Whitney: "They Oughta Write A Song" is an excellent well rounded vocal jazz album, How Did you go about choosing the collection of standards that are on there?
Halie: Thank you! I'm so glad you enjoy it... and thanks for asking me to participate in your blog! It's a pleasure.
The standards that are featured on "They Oughta Write a Song" were chosen for a variety of reasons... some of the songs are ones that I have been performing for many years, and felt like natural fits for me vocally and for the musicians that are featured on the album. "Summertime", for example, is a song that I've been performing since I was 12 years old, and is one that I've loved singing from that first performance of the song (which was at the Spring Recital assembly at my middle school in Sitka, Alaska). For me, it was included for its nostalgic value as much as anything... and I thought it fit well in the context of the rest of the album.
Matt Treder (the wonderful pianist featured on the album) came up with a great, unique arrangement of "Blue Skies" that I absolutely adore. The song is a classic and wonderful in its own right, of course, but the arrangement was what really sealed the deal for me. It was just too fun NOT to include. The same could be said for the choice of "Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps"--though not technically a jazz standard, it's definitely a classic, and I loved the arrangement we'd come up with over the previous year or two of playing it at our live shows together. I really appreciated the zesty energy it added to the album... and since it's been one of our most requested songs in live performance, it seemed like a good choice all-around!
Other standards included on the CD, such as "God Bless the Child", "As Time Goes By", and "Autumn Leaves" were chosen out of both favoritism and how they fit into the rest of the album. They seemed to compliment the selections we absolutely HAD to include in the CD and had chosen already, were some of our favorites, and we felt our renditions brought something a little bit new to the tunes. It was really quite difficult to narrow down our song selection for the CD... out of a repertoire of many hundreds of songs, choosing only a dozen or so can be a daunting task indeed. At some point, we had to almost blindly choose from a somewhat narrowed down list in order to make a definitive decision at all, it seemed! In a way, it was like spinning a globe and randomly placing one's finger down on the surface, and saying "... and then we'll travel HERE". It's a bit of an exaggerated analogy, but I think you get the picture... :)
Whitney: What Inspires you? Do you have a writing routine that you follow or do you merely follow your inspiration?
Halie: My writing "routine" is pretty much without routine entirely. I'm definitely not a songwriter that keeps to a steady, or even frequent, writing schedule. I play with songs in my head all the time, sometimes consciously, sometimes not... but actually sitting down at the piano with my writing notebook in hand is a much rarer activity. Sometimes I go a few months without finishing a single song. Then, after long periods of "creative dormancy", I'll write five or ten songs in a matter of a few days, and then write pretty regularly over the course of a few weeks or months. I'm not really sure why it works that way for me. Some of it is related to following the flow of my inspiration... when I feel inspired enough, sometimes I can't NOT write a song. A lot of it, though, is dependent on whether or not I make the time to write. Life gets busy with so many other things, and the time and space needed for writing sometimes all but disappears. It's something I'm trying to work on more. :)
Whitney: One of my favorite song on the CD is 'I Dont Miss It That Much" and I was certain that I had hear it somewhere before then I looked closer and saw that you wrote the song! It's a fun and catchy song, is there a story behind it?
Halie: I was still a teenager when I co-wrote "I Don't Miss It That Much" with Rick and Janis Carnes in Nashville, so I don't remember all of the specifics surrounding our inspiration during that writing session... I do remember, though, that it all started with the attitude of the story. We were aiming for creating a storyline of sort of a self-assured woman's way of looking at a relationship after it's crashed and burned... maybe for me it was who I aspired to embody at the time, as I was certainly prone to being quite sensitive and overly nostalgic, particularly when it came to relationship matters. Hence the lyric, spoken with a voice of confidence that only experience can truly inspire, about a woman who admits her moments of weakness, her rose-colored-glasses memories of the love that once was... and then her subsequent reality check of "well, it really wasn't worth all the rest, all the drama and B.S., though, was it... I'm no fool!" I loved the attitude then, and I love it even more now that I can relate more fully on a personal level to the song!
In short, no, there was no particular story that inspired the song--it was just a sassy idea that happened to lend itself very well to some entertaining rhymes and wordplay, and that all of us found to be all too true and yet funny and refreshing.
Whitney: Do you have a favorite song on the CD and why?
Halie: I'm incapable of choosing favorites when it comes to music... all songs speak to me differently, touch different aspects of my memories or my emotions. Some I like only because of how it feels to sing them. It really is impossible to choose a favorite. But I can tell you the biggest surprise. The song that I'd conceptualized a different spin on, but had no idea how it would actually turn out when we tried recording it with the new concept, was "A Whiter Shade of Pale". Putting it into more of a swing rhythm, toning it down musically and vocally to where it was more of a gentle jazz ballad than a classic rock tune, seemed like it might not really work out at first. But it did! At least, in my opinion it did... it completely exceeded my expectations. And I can't tell you how many requests for and comments about that song that I get on a regular basis. So something must be working, and not just for me!
