Sharon Van Etten, Rickshaw Theatre, Sunday, July 6, show at 9 p.m. For more info go to rickshawtheatre.com.
Sharon Van Etten creates songs that come from the psyche and aim for the jugular.
Listening to her tunes connects you with an artist of immense powers ready to take chances. In her work subtle shifts in tone can lead to epic, dramatic insights. Her new album, Are You There, is full of such intense moments.
When Nick Cave brought her in as the opening act on his Push the Sky Away tour last year, Van Etten eventually found herself on stage for most of the Bad Seeds' set as well. With her musical personality you get the sense that it's all or nothing.
She spoke to the North Shore News about her new album and the creative process in general prior to her show at the Rickshaw Theatre on Sunday.
North Shore News: What was it like growing up as the middle child in a large family?
Sharon Van Etten: Well, being one of five kids you learn how to share and you learn how to mediate. We're all very close in age so we've all been friends all our lives, too. We shared a lot of stuff, you know. Shared rooms, shared music, all that kind of stuff. Played games together, we're a really tight-knit family.
North Shore News: Are any of your brothers or sister musicians?
Sharon Van Etten: My brothers are both drummers and one of them also plays guitar and everyone has been a music fan. We grew up singing together and stuff. My brothers still play but it's more for fun and jamming and stuff.
North Shore News: How did you get interested in music?
Sharon Van Etten: I've always kind of sang and gravitated towards instruments. At the elementary school I went to they gave free lessons and third and fourth grade I took violin and clarinet lessons. In sixth grade they offered a free choir program. By the time I was in high school I got really into choir and I was in musicals and stuff. I just kind of gravitated towards it and my parents always found a way to help me do it.
North Shore News: I've always associated you with guitars and vocals but it sounds like you were involved with a lot of instruments.
Sharon Van Etten: Anything I could get my hands on, you know, I was always kind of a hobby girl. Like I said, I tried violin, clarinet, piano and I was in choirs, musicals. I listened to all different kinds of music so I was interested in all sides of it for sure.
North Shore News: Were there any particular genres that caught your attention?
Sharon Van Etten: We listened to the oldies stations so I heard doo-wop from my parents - my dad was more into rock'n'roll, my mom was more into doo-wop and soul.
Through my parents I listened to the Mamas and Papas and The Everly Brothers and Del Shannon. And my dad also got me into The Kinks and The Beatles and The Rolling Stones and Neil Young, all that kind of stuff. Also my siblings, my older brother and sister especially, you know we were like the '90s kids, and they got me into like grunge and alternative and some of the more gnarly stuff like Metallica, Megadeth, Iron Maiden and Guns N' Roses. They schooled me a lot growing up, too.
North Shore News: There's music and then there's music as a career you seem to have developed yours organically.
Sharon Van Etten: I just started wanting to learn how to play something to write to. It's always been pretty minimal, the chord progressions. I'm not a really good guitar player I just know basic chords so I can have more freedom with melodies. I started to do open mikes by myself and my friends pushed me to start playing shows. I learned how to set up shows and then I met some really supportive friends that helped me put on shows and it just kind of grew naturally. I don't really know what happened.
North Shore News: Do you have a certain process you follow for lyrics and music when writing songs?
Sharon Van Etten: It's usually when I'm going through a really hard time. I'm not really good at communicating when I'm in it and so I find a moment alone, I get a glass of wine and I hit record and I just sing stream of conscious for awhile. I stop and I save it and I put it down for a few days so I can get a little distance from it and then I will listen back to it and try and hear what it is I'm trying to say and what I was feeling.
I kind of analyze myself even if it's pretty raw or it doesn't make any sense. I can't always make sense of it but sometimes I can chew away at it and figure out what's going on.
North Shore News: Do you write on a specific instrument?
Sharon Van Etten: It's all over the place, it's really whatever I have at hand. I have a piano at home I've been writing on a lot and I play on guitar when I can. Sometimes when I have time before a soundcheck I'll play on the keyboard as well but it really just depends on the day.
