouse type websites and you upload your tracks to them and then they distribute it to all the streaming services. The main issue is that you are kind of lost in this sea of intangibles. My goal right now is that I just want to play in intimate venues, which I am really enjoying. My vision for what would be a cool way to express this musical adventure is to do three tours a year, and maybe one international tour a year. I think my life could accommodate that. Because that is really the sticking point right now with having little kids. How do you balance it? Ideally maybe three two-week tours a year playing the art houses and intimate venues. But that's hard to do, you know? You have to build the fan base, and this whole cult of personality thing that has developed around songwriters— I just don't quite know how to engage with that at this point. I'm just like a working musician and I've done it for so many years so, today it's a very different world. Today you make your own way, create your own path, as opposed to saying, okay what do I have to do to get to where I want to be?
What are you working on right now?
My first album came out when I was twenty and it was all classical, with Dancing on Strings. I played classical violin on that and my sister played upright cello. And now on my own I've put out a few singles on Amazon, iTunes and Spotify. Right now I am working on a full album, or maybe it will be an EP, extended play, but I am not sure yet. I just got this whole home recording set up and I am super excited. I am super comfortable with totally acoustic performances. It's what I've always done, without a microphone, in intimate venues. So that's really my forte and what I am recording. Maybe at some point I will venture off into other lands. When I record I mostly play violin, guitar and sing. Ideally I would love to have trumpet on some tracks and upright bass. I can get around a little bit on upright bass, but not enough to do it justice. My friend Steve Ucello, who is going to be playing with me at my upcoming concert at Lelia Aeska Art House in April, will be on bass.
Tell me more about the April concert?
It's a fundraiser for Teen Kitchen at Lille Aeske, which means literally "little box" and there are only thirty five seats. My cousin Lauren June is going to open for us. She's a great musician. It's a very intimate show. I think next year we might try to play Kuumbwa.
What is a day in your life like professionally?
Well today I am here being interviewed about my music (laughter). And tonight I am going up to the Quaker House for a the International Songwriters Listening Room Concert. The host is from Denmark, and he hosts these retreats in Florence, and California and Ireland and Finland, all over the world.
There's also this idea of needing to make money as a musician.
(Laughter) Yes! There are musicians who play for money and there are ones who just play. It's two totally different experiences. I do both. For example, a lot of the songs I write now are far edgier than anything I get paid to play. Although there have been plenty of people who are like, oh come play at my restaurant, but I am still trying to figure that out because is that what people really want to hear when they are having dinner? You know what I mean? Whereas when you are getting paid whoever is paying you dictates the aesthetic choices more. Not that you cannot find aesthetic inspiration inside those parameters, or enjoy it, you know playing for others, but I have always done that instrumentally. Once you start putting words in there it’s quickly more definably this or that. It can be more inappropriate faster (laughter).
Do you feel censored as a mother and a songwriter because you have young kids? Do you worry that they shouldn't hear you express your inner life, or even listen to your stuff in ten years?
So, yes, I feel I should self censor but I don't really. (Laughter) What's even worse is that sometimes I am practicing and I hear my kids singing these songs that I wrote and I'm like, Oh God! That is so dark (Laughter). But I can just hope that they don't understand, that's all. When I was a kid my dad would listen to an album called Pot, Spoon, Pipe and Jug. It was from the label Stash Records. And it was just like all songs about being a junkie, and marijuana, just like all drugs everything! And like a song about benzedrine in your Ovaltine, and my dad would play all these songs and would listen to them and I would be singing these songs around the house. My mom thought it was pretty disturbing. Like, Who put the benzedrine/ in Mrs Murphys Ovaltine? It was so far away from my own personal experience that I was just like, oblivious. So yes, in terms of censoring yourself? You can't.
Gosh, I have trouble with that. I have particularly distasteful scene I am writing for my novel and it's tough to let myself write it.
Did you hear about that Podcast where the dad wrote pornography and then the dad died? So what they are doing now is making all of this pornography into serial podcast episodes. And apparently it's really really terrible writing, its really silly and just ridiculous. But that's what the son is doing.
Making fun of his dad's writing in serial podcasts? Nightmare! Worst nightmare! Why?
I think it's kind of like a strange form of legacy. But super funny. Like the son somehow has an appreciation for this in some way and thought it was just a really funny opportunity for, I don't know, making some creative work? (Laughter) They just crack up on all the terms that he uses.
I can't imagine. What if my kids do that to me after I die?
He's dead. They are also enjoying the comical, that this is something Dad created, this pornography that is amazingly funny.
My grandfather was a novel writer and wrote these crazy sex scenes and I just want to die when I read them.
Didn't somebody say that to be the significant other of a writer, songwriter, novelist, whatever, is basically the worst position that anyone could be in? Because it's like, Is this about me? No. Oh God! Is this about me? Yes! Oh God! Either way you are screwed. If it's a love song and it's not about you then it's terrible. If it's a love song and it is about you then it's humiliating and exposing. And all you can do is just hope that's its obscured enough and that there is enough creativity in there that people don't just see right through it to you. That it somehow comes through a filter where they can identify with it in their own way. And it really does generally do that. Now when I play songs for my husband he sees right through all of it, usually. But sometimes he doesn't, and then that's just where it stays (laughter). He puts up with it. No, he appreciates it! And there's so many different kinds of songs too, they are not all sort of voyeuristic.
I know I asked where inspiration comes from, I wanted to go a little deeper into that.
I've had a song that came from a trip we went on and from a circumstance, a hang out session. Sometimes they come from conversations with friends, sometimes they come from a fight, sometimes they come from a daydream, sometimes they come from thinking about people I know...sometimes they come from some kind of internal struggle about something, you know if you feel two ways about something, or maybe you just need to work something out. I have a song book. Usually it has to be sort of a quiet moment, in fact a lot of times lyrics seem to come to me right before I wake up, I'll be mostly sleeping but just awake enough to observe the thoughts that are going past. I think they call it the liminal state or something.
Is your music like your religion?
No, not really.
What your your religion be?
I'm not religious.
I know. (Laughter) That's why I am asking.
I don't know, I just need things to make sense. Things are, I guess I sometimes sort of have this creeping nihilism. There's a real challenge and I know that that's not a really great viewpoint, to let a certain amount of nihilism go too far with you. And it does seem to help to engage with earthly endeavors, to keep that sort of existential crisis at bay. You know, like gardening, and cooking.
A lot of artists have that existential crisis ...
...bubbling beneath the surface? Yeah. What is that? Why are we prone to that? It's so annoying.
Lydia's Website
January 27th @ the Blue Lounge February 24th @ the Blue Lounge March 24th @ The Blue Lounge April 14the Benefit @ Lille Aeske w/ Steve Ucello April 4th @ Discretion Brewery -Solo
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Thank you Kim! I had such a wonderful time talking with you. It was a lot of fun.
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