I have a particularly special place in my heart for the title track. I remember writing the song with my friend and co-writer Larry Wayne Clark when I was 18 and living in Nashville. It was the first tune we'd written together that could be categorized as "jazz", and, after a year or two's hiatus from singing much jazz while living and writing songs in Nashville, something about it felt so right and at home for me. I remember thinking to myself, "This is what I'm really meant to do." I grew up singing jazz, listening to jazz, emulating my favorite jazz singers, steeped in jazz music. I ended up singing and eventually writing a lot of other styles of music during the teen years of my career (and I still do!), but jazz always felt like "my genre" when I would perform it. Singing "They Oughta Write a Song" always brings me back to the moment, at 18, when I re-discovered my identity as a jazz singer. And I love the word imagery! It has a mix of humor and "torchiness" that I really enjoy singing and listening to. I'm really proud of our song. :)
Whitney: Congratulations on winning the Just Plain Folks 2009 " Best Vocal Jazz Album" award, You credit the albums sound to your talented musicians you work with- Matt Treder (Piano),Mark Schneider (Bass), Brian West (Drums), and Tim McLaughlin (Trumpet)- will you continue work with them on upcoming albums? Halie: Thanks! It was a very empowering and affirming experience to be given such a wonderful honor by such a varied (and large) group of musical peers and industry professionals. It was truly one of the best moments of my life to date! Surreal, too. I didn't think I had much of a chance, as I wasn't really known much at all outside my region of the Northwest, but I was happily proven wrong. The quality and skill of the other artists and albums that were also nominated in that category made it all the more incredible to me.
I couldn't ask for a better group of musicians, or a better group of friends to work with. I've been performing with Matt and Brian since I was 15 years old, and you just can't replace the kind of musical relationship that's created over the course of a decade of collaboration. Mark and Tim, though I haven't been playing with them for as long, are so wonderfully talented and truly inspire me as a performer. I will definitely keep working with these guys, if I have a say in the matter! They make my job as easy as possible, both as a producer in the studio and as a vocalist on the stage.
Halie: Thank you! I'm so glad you enjoy it... and thanks for asking me to participate in your blog! It's a pleasure.
The standards that are featured on "They Oughta Write a Song" were chosen for a variety of reasons... some of the songs are ones that I have been performing for many years, and felt like natural fits for me vocally and for the musicians that are featured on the album. "Summertime", for example, is a song that I've been performing since I was 12 years old, and is one that I've loved singing from that first performance of the song (which was at the Spring Recital assembly at my middle school in Sitka, Alaska). For me, it was included for its nostalgic value as much as anything... and I thought it fit well in the context of the rest of the album.
Matt Treder (the wonderful pianist featured on the album) came up with a great, unique arrangement of "Blue Skies" that I absolutely adore. The song is a classic and wonderful in its own right, of course, but the arrangement was what really sealed the deal for me. It was just too fun NOT to include. The same could be said for the choice of "Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps"--though not technically a jazz standard, it's definitely a classic, and I loved the arrangement we'd come up with over the previous year or two of playing it at our live shows together. I really appreciated the zesty energy it added to the album... and since it's been one of our most requested songs in live performance, it seemed like a good choice all-around!
Other standards included on the CD, such as "God Bless the Child", "As Time Goes By", and "Autumn Leaves" were chosen out of both favoritism and how they fit into the rest of the album. They seemed to compliment the selections we absolutely HAD to include in the CD and had chosen already, were some of our favorites, and we felt our renditions brought something a little bit new to the tunes. It was really quite difficult to narrow down our song selection for the CD... out of a repertoire of many hundreds of songs, choosing only a dozen or so can be a daunting task indeed. At some point, we had to almost blindly choose from a somewhat narrowed down list in order to make a definitive decision at all, it seemed! In a way, it was like spinning a globe and randomly placing one's finger down on the surface, and saying "... and then we'll travel HERE". It's a bit of an exaggerated analogy, but I think you get the picture... :)
Whitney: What Inspires you? Do you have a writing routine that you follow or do you merely follow your inspiration?