North Shore News: On the new record you play an omnichord as well.
Sharon Van Etten: My bandmate Heather Woods Broderick gave me an omnichord when we were touring the last record Tramp. I had a song on there called "Magic Chords" I recorded on like a church organ at a friend's studio. You can't really tour with an organ - they're really hard to maintain and they take up a lot of space. She gave me an omnichord and said, 'You try this out and try to work out the song on here.' It's small, it's compact, it's about the size of an autoharp and has a lot of cool functions on it. I just ended up writing on it a lot because it's easy to travel with and it's got a headphone jack so you don't annoy your neighbours at two in the morning if the spirit overtakes you. It's a real versatile instrument.
North Shore News: How was it making the new album? Your first as a producer. How was it putting it together?
Sharon Van Etten: This is the first time I've had a set band who could go in the studio and track live with me. They also heard the songs in a lot of different stages from when I started writing to a loose demo of it. I did a couple of other
tracks at home in super lo-fiversions so everyone knew what they were getting into. We had our own language by this point - we've been travelling together for the last three years so we're able to communicate really well together. I've never had that before.
North Shore News: What was it like recording at Jimi Hendrix's studio Electric Ladyland? Sharon Van Etten: That studio is really, really special. I felt kind of on the spot because it was really just me playing piano and singing at the same time. I was doing live tracking of those piano ballads. I recorded "I Love You But I'm Lost" and "I Know" there and you know I'd get two-thirds of the way through and get one bum note and have to start all over again. But that space is really magical for sure.
North Shore News: You got to perform on some historic instruments as well.
Sharon Van Etten: The piano was played on Patti Smith's Horses. I don't think she played it, I don't think she plays piano but I like to imagine she leaned up against it or something. There was another piano that was brought up later to the studio from the Record Plant that was played on John Lennon's album Imagine. We didn't get it till later in the tracking and most of the songs were done but we found some room for it of course and the one you can hear it most on is "You Know Me Well" - when you hear the deep, dark piano tones that's the Record Plant piano.
North Shore News: I was just looking at the personnel list and there's a lot of musicians involved on the record.
Sharon Van Etten: Yea, most of it's the core band. Zeke Hutchins plays drums, Doug Keith plays guitars and Heather Woods Broderick sings and plays the Wurlitzer mostly and some piano. David Hartley came into play bass, but you know really it's just an excuse to hang with friends that travel a lot as well and you get a chance to work together, which is nice. You have good communication and a comfort level where you can just let go a little bit.
North Shore News: You took the photograph on the cover of Are We There. A frozen moment in time.
Sharon Van Etten: The album cover is a photo of my friend Rebecca. She did the artwork for the first two records. She's an old friend of mine from my 'straight out of high school moved to Tennessee' days. She's a really important person in my life.
We used to work together in a bookstore and after work our routine was getting a couple of Diet Cokes and a pack of cigarettes and cruising around in her car listening to music and singing for a couple of hours. I moved back home for a little bit and then came back to tie up some loose ends and catch up with her. It was right before she moved to Indiana and just before I moved to New York. She moved to Indiana and got married and had kids and I moved to New York to try to do the music thing. We kind of went our separate ways and took different paths. We were on a country road in Tennessee just outside Murfreesboro. It was the last time we had before we kind of did our own thing.
That was the first photograph I gave to my boyfriend when I first moved to New York. We were on and off for about 10 years and I totally forgot about that photograph. I never saw it after I gave it to him until I moved into his apartment last summer and he was cleaning up his room and making space for me and he pulled out this pile from underneath the bed and it was every Mix CD I ever gave him and all my early demos and house cards and letters and also that photograph. It was covered in dust and kind of summed up where we were emotionally.
North Shore News: Do you take a lot of photographs? Sharon Van Etten: I did for a long time after I moved back home. I took like a year of photography classes at a community college. I actually just got a camera again because I realized I missed doing it. I feel like I'm constantly framing in my mind. I love photography.
