Interview - Suz Slezak

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Suz Slezak may be best known as an integral part of the indie-rock-folk band David Wax Museum with her husband David Wax, but with the solo release next month of Watching the Nighttime Come, the singer and fiddler steps out into a new role, that of gentle lullaby artist.

Watching the Nighttime Come successfully balances many challenges with lullaby albums -- sonically interesting without being distracting, making old songs sound new (and vice versa).  Slezak, who's handling preorders for the album via PledgeMusic, chatted via e-mail about her musical upbringing, creating an integrated musical and family life as a musician, and all you really need to have when touring with a baby.

Zooglobble: What are your first musical memories?

Suz Slezak: It's hard to say what my first musical memories are since music has been so integrated into my life since such an early age. Here are a few:  demanding piano lessons at age three when I found out my brother was going to start taking them; listening to my favorite record, "Seven Little Rabbits," on the record player; playing the piano with a pacifier in my mouth; singing rounds in the car with my whole family; hearing fiddles and banjos through the walls of a tent while camping out at an annual old time festival down the road from my house in Central Virginia. 

What made you want to make music for a living?

Honestly I was well into my twenties before I thought making music for a living was a real possibility. I knew I wanted a life that was interconnected -- I wanted my kids and my partner and my work to all be intertwined.  I also wanted a creative job that included travel and community.  So I feel very lucky that through playing music, all those things have become a reality.

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Your new album grew out of a collection of lullabies you'd recorded for friends who were having babies -- what were some of the songs on those handmade CDs and how did you record those?

That first collection was made in one evening in a tiny studio in Somerville, Massachusetts. I recorded everything myself: the vocals, the fiddle, the harmonies, the fiddle harmonies, and a simple guitar part too.  Some of the songs included "Tender Shepherd," a favorite childhood round; "Ubi Caritas," a chant from the ecumenical community in France called Taize where we visited as kids; some of my favorite fiddle waltzes; and "Say Darlin' Say," a traditional song recorded with my first old time band, Mill Pond Nine. 

Besides recording it in a studio, how did writing and recording Watching the Nighttime Come differ from those early lo-fi recordings?

The main difference is that this new record was really a collaboration between myself and two amazing producers, Josh Kaufman and Nate Martinez. The first recordings were really just me, my fiddle, my guitar and an engineer pressing play. Watching the Nighttime Come has textured electric guitar and synth sounds, ambiance from a simple percussion set up, and playful woodwinds and harmonica. It's got David's voice in there plus gorgeous harmony vocals by Lauren Balthrop. And half of these songs are written by me, so it's exciting to have them come alive.

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How did becoming a mother yourself affect the recording?

Oh gosh. Well, being pregnant was one of the reasons I finally hunkered down and made this happen. I knew my time would become less my own once the baby was born, so there was a pressure of getting it done before she arrived. However, after the first session in the studio when I was six months pregnant, we realized we were getting into a bigger project than we'd originally thought and knew we needed more time to work. So when our daughter was just a few months old we traveled by train back to Brooklyn and, between naps and nursing breaks, finished the record. I think becoming a mother also puts a new spin on the significance of making music, especially recordings. I love that my daughter and maybe even her children and grandchildren will be able to listen to them one day and imagine me singing to them -- which I am!

Your PledgeMusic video shows you giving a video tour of the David Wax Museum's touring van.  Did you pick up pointers from touring with a child before starting the fall 2014 tour?  What did you learn while on the tour?

We are so lucky to know a small but growing posse of touring moms. The person we owe a great deal to, however, is Rhiannon Giddens of the Carolina Chocolate Drops.  She has been an inspiration to me for several years, not only traveling with two kids, but even using cloth diapers on the road! She taught us that you really only need two things: diapers and the carrier. The rest you can do without.  Coincidentally, Rhiannon is releasing her own solo album  (with the renowned producer T Bone Burnett) on the same day (February 10).

Anais Mitchell is another touring mom who advised me before Calliope was born and reminded me how flexible little ones actually are. And I'll never forget  an article I read about Ani DiFranco who said touring was actually easier in many ways than being at home since you have a whole host of helping hands when you're on the road. And I've found that same thing to be true. Not only does the baby nap well in the car, but there are plenty of loving arms to hold and entertain her any time of the day or night.  We call the band members her Runcles (Road Uncles) and they've been a big part of her life.

