I STILL REMEMBER THE FIRST TIME I HEARD MADELEINE PEYROUX’S VOICE ON A RECORD.
I WAS DRIVING IN MY VAN BACK IN 2002, AND HEARD THIS MODERN BUT CLASSIC RENDITION OF “GETTING SOME FUN OUT OF LIFE”. INTRIGUED, I CALLED THE STATION TO LEARN THAT IT WAS ON AN ALBUM BY A LADY NAMED MADELENE PEYROUX FROM A HANDFUL OF YEARS PREVIOUS. I PURCHASED IT AND FELL IN LOVE WITH THE RELAXED ATMOSPHERE OF THE ECLECTIC SESSION
I STARTED MAKING IT A PERSONAL QUEST TO FIND ANYTHING I COULD ABOUT THIS ENIGMATIC LADY, AS SHE SEEMED TO DROP OUT OF NOT ONLY THE MUSIC SCENE, BUT LIFE ITSELF.
I FINALLY CAME ACROSS HER LIVING QUITE THE BOHEMIAN LIFE IN VENICE. WE CHATTED AND SHE INVITED ME TO HER UPCOMING “RETURN” SHOW IN SANTA MONICA, WITH A NEW ALBUM ABOUT TO BE RECORDED.
THE ALBUM, CARELESS LOVE, PROPELLED MS. PEYROUX INTO WIDE POPULARITY, WITH SENSITIVE PRODUCTION OF LARRY KLEIN BRINGING OUT THE BEST OF PEYROUX’S GYPSY SPIRIT.
THIS PAST YEAR A REISSUED CARELESS LOVE HAS COME OUT, TEAMED WITH A CONCERT RECORDING FROM THE SAME TIME.
IT SEEMED LIKE A GOOD OPPORTUNITY TO CATCH UP ON MS. PEYROUX, WHO’S FINALLY RETURNING TO HER FIRST LOVE, PERFORMING AMONGST HER FRIENDS.
I FIRST MET YOU FOR AN INTERVIEW AT VENICE BEACH BACK IN 2004, RIGHT BEFORE YOU WERE ABOUT TO RECORD YOUR “COMEBACK” (CARELESS LOVE) ALBUM AND DO YOUR “RETURN” CONCERT AT THE VICK
We met at The Novel Café’. I used to go there all the time because it was the only place I could use the internet for my computer. I was subletting my apartment on Craig’s List. Those were the days, only 17 years ago! (chuckles)
YOUR STORY BETWEEN YOUR FIRST ALBUM AND THIS ONE IS PRETTY WELL KNOWN, BUT TELL MY YOUR THOUGHTS ON YOUR RETURN TO THE STUDIO AFTER SUCH A LONG ABSENCE, WITH A COMPLETY DIFFERENT SET OF MUSICIANS.
Going into the studio, at least in my recording style, I don’t go often, and every time I go it’s a really big deal (as opposed to some people who really live in the studio and play around with different ideas and have a different relationship to that whole world).
Even now, when I go into the studio and make a recording, it’s a very high octane kind of thing. It just feels special. And, in New York it’s a very expensive thing to go into a professional studio.
Back then, when we did (Careless Love) I felt different already. I was a lot older, by about eight years. It was a more knowledgeable situation; I knew what I was getting into.
The first time I made a record (Dreamland), I didn’t even understand the slightest detail about the process. I wasn’t even interested in the recording process; I was only interested in the performance, in everybody’s performance, in the music itself and the ways to approach the music.
But I started to slowly realize over the last decades as they pile up that this sort of world of recording doesn’t exist without it.
It’s just like the theatre; you can say that you’re making a show anywhere in the world, but if you’re in the theatre, it’s understood that it’s what institutions are for. Everybody knows that you’re supposed to listen. That’s the point of doing a recording-there’s a listening space that’s been created before you got there. So there’s all of this silence that surrounds every recording. There’s a silence that you need to create into. That’s why people like to put on White Noise because they’re in a pre-recorded space.
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“Even now, when I go into the studio and make a recording, it’s a very high octane kind of thing. It just feels special.”
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YOU HAD LARRY KLEIN AS YOUR PRODUCER. WHEN YOU WENT IN, DID YOU JUST TELL LARRY TO “TAKE CHARGE” SINCE HE IS SUCH A MASTER OF THE STUDIO?
He is super comfortable in the studio. I realized later that he’s there, every day and all day. He’s always in some kind of a studio.
I always have somebody else at the helm when I’m in the studio.
It’s a very odd feeling to walk into a studio when I’ve done things by myself (with an engineer) and copying my own vocals, for example, and stuff like that.
Larry was and is especially artful in the studio. He doesn’t say much to anybody, and when he does say something, it’s kind of convoluted sounding unless you know exactly what he’s talking about.
