A FIRESIDE CHAT WITH LIZZ WRIGHT


Do you know Lizz Wright? Chances are if you don't already, you will and soon. Wright is getting a debut reception I haven't seen since Norah Jones. And although Jones' success was helped in large part because, like Diana Krall, people who don't own a jazz CD or perhaps own one, bought Jones' album, Wright's success will undoubtedly be her own. The gal knows how to sing jazz. That speaks volumes these days. Ms. Lizz Wright, folks, unedited and in her own words.


FRED JUNG: How rural is Kathleen, Georgia?

LIZZ WRIGHT: Kathleen, pretty rural, there were horses and chickens, no big fields though. Everybody had a big yard and a big house, very, very Christian neighborhood. People were pretty quiet out there.


FJ: How did you develop an interest in song?

LIZZ WRIGHT: There wasn't really a point where I was so interested really because my dad kind of drafted me into serving in church because he was a minister. He needed a pianist and also a singer. He wanted me to open for him before he would teach. So I kind of began accepting that that was my place in the community. I used to sing little songs since I was about five and I would always expect people to cry or dance afterwards because I remember these great, big outbreaks of emotion after I would sing. I used to think it was about me until I started serving in my dad's church and then I realized that you have to find the beauty of people's lives and give it back to them in the service. You kind of belong to them. You kind of belong to the congregation.


FJ: Tell me about your journey from your father's church to signing with Verve.

LIZZ WRIGHT: It was a jagged little path. It was full of different pockets of waiting, thinking, and hoping, and being unsure, and being helped by good people. Generally, the story goes that I left home to go to Georgia State and I just wanted to be exposed to the jazz that I had heard only on the radio before that. So I would sit in on jam sessions and even before that, I just told every jazz musician that I could find that I really wanted to do this and I really wanted to know about this music. They gave me this long list of vocalists to study and I remember Nancy Wilson was at the top of the list and I just plowed down through the names. I would go to people's houses to listen to music. In Atlanta, people in the schools, the education scene, and outside in the jazz community were very supportive and very excited about my enthusiastic desire to learn the music and so they really helped me. People would bring me tapes and all kinds of stuff. I left school after a year because there was no vocal jazz program for the undergraduate. I moved home and I spent about six months working and just sitting alone and thinking about what I was doing and how I was going to do this. In the first place, to come to school, I had left the whole church and left almost like a family. There were people who didn't want me to leave and who didn't necessarily give me their blessings because they didn't want me to leave. They wanted me to stay there and keep serving. I was just determined to do something different. I began questioning myself and whether I was doing this for me or whatever. It was a very interesting time, but during that time, I would drive to Atlanta to sit in on jam sessions and one night I was just spilling it. I think I sang "Summer Time" or something. And a man decided he wanted to help me and had a band put together with some of the best, well-known musicians in Atlanta called In the Spirit. I sat in with these guys and from the first night, I knew that that was the next step, was to sit up under these men and let them teach me. These guys would play in church on Sundays and then during the week, they would work in the city and play. They already understood everything that I was experiencing and so under their nurturing, I began to grow and learn more songs and learn my own language and voice. A couple of demos were sent to Verve and the second one was when they decided to give me a chance. Even still, after I was signed to Verve, it was a long process of waiting, trying different things, talking, and performing and seeing how people responded and to what. Now that we have something finished, a project, it is a thing that is celebrated by all of us. I needed so much support and I got all of it. It is amazing.


FJ: Having grown up in the church, why jazz?

LIZZ WRIGHT: I didn't do gospel because I know how Christianity is. I really understand the faith. It is all I have ever known, up until I was about eighteen. I know how important my parent's reputation is and I also knew I was experimenting with what I was taught and when you do that, you have to take responsibility for it. I wanted to sing about spirituality and still "take care of" people, but in a different way. I wanted to talk about spirituality in a colorful, everyday perspective and I found that in jazz. It is still sacred, in love, in death, failure, all that stuff is covered in those songs. It is still the sacredness and almost a sense of reverence for life. Naturally, it appealed to me and from listening to it on the radio, I had a great hunger to use it as a bridge to really understand the world around me without going too fast and all at once.