And of course we couldn't do this without the amazing help of my dad who retired last year and comes on most of our tours to watch the baby. He's named himself Nanno (a male nanny) and puts up with smelly green rooms, late nights, and long, long drives for the good of the family band. 

What's your favorite song (or two or three favorite songs) to sing to your daughter?

You know, I end up humming to her more often than actually singing, which means I'm making up new tunes each night. But one of my favorite songs is "Didn't Leave Nobody But the Baby" that Alison Krauss, Gillian Welch and Emmylou Harris made famous in O Brother, Where Art Thou?. It's got such a great soothing, rocking rhythm to it. The words are a little sad though, so I've been making up my own more baby-friendly lyrics. 

What's next for you?

Well, my main project, David Wax Museum, is putting out a new album later in 2015, so we're gearing up for another couple years of touring with that record.  So that's the realistic next step. But we're often fantasizing about ways to spend more time in L.A. and Mexico. And I'm always trying to figure out how to make more fiber art.  But for now, I'm looking forward to my "Sweet Love and Lullabies" tour to release Watching the Nighttime Come. We'll be playing shows in New York, Boston and Northampton on Valentine's Day weekend.

Photo credits: Jo Chattman

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Interview - Vincent Nunes

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The first part of my conversation with upstate New York musician Vincent Nunes had to do with his name.  While Nunes has been making music for kids for about 25 years, he's had an even longer career as lawyer Paul Nunes.  (Vincent is his middle name.)

Nunes has a new album about, Smart Songs for Active Children, and I was interested in talking with him not only about his music, but about living a double life, or, rather, what it's like to have an active career in the non-kids music world while pursuing a second life in an entirely different field.

Zooglobble: What are your first musical memories?

Vincent Nunes: My mother singing to me, she sang around the house -- very simple songs with Portuguese/Latin rhythm.  She was 100% Portuguese.  My dad was Manual Acosta… There's some reflection back -- a song on the new album, "Lullaby to Lucy," uses a kind of Portuguese melodies.

Are there Portuguese nursery rhymes?

I don't know. The songs would have the classic Portuguese rhythm. Like the "lida" [sings the rhythm] -- I used that on "My Triangle" from a previous record.  Mom became a teacher.  She sang from the American canon -- "Farmer in the Dell," for example.

What about your dad?

I heard him play a lot -- he was a touring musician.  His main instrument was a keyboard, so we had an organ in the house.  The van had a second organ.  It never left the truck, it was a beast, it was so heavy to move.  His band was Manny Nunes and the Latin Kicks -- they did  songs with Portuguese rhythm.

Was he a vocalist?

No, not the vocalist.  He sang more toward the end of his career.  He was more of a lyrical interpreter -- he was a crappy singer.  He was pitch perfect, but had a grizzly bear voice.  He didn't sing much, for good reason.

I never took a [music] lesson from my dad.  I did learn a couple rudimentary things, but nothing formal.

We lived in a 2-bedroom apartment behind my dad's jewelry store.  Eventually there were 2 girls and a boy in our family, and so my sisters shared a room, and my dad had to convert the dining room into a bedroom for me.  But after the remodeling, he couldn't get the upright grand piano we had in there out of the room.  So I was 4 1/2 years old, and I woke up every morning staring at and squeezing past the piano getting out of bed.

What led you to the law as a career?

I never intended to be a lawyer -- I planned to be an English teacher.  I took all the courses to be one.  But a professor in college knew me and my family and asked, "Are you prepared for the life?"  He was referring to the fact that teachers don't make much money.  "You're smart, you write well -- have you thought about becoming a lawyer?"

At that point in the year, there were only 2 law schools still accepting applications, and Syracuse was one of them.  I went there, and it wasn't that I liked it a lot, but I was pretty good at it, so I stayed a second year, then a third year.  After graduation I worked in a U.S, District Attorney's office, I clerked for a judge, and then became a Wall Street lawyer.