THAT’S WHAT A LOT OF HUSBANDS SOUND LIKE TO THEIR WIVES!
Yes, well, there is that dynamic with men and women. (laughs)
Like, we would put a demo on, everyone would listen to it. The guys would get up and go “Well, I guess we’d better go” and he would send everybody off to their stations and instruments to sit down. On a couple of those songs like “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome” he’d walk around the recording room and just whisper in each person’s ear! Real quietly. (chuckles)
There had been no rehearsal, and my whole understanding of a recording was that you get everyone together and then rehearse way before you ever walk into a studio. So this was a different type of recording process.
He counted if off, and we played “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome”, and I thought to myself “Oh, this is crazy!” and saw that they were learning how to play it while I was singing it.
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“(I) saw that they were learning how to play it while I was singing it”
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HE’S LIKE A “MUSICIAN WHISPERER”
He’s more like a “Singer Whisperer”. Larry’s talent is for understanding singers; I don’t know if he has that talent with instrumentalists as much. He probably does-he’s a musician.
He’s “The Girl Vocal Whisperer”. He has been working with a Swedish male singer who’s good, too.
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“(Larry Klein) is more like a “Singer Whisperer”. Larry’s talent is for understanding singers”
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WHAT HAS HE WHISPERED TO YOU?
He didn’t whisper to me on that song, because we had already talked about i830. He mostly tried to distract me from my own thoughts. He would do a weird dance or something to try to get me to laugh while I was in the middle of recording vocals. For him, it was when I wasn’t thinking that I did my best work, which if you’re going to go down the husband and wife route, you could make a lot of jokes about that, too! (laughs)
WHAT WERE YOUR FIRST THOUGHTS WHEN YOU HEARD THE ALBUM PLAYED BACK? WERE YOU ENCOURAGED, OR WERE YOU THINKING OF A “PLAN B” IN CASE THE ALBUM DIDN’T CATCH ON?
I didn’t need a plan, or at least I never did at that time.
I was always there for a certain amount of things, which was music, which is the most soothing, healing and inspiring experience.
There’s also just the “being in the moment” aspect of it. As far as getting by in life, I didn’t have aspirations for much. Not that I didn’t have aspirations to do good work, I did have aspirations for that.
But, I didn’t have a goal as to recompense for that work. I didn’t think “Well, I’m gonna now have an apartment”. I didn’t even have any of that figured out, even to a point where it was a little bit unhealthy, because there is a certain point where you go “You mean I should have thought about that?”
So, it’s piece by piece.
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“(music) is the most soothing, healing and inspiring experience”
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HOW ABOUT PREPARING FOR YOU RETURN TO PERFORMING IN CONCERTS AFTER THE LONG LAYOFF DUE TO RECOVERING FROM LOSING YOUR VOICE?
I don’t remember that being a good gig, to be honest.
My memory is that I didn’t do such a great job. However, it’s not that I hadn’t been singing. I hadn’t been singing as Madeleine Peyroux, so I think that my relationship with the audience was a little bit awkward, especially because I wasn’t sure if I was singing to them as someone who they know, or is it as somebody that they don’t know. Who is this person?
Whereas, as a street musician, I didn’t have to deal with that. That is one of the joys of being anonymous when you’re a street musician. That means that you don’t necessarily be the main character.
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“one of the joys of being anonymous when you’re a street musician…means that you don’t necessarily be the main character”
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WHEN DID YOU FEEL YOU COULD GO BACK TO BEING COMFORTABLE IN YOUR OWN MUSICAL SKIN? WAS IT FROM THE SUCCESS OF THE ALBUM OR DID IT JUST EVOLVE AFTER DOING A FEW MORE GIGS?
Yes. (laughs)
Those are two options that are not opposed to each other.
I’ve been performing for people since I was about 15 years old, playing for money on the street, in clubs or whatever. Then, in the recording studio with the backing of a record label under my own name.
I’ve been doing that since before I started being mature, way before my brain evolved enough to understand certain concepts. I’ve been growing up in front of an audience, so my identity is going to change along with me.
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“I’ve been growing up in front of an audience, so my identity is going to change along with me”
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BY THE TIME YOU DID THE CONCERT THAT ACCOMPANIES THE REISSUED CARELESS LOVE ALBUM, YOU HAD YOUR OWN BAND AND SOUND, WITH A MUCH DIFFERENT FEEL THAN YOUR RETURN GIG.
That concert is from about the same year that the record came out.
WERE YOU SURPRISED BY HOW SUCCESSFUL THE ALBUM BECAME, AND THAT IT CAUGHT ON SO WELL?
Oh, yes, of course, of course.
It was a surprise from the get-go.
It all went by really fast.