Halie: My writing "routine" is pretty much without routine entirely. I'm definitely not a songwriter that keeps to a steady, or even frequent, writing schedule. I play with songs in my head all the time, sometimes consciously, sometimes not... but actually sitting down at the piano with my writing notebook in hand is a much rarer activity. Sometimes I go a few months without finishing a single song. Then, after long periods of "creative dormancy", I'll write five or ten songs in a matter of a few days, and then write pretty regularly over the course of a few weeks or months. I'm not really sure why it works that way for me. Some of it is related to following the flow of my inspiration... when I feel inspired enough, sometimes I can't NOT write a song. A lot of it, though, is dependent on whether or not I make the time to write. Life gets busy with so many other things, and the time and space needed for writing sometimes all but disappears. It's something I'm trying to work on more. :)
Whitney: One of my favorite song on the CD is 'I Dont Miss It That Much" and I was certain that I had hear it somewhere before then I looked closer and saw that you wrote the song! It's a fun and catchy song, is there a story behind it?
Halie: I was still a teenager when I co-wrote "I Don't Miss It That Much" with Rick and Janis Carnes in Nashville, so I don't remember all of the specifics surrounding our inspiration during that writing session... I do remember, though, that it all started with the attitude of the story. We were aiming for creating a storyline of sort of a self-assured woman's way of looking at a relationship after it's crashed and burned... maybe for me it was who I aspired to embody at the time, as I was certainly prone to being quite sensitive and overly nostalgic, particularly when it came to relationship matters. Hence the lyric, spoken with a voice of confidence that only experience can truly inspire, about a woman who admits her moments of weakness, her rose-colored-glasses memories of the love that once was... and then her subsequent reality check of "well, it really wasn't worth all the rest, all the drama and B.S., though, was it... I'm no fool!" I loved the attitude then, and I love it even more now that I can relate more fully on a personal level to the song!
In short, no, there was no particular story that inspired the song--it was just a sassy idea that happened to lend itself very well to some entertaining rhymes and wordplay, and that all of us found to be all too true and yet funny and refreshing.
Whitney: Do you have a favorite song on the CD and why?
Halie: I'm incapable of choosing favorites when it comes to music... all songs speak to me differently, touch different aspects of my memories or my emotions. Some I like only because of how it feels to sing them. It really is impossible to choose a favorite. But I can tell you the biggest surprise. The song that I'd conceptualized a different spin on, but had no idea how it would actually turn out when we tried recording it with the new concept, was "A Whiter Shade of Pale". Putting it into more of a swing rhythm, toning it down musically and vocally to where it was more of a gentle jazz ballad than a classic rock tune, seemed like it might not really work out at first. But it did! At least, in my opinion it did... it completely exceeded my expectations. And I can't tell you how many requests for and comments about that song that I get on a regular basis. So something must be working, and not just for me!
I have a particularly special place in my heart for the title track. I remember writing the song with my friend and co-writer Larry Wayne Clark when I was 18 and living in Nashville. It was the first tune we'd written together that could be categorized as "jazz", and, after a year or two's hiatus from singing much jazz while living and writing songs in Nashville, something about it felt so right and at home for me. I remember thinking to myself, "This is what I'm really meant to do." I grew up singing jazz, listening to jazz, emulating my favorite jazz singers, steeped in jazz music. I ended up singing and eventually writing a lot of other styles of music during the teen years of my career (and I still do!), but jazz always felt like "my genre" when I would perform it. Singing "They Oughta Write a Song" always brings me back to the moment, at 18, when I re-discovered my identity as a jazz singer. And I love the word imagery! It has a mix of humor and "torchiness" that I really enjoy singing and listening to. I'm really proud of our song. :)
Whitney: Congratulations on winning the Just Plain Folks 2009 " Best Vocal Jazz Album" award, You credit the albums sound to your talented musicians you work with- Matt Treder (Piano),Mark Schneider (Bass), Brian West (Drums), and Tim McLaughlin (Trumpet)- will you continue work with them on upcoming albums? Halie: Thanks! It was a very empowering and affirming experience to be given such a wonderful honor by such a varied (and large) group of musical peers and industry professionals. It was truly one of the best moments of my life to date! Surreal, too. I didn't think I had much of a chance, as I wasn't really known much at all outside my region of the Northwest, but I was happily proven wrong. The quality and skill of the other artists and albums that were also nominated in that category made it all the more incredible to me.
I couldn't ask for a better group of musicians, or a better group of friends to work with. I've been performing with Matt and Brian since I was 15 years old, and you just can't replace the kind of musical relationship that's created over the course of a decade of collaboration. Mark and Tim, though I haven't been playing with them for as long, are so wonderfully talented and truly inspire me as a performer. I will definitely keep working with these guys, if I have a say in the matter! They make my job as easy as possible, both as a producer in the studio and as a vocalist on the stage.
Thank You, Halie for participating in my blog, we look forward to hearing your musical gifts in the upcoming album.
Look for Halie Loren's new Live album "Stages" to be released March 15, 2010
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