FJ: How instrumental was Brian Blade's involvement with Salt, your Verve debut?

LIZZ WRIGHT: Brian was pretty much the primary person that I dealt with as far as the arrangements of songs and testing each song out. We all got involved. We all put songs in the pot, Tommy (LiPuma), Brian, Jon (Cowherd), and myself. But from Brian, I really learned to be open and look everywhere and anywhere I needed to, even in places where I had been as far the really old music in the small churches where there is no instrumentation. You sing about simple things, Jesus and Savior, a lot of stuff that I thought I had left behind. He brought it all back to me and put it all together with stuff that I had never heard and had me listening to all kinds of music. That really helped me to be comfortable with the fact that I am still searching for it. Brian is a really important person, not only in this project, but in my growth as a person and as a musician.


FJ: We live in the hype age and an artist has the double edge of not only being artistically sincere, but commercially viable.

LIZZ WRIGHT: As an artist, you really can't think about that so much. I was thinking about that so much, about marketing and appeal, I really went crazy several times. I was worried about the fact that I am too young to sound this old and people will not believe this is really me. I was freaked out. The label was the one who told me to calm down and that I didn't have to figure all this out and to take my time. Everybody was really patient. It is a process and you don't really agree about everything every step, but I wouldn't exchange all the steps for anything.


FJ: It seems you are your own worst critic.

LIZZ WRIGHT: It is. It really is. I like to feel clear. I like to know, so when I am functioning without some kind of answer or basic knowledge, it can be very uncomfortable for me. This project has really pushed me outside of myself to just let go.


FJ: How much of your humility do you attribute to your faith and your upbringing?

LIZZ WRIGHT: I attribute a lot of it to how I was raised and to the grace and wisdom of my parents, but also to the grace and wisdom of all these new people I've met. I have learned to make every single person a teacher. When you realize that you belong to the audience, that they teach me and they bless me, it is really amazing how the world is very circular and some things have not changed. About two years deep into me singing jazz, my mom began to really try to understand why I choose this outlet. How was I doing in my search and was I able to answer the questions about my faith and my spirituality in this lifestyle and thing that as a precedent of pretty rough living. Some of it hit me. I went through some phases, very quickly, but I went through them. I would come home and my parents would check me out. They know everything from have I gained two pounds to am I still going to church. They just wanted to make sure that I was keeping what they had given me. It is a challenge, but it is a blessing too.


FJ: After three months on the road, the voice of mom gets comforting.

LIZZ WRIGHT: It is real comforting. Now, I call my mom and I let her talk. I just hold the phone and just sit there. I need it. I run out. They are my roots.


FJ: Is there a difference between a vocalist and a singer?

LIZZ WRIGHT: Well, as far as terminology, I consider a vocalist to be an instrumentalist, whose instrument is voice. Usually, that term makes it clear. Generally, the term singer is associated with the entertainment aspect of it. But it is all the same job. You get the give the human experience back to them, but it is art. It is not like the grueling everyday. It is something beautiful and you get to act it out with those words. It's cool.


FJ: And the future?

LIZZ WRIGHT: I am already thinking about the next project. I really want to take the approach of doing little pieces at a time. That is really what got this project done and taking my time. I don't really believe that music is a business. I think that sharing music is a business, but music itself is the orchestration of life and it takes time to realize where you are and who you are. All those things are in constant motion. So to collect that information and make a strong project that really has some sense of life in it, it takes time. For the next project, I really want to take my time and do things song to song. No rules, but to be open and use the knowledge that you have.

Fred Jung is the Editor-In-Chief and is Wang Chunging tonight. Comments? Email Him