****The difference between Careless Love and the one before it (Dreamland) was that with Careless Love I was old enough to say “No” to some things and “Yes” to other things. I had a little bit more skill in managing my own work load so that I could stay on the road.
I also had been preparing my voice (which I had lost after touring for the first record), so the big problems were just making sure that I could keep the schedule, stay touring and follow the money to make sure that I was able to make a living off of the money. Sometimes you can be very busy on tour but not make enough to pay the rent, which is what happened on my first record. It depends on how much you know what you’re doing.
I was in way more control of my life.
There’s a lot of good stuff that has happened to me that is not deserved.
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“Sometimes you can be very busy on tour but not make enough to pay the rent, which is what happened on my first record. It depends on how much you know what you’re doing”
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BEING A BIT OF A GYPSY, DID YOU LIKE THE EXTRA RESPONSIBILITY, OR DID IT FIGHT AGAINST YOUR “ONE DAY AT A TIME” MENTALITY?
That is the balancing act of life, because you want freedom and yet you want somebody to do every thing for you, which takes away from their freedom. You completely can’t have both.
The goal is to figure out what is the right balance for you.
To a certain extent I don’t like this crazy culture that we have of always being on the way to somewhere ***else, to get through something, or to have a goal established. It can be too much, and that is something that street musicianship showed me early in my life. There was this ability to say, “Let’s just go play, and now we’ve finished playing. Let’s relax.”
It wasn’t about that we “had to accomplish something”.
SINCE THE POPULARITY OF CARELESS LOVE, HAVE YOU LIKED THE TRAJECTORY OF THE TYPES OF ALBUMS THAT YOU’VE RECORDED, LIKE WRITING YOUR OWN MATERIAL, OR DOING “SECULAR HYMNS”?
I am happy with it, but I think that I’d like to do more.
HOW WAS WRITING YOUR OWN MATERIAL AS A NEW RESPONSIBILITY?
(laughs) It’s hard, and it doesn’t get easier with time. It does get a little bit clearer the more that you work at it. It’s clearer with what you can do.
My problem with writing was coming up with really grandiose goals without having a way to get there.
I would come up with an idea for a song that would start out with a combination of a melody, a few ****words and some harmonic information. In my mind I would ask myself, “What am I trying to say?” and I’d flesh it out into something that was impossible to say in one song. I’d do that every time.
I would think that I’m going to explain the whole meaning of life by doing this song. “No, don’t do that!” I’d say to myself, but that’s what would happen.
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“My problem with writing was coming up with really grandiose goals without having a way to get there”
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IS THERE A SONGWRITER THAT INSPIRES YOU TO KEEP TRYING?
There are a lot of them; all of those geniuses. Someone out there that is attainable? No. (laughs)
I don’t know how to go there
IS THERE ANYONE LIVING OR DEAD THAT YOU’D LIKE TO SIT DOWN FOR AN EVENING AND PICK HIS OR HER BRAIN?
I’d love to talk to Joni Mitchell, if she would let me.
I was listening to Alan Watts last night. He’s pretty amazing; I love listening to him.
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“The difference between Careless Love and the one before it (Dreamland) was that with Careless Love I was old enough to say “No” to some things and “Yes” to other things”
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ARE THERE THREE BOOKS THAT YOU HAVE READ THAT YOU WISH EVERYONE WOULD READ?
Of Mice and Men by Steinbeck
Emily Dickenson, anything, or The Best Of.
I would mention Frederick Douglas’ autobiography, but I haven’t finished it yet, so it doesn’t count. It is inspirational to me.
WHO WOULD YOU PAY $1000 TO SEE PERFORM?
Louis Armstrong, for sure.
WHAT FUTURE GOALS DO YOU HAVE?
To live in nature, and possibly get together a retreat for people to come to and have an intensive experience of maybe two weeks of finding music in every aspect of your day. It would have be an almost spiritual thing of being out there in nature and creating cool ways to find rhythm and harmony and music in your day. Two weeks of constant music, but not in traditional sounds.
WHEN WILL YOU HIT THE ROAD AGAIN?
This week. I’m happy to be playing music with people, in tune, in time in front of other people. It’s my joy.
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“There’s a lot of good stuff that has happened to me that is not deserved”
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IN LIFE, FEW PEOPLE GET SECOND CHANCES. MS. PEYROUX HAS BEEN ON OF THOSE WHO HAVE NOT ONLY BEEN ABLE TO RETURN TO HER FIRST LOVE, BUT IS ABLE TO APPRECIATE IT. FEW THINGS ARE AS HEALING AS GRATITUDE, AND MADELEINE PEYROUX, WHO’S BOTH LIVED ON AND PERFORMED ON THE STREETS, IS ABLE TO CONTINUE A CAREER UNTIL, AS SHE SINGS, “UNTIL THE END OF LOVE”