And the birth of our first daughter led me out of there [to Rochester].  That was the birth of Vincent.  I continued to be a lawyer, but was afraid of telling the legal community that I did kids music -- and vice versa.  I was afraid that clients might not think of me as tough.  I prefer smart, creative, hard-working, honest people as lawyers, but I was afraid of that perception, so I decided that "Vincent" would do kids music, and "Paul" would be the lawyer.

But I was also afraid the other way, that musicians would think, "Oh, he's a lawyer, he must not be very good, it's a vanity project."  If you don't like [my music], fine, but it's not a vanity project.

It was only this year -- after years that included [my own] cancer surgery, the death of important people to me -- that I decided "this is who I am."  It feels kinda good.

I'm very proud of [Smart Songs for] Active Children.  I'm working on another collection now.  The greatest thing is to know that something I wrote will be introduced to kids -- what an honor!

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You worked on Smart Songs for Active Children for several years -- what was the organizing principle behind the album?

I asked myself, why would someone listen to kids music?  There's lots of interesting and fun-to-listen-to music, but if that's the point, they can listen to the Beatles, or Pomplamoose, or Jason Mraz.

Kids are looking for protein, music that's age-appropriate.  So I'm interested in music with the 3 Cs:

1) Curriculum -- the content -- for early learners.  It can be even broader, including physical learning.

2) Must engage child's creativity -- can they connect to the song?

3) Does it connect to community values, such as sharing, helping, recycling, the importance of friends?

Are there any songs you're particularly proud of?

There's "No One's Going To Keep Me Down," which speaks to the concept of grit.  That was a hard song to write.  You can't say, "You should," it has to be declarative -- "I am." I am smart, I am strong -- what kind of strong? there's a wonderful ambiguity there -- I am brave, I tell the truth, I am kind, I can help -- extending outside yourself -- and I will not quit.  That's a hard song for me to beat -- it's simple, people can phrases.

There is a very difficult song called "Manuel the Great," which has 7 different rhythms, turns on a hairpin.  It was a way to expose children to different rhythms; I tried to make it silly.  "They Speak Spanish" -- I didn't want to make the song "list-y." I thought about Portugal, it's the last country.  I wanted to write something respectful.  It started in Spain, but moved out from there.

Or "House of Love," as simple a song as can be. "What do we do in a house of love?"  We dance.... the listener doesn't hear a mother/father/child triangle. What about single parents, grandparents -- I can't say mom or dad without alienating my own family.  Same-sex parents -- don't they live in a house of love, too?

You have a long, successful career as a lawyer -- what do you get out of kids music?

I've thought about "legacy."  You know, I've been doing law for a long time. Files will get sent back to me from cases I worked on many years ago, and I need to decide whether to save or destroy them.  Looking through the files, I read about stuff I sacrificed vacations for, worked weekends on.  I'll mark "destroy" usually -- if the client won't continue to pay for the storage, I'm not going to keep them.

But the little CDs I made twenty years ago, people still order them.  People come and sing to me.  My legacy is not my law career, but these songs.

Here's maybe a subversive thought: Music in general is part of the human psyche.  We all get that rhythmic piece, that melody built right into us.  Music and lyrics and super-glued to the brain.  It's the first thing in the womb, and the last thing that leaves -- my dad, as he died, couldn't remember names, but could sing songs.

So if you take a children's song, infuse it with a positive message, you can change a corner of the world.  "More Love" -- that's a "we can build a better world song."  Numbers and colors are important, but "the rain falls, we need more love."

I have the privilege of recording the songs, which, if they're good enough, parents and teachers buy them.  If they like it, then we're changing the world.  If they don't like it, that's fine, there are plenty of flavors of ice cream.  But if they stop at Vincent Nunes' shop, I hope they buy a double scoop.

Interview: Tito Uquillas (The Hipwaders)

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I tend to think of Tito Uquillas' Bay Area band The Hipwaders as being one of kindie's "old guard" -- not that they've been around as long as Raffi or Trout Fishing in America, let alone Ella Jenkins, but having released their self-titled debut in 2005, their sharper guitar-pop was one of the early examples of the kindie wave that swept over the kids music world in the second half of that decade.

