Questions about the music and the new record: An Interview With Sophia Babb
What are you exploring in your music?
That’s a good question. I’m not sure what I’m writing about until a song actually arises and takes some kind of shape, so I can’t say I’m consciously exploring themes - but definite themes do emerge as the song takes shape. Where do songs come from? Or, how much of what I write is intentional vs. how much of what I write is magical, or something buried in my unconscious mind? That’s an interesting question.
I think Songwriting for me is mostly a subconscious response to some feeling, idea, emotion or struggle that’s buried somewhere in my unconscious mind, or better yet, something that’s stuck in my soul. Songs probably come from the same strange, deep place that dreams come from. I can say that all the songs on the new record came about from first mindlessly just playing, riffing and noodling on the guitar. The words and melodies generally emerged from my vocalizing over those guitar riffs and chords - and the words didn’t start out as conscious attempts to write anything in particular, they just emerged organically from what seemed to sound good with the guitar parts. But once they had a form, and a decent chorus, then I would actually slave over the lyrics.
I think some of the themes in my work end up as abstractly poetic spiritual metaphors for spiritual or psychological issues I’m working through, especially in songs like “Water From The Stone,” “Cold Mountain,” or “Lonesome Traveler.” I guess those kind of songs could be called Post- Modern Spirituals, because they are definitely influenced by old school Gospel, Folk Traditional songs, and those ancient, haunting African- American spirituals I love more than anything. My other songs have a more story-based, cinematic quality - so those songs are more like “small, dark movies” (a line from a Greg Brown song.) So the songs like “Steel Militia,” “Sunflower,” or “Sad Woman on a Train” are more like little movies with this sort of film director / narrator telling the story and painting the images. I do think I tend to write cinematically - so I often write what seem like “small, dark movies” - That’s probably due to my screenwriting background.
What do you write about that others hide from?
I don’t know what other people hide from but in this record I guess tend to go after these dark, deep, philosophical themes like Faith, Religious Fundamentalism, Suicide, Isolation, Lust, Loneliness and Longing. I don’t think these are the themes of big Pop Hits:) It’s because I’m a Scorpio. It’s all sex, death and resurrection. That must be it.
Is there anything YOU tend to hide from, that you explore/address/find in writing music?
Love. I guess I hide from writing proper Love Songs. I would love to write a proper love song. I try, but I always find the darkness. And Happiness. I can’t seem to write a song that says “I’m So Happy!” I want to. I really do. But I just tend to go dark.
How have the places you've lived influence your sound and writing?
Well, yes. Definitely. I was born in Oshkosh, Wisconsin in 1966, and I was raised there through the early 70’s and I came from a big family of music loving, campfire singing, guitar playing, college-educated, Norwegian Lutherans (100% on both sides). So the folk music of that era is what my whole family would sing together when I was a little kid. We sang all the Civil Rights era songs of Odetta, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Peter Paul and Mary. So that stuff is really, really deep in my DNA. In the early 70’s my entire family on my mom’s side got “Saved” and became Born Again Southern Baptists! Whoo! Crazy stuff! So along with the folk music standards we added all the classic old Southern Baptist, Gospel, Spirituals and Bluegrass Gospel songs to our sing-alongs. We also watched the Johnny Cash show, and Hee-Haw, and the Glen Campbell show in the 70’s. So I got introduced to good, and bad country music then. But the rock and roll thing really came from the long 8 mile bus ride I had to take from Mapleton, my small town in Wisconsin, to get to my grade school and later Junior and
Senior high. The bus driver always rocked out to 93 WQFM which was a great Rock radio station from Milwaukee. That’s where I heard Queen, The Beatles, The Stones, The Kinks, Pink Floyd, Cream, etc. And my mom’s stash of records really had a huge influence on me, specifically Elton John’s “Madman Across the Water,” Simon and Garfunkel’s “Greatest Hits”, Emmy Lou Harris “Roses In The Snow” and Gordon Lightfoot’s “Summertime.” I’ll bet a lot of my actual sound and ideas could be found in those three records. Later, during my college years at ASU, when I lived in Arizona, I dove into that whole live, late 80’s post-punk scene that was happening there with the Meat Puppets and poppier bands like the Gin Blossoms, and I listened heavily to The Cure, REM, the Smith’s, Talking Heads, Violent Femmes, Chili Peppers, etc. And I had a really great friend in college there who turned me deeply onto The Beatles, The Stones, Led Zeppelin and David Bowie. College is also where I really dove deep into Bob Dylan and The Beatles. At that point Dylan and The Beatles took over my life, and totally overshadowed the 90’s Seattle music scene I was supposed to be into. I liked Nirvana and Soundgarden, but nowhere near as much as I worshipped Dylan and The Beatles. I could go on and on...
How does being a father and getting older contribute to your songwriting?