So Uquillas has some history and perspective on kids music in the past decade.  His band's also got a new album coming out, Year-Round Sounds, on September 23.  The new album features a number of songs celebrating seasons and holidays.  In our chat, he and I talk about favorite holidays, the stop-and-start process of recording this new album, and how he views the balance between his day job as a paramedic and the rest of his life.

Zooglobble: What are your favorite holidays?

Tito Uquillas: As a kid, always Halloween, that was always fun.  Dressing up, trick-or-treating, those things.  Now they're fun from a different perspective.  As an adult, it's even more fun when we play, we dress up a bit.  For Halloween shows, I would dress up with a wig and costume beard and felt invincible, it was a great confidence booster.  Now that I've been playing for a while, I'll just dress up with a hat.

Christmas shows are a blast, too.  For Christmas we always dress up as a Victorian band.  Because everybody’s in the spirit.

It’s probably a tie now between Halloween and Christmas.

You did an entire EP of holiday/Christmas songs (A Kindie Christmas) -- what are your favorite holidays to write songs for?  Is it easy to write for a particular holiday?

I’ve been writing songs since I was 15.  I always liked writing jingles.  I remember writing a fake commercial for "The Starving Martyrs," who would starve for whatever your cause was.  The Christmas album included songs I'd written over time, some dating back to the 80s and I realized I had almost a full album.

The problem is it’s not until the actual holiday that I come up with a song.  People will hear it and ask, “Aw man, you have that recorded?”  And I'll say, “no, you have to wait a year.”

We've got a new song that was based on a tangent of a discussion between the bassist and drummer about the animal the chupacabra.  It's a fun song -- it’s a good feeling when your latest song is your band’s favorite song to play.

But, no, it’s [not a particular holiday but] whatever inspires you in the moment.  Writing about something [on demand], that’s hard.  Sometimes I can do it “on spec.”  There’s a song on the new album ("We Can Be Heroes") written as a theme song for an animated series.  The cartoon was going to be shown in Europe.  And then the studio got an attorney and said that it would be better to just be made for Wales.  So the song would have to be sung in Welsh.  That wasn't for me.  So now it's on the album...

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Can you talk a bit about recording with Willie Samuels?

I work in a town called Crockett, which is the home of the C&H sugar factory.  A firefighter there went to school with Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day.  I thought Green Day [recordings] always sounded good, so I tracked down the studio where they recorded their stuff.  I once thought you just hired a studio, but it’s not like that, you have to find an engineer.  I found Willie Samuels, but he'd moved to a different studio, a top-notch studio, and I thought there was no way I could afford that.

But that's not how it works.  We set up a budget, and sometimes you get kicked out.  For our album The Golden State, which we also recorded with Samuels, we got kicked out for Lady Gaga.  Samuels recorded spoken word with Danny Glover, with Al Gore.  He recorded 20-piece salsa band.  So we recorded at odd days and times.

I've recorded whole albums at once and didn’t like intensity of recording 14 songs.  So we had 6 songs for a session, which was much more relaxed.

Besides he does what he wants.  He doesn’t like hand percussion, so on one song he mixed it really low.  I know what to expect.

How do you view the interaction between your day job as a paramedic and your life as a kindie musician?

I just celebrated my thirtieth anniversary as a paramedic.

Congratulations!

Thanks, I think.  You know, if there was ever a panel at a kids music conference on being a  “slacker,” that’s me.  I've got to get that balance going between job, and marriage, and music.

I like the stress of my job, which is sick in a way.  As a paramedic we’re used to handling very stressful situations.  When I was 10, my mom got cancer and passed away when I was 12.  And that messed me up a bit as a teenager.  I was quiet and didn’t come out of my shell until 15 or 16.  I wanted to control the situation more than I could before.

I had a band at 15 and that was a relief.  The music thing was much more satisfying.  Much later in the Hipwaders, we’d play at children’s hospitals and parents would be crying out of gratitude.  Wow, thirty years of being a paramedic, nobody ever cries out of gratitude.  The 2 things parts go hand in hand.  The job is very clinical.

The performing part of the band has actually helped me.  Learning to play to the room, looking around making sure everyone is calm, cracking jokes, making sure everyone is put at ease.  It’s almost like a performance too, having to treat a patient.

I imagine a paramedic team is sort of like a band, everyone with their own roles and strengths.

Yeah…  I like going to different people’s houses and cultures.  The last call I was on had this Middle Eastern war rug hanging -- it's a map of Afghanistan with pictures of guns, artillery.  When the Afghans kicked Russians out, they made these rugs -- our military would buy them, so would Afghanis.  The call before that was the tackiest house, looked like something from King Louis XIV; it was owned by an elderly Russian couple.  To me, that’s always fascinating.  Or seeing different religious shrines.  Especially in the Bay Area, which is so diverse -- Cambodians, Phillipines, Middle Eastern.

How do you integrate those two parts of your life?  I was recently having a discussion online with some kids music folks and talking about how major corporations are selling only Dora the Explorer or Kidz Bop album, but also the huge changes in the recorded music industry make it easier than it's ever been to be a part-time creative.

It’s three parts, actually -- family, job, and creative life.  I always have to have a project going -- in between bands in my youth, I might have had a visual arts project.  Now it’s just music.

The Dora and  Kidz Bop stuff -- I don’t even think about that.  That’s a multimedia thing -- TV, merchandise, it all goes together, there’s no way the kindie crowd can get into that.  People ask me, "Can you play Frozen?"  I say no, it’s just not me.  I like Frozen but I really don't like show tunes.  I had a partner doing pediatric care, and he was talking about preschool theme shows I don’t know at all.

The band is happy that we can make albums, play shows, and maybe release an occasional video and not use our own money.  But I’m really cognizant of maintaining the balance between family and playing shows.  We can usually make a day of it as a family.  I don’t want to disrupt that balance.  If I were offered a two week tour on the East Coast, I'd probably say, “Ahhh, I don’t know” unless they paid us a lot of money.

I’m not big on the PR thing now -- we can’t take time from our day jobs and tour the country.  So written press is not that important to us.  Being a regional act is fine for me.  We can get plenty of bookings; there are a half dozen musical acts and we all get gigs.  I'll do it yourself and hope for the best.

You’re not going to get rich, but you’re not going to go broke, either.

Lots of people record, teach music.  I’m not sure I could do it every day or every other day as a job.  What if I had to teach preschool, would I have to write more preschool songs?  That’s not me.  Laurie Berkner is really good at it, but a lot of the other preschool songs I hear are insipid.  I'm fascinated by people who do it as a job.  It's not for me, worrying about [it as] a job.  Hopefullly it’s working out well [for them], that they can retire.

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Are their new tracks on the upcoming album you’re proud of?

“Kings and Queens” song was fun to write.  We’ve had Gunnar Madsen sing [Ed: and Charity Kahn also duets with Uquillas on the album], but never an actual musician.  I was listening to a podcast with Mike Myers, who has a reputation for being difficult. His was saying his art has a quirkiness, particular style.

Sometimes musical guests dilutes that.  I was really struggling with the keyboard part on "Kings and Queens", but couldn’t get it out of my brain on the recording.  So Chris Wiser from the Sugar Free Allstars came on board, said, "Oh, you want a funky clavinet... strings on the chords."  My wife said, "You can play that," and I'd say, "Yes, but I can’t get it out of me."

Oh, and the Buck Owens Christmas song ("Have a Very Merry Christmas") -- I couldn't make it just like Buck, then realized, I'll just make it an R&B song.  Also, I realized that there were just 2 bluegrass song covers and those weren't available on CD, so it was "Oh, nobody’s recorded that."

What’s coming up?

We have a new video (hopefully within a couple weeks) for “Just Not Me.”  Visually, I thought it would be a funny cartoon.  I saw Thessaly Lerner’s videos, which were a little Ren & Stimpy-like.  The animator's cartoons are a little more edgy.  He’s doing the animated video for that.  There's an album release show in a couple weeks, and Halloween shows and Christmas shows are already lined up.  We'll record a new song, too.  Got feedback from one woman who said her kids had [Year-Round Sounds] constant repeat.  That was nice to hear.