Well, as far as being a Father, it makes it much, much harder to find the time and energy to actually devote myself to songwriting and playing guitar because I have a major responsibility to be a decent father, parent and breadwinner first. And so now my first duty - which used to be to go to worship at the temple of Art, Music and Song - is now to be a day laborer at the church of Fatherhood, Family and Money. And that’s not easy for me, because all I want to do is write, read, play and perform. And to be a decent artist, writer and musician, at least in my case, it seems I need at least 3 or 4 uninterrupted hours a day to be able to dive deep into actually playing music and writing decent lyrics, and getting in touch with the muse, and it seems to take a good chunk of uninterrupted time to get deep enough into my subconscious / unconscious mind to go there. So there’s a selfish aspect to being a really committed artist. Or maybe a Self-Absorption. That’s more like it. Self-absorption takes time, and it’s time that tends to steal from what the family actually needs. As far as being older, I think I just have a lot more experience and story to draw upon than I did when I was younger. There’s just a much greater breadth of knowledge of human experience: the miracle of a child, the selflessness of parenthood (if you’re a good parent), the deaths of one’s grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends and parents. The fact of having been alive across six very different decades: the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s, 90’s, 00’s and 10’s. America and the world has changed and morphed so much since my childhood in the 70’s, which had such a different vibe. But more than anything, I think being older has definitely made me humbler, softer, more forgiving, more empathetic, less cocksure, and more aware that life is short. So I think there’s less ambition and less hubris in my writing now. There’s probably more compassion, more empathy and more softness, in what I write now. I’m definitely less egotistical, self-centered and selfish. But sometimes, Ego and Selfishness and ambition is the fuel of really great poetry and music. So there’s definitely a poor there that seems to fade with age. Probably because the Devil really loves all that stuff - and that’s where great Rock and Roll comes form. It’s the Devil’s church:):)
How are you different now as a musician and writer than you were five years ago? 10?
I don’t actually know. Maybe I’m better, or maybe not. I’ve been a professional writer (copywriter / scriptwriter) for 20 years now, so I think maybe you are braver poet when you are younger, because maybe you are less afraid of saying outlandish, controversial things, and you are less constrained by the wise old critic and editor that seems to come with time. That said, I think that the young, fiery poet is still in there - and the wise, old critic and editor has actually learned a few things of great value. So I think there could be more depth, even if the fire is harder to come by. That’s why I think it takes more time and energy now to get something good. So now I just let it come when I have time, and record it as it is, and then hope to get back later to polish it!
What do you want to communicate with your music?
I really don’t know. I guess I just want to share the experience of how it feels for me - being a human being - with all the love, joy, hurt, sadness, pain, longing and beauty that goes on in a human life. I think I’m first trying to communicate something to myself, and then
Where did this album come from? Who were you when you wrote it?
Well, I wrote these songs during my totally irresponsible but richly rewarding wayfaring troubadour and wandering poet days. It’s kind of embarrassing to say, but it’s the truth: the songs on this album were written over a period of almost 20 years (from my late 20’s to my early 40’s) and each song, in retrospect, is really like a little road trip vignette snapshot or soul postcard from one of these singular, “Poetic experiences” I had in each of these places or settings. These songs were actually birthed and written from the year 2000 through the year 2016 when I was living like a character from a Kerouac novel and chalked up at least 40 different addresses across North America. They came from a weird boarding house situation in Austin, Texas, a studio apartment I had in Portland, Oregon, a strange old farm I was housesitting in on Lasqueti Island in British Columbia, a house I shared with an ex-fiancee in San Barbara, California, a rental apartment in downtown Prague, and so forth. I was all over the place physically and spiritually. The actual record took me 4 years, 5 studios and a lot of help from some very generous musical friends to make. But that was mainly because of money issues...That’s one reason to call it “Water From the Stone.”
Here’s a Breakdown of the songs on the record. The themes for each probably are:
Water From the Stone is probably a metaphor about Faith. It’s got a biblical thing going. I think it’s about about trying to find God in a world where seeking God seems foolhardy, naive and mostly impossible. It’s about trying to find water in a desert. It’s also about the feeling of the awful weather in Northern Colorado in spring, when it’s a freezing raw wind, and it’s dry, but it’s all gray and brown and dead. God I hate that.
Steel Militia is about religious, nationalist fundamentalism. It’s based on a true story I read at the start of the second Iraq War. It’s about what happens when two soldiers of deep faith, one a Christian American, and one an Iraqi Muslim, meet on the field of Battle. Where is God? Who is the righteous one?
Some Dreams is about all the different American dreams we have that end up eluding us, deluding us, or killing us.
Lonesome Traveler is just a host of images from a spiritual journey. That melody came out of me on hike in Oregon where I literally heard this wailing chorus of Native American voices chanting in my head. That was maybe the weirdest thing I’ve ever experienced. The lyrics tumbled out of me a few years later when I was on a Buddhist retreat in Canada. I was about to become a Buddhist monk. I met a French girl instead:)
Sunflower is a song about a very beautiful friend of mine who took his own life. I got the idea when I saw this big dying Sunflower in a huge field of Sunflowers and it was the only one that had turned it’s back on the sun. It made me think of him.
Cold Mountain started at my place in Santa Barbara as a duet I sang with my then Fiancee, Heather Beckett, who is a wonderful singer, songwriter and playwright. I finished it at a Buddhist retreat center above a beautiful lake in British Columbia. It was based on a bunch of different poems in the book “Cold Mountain Poems” by Han Shan, an ancient, almost mythical Chinese poet. It was all about the idea of becoming a monk and leaving the world behind.
Hostage is all about lust and shame and guilt and madness: the great battle between one’s spiritual vows and one’s carnal nature in this weird sort of Spaghetti-Western / Russian Gypsy mash-up style. It’s an imagined monologue from the mind of a priest who has gone crazy with lust over this beautiful dancer named Maria. There was this hundred year old photo of a young handsome priest I saw at a museum in Todos Santos Mexico. It seems this priest had a secret family of 6 children with a beautiful woman from the village. This is like his confession to an elder priest, and to God, before he decides to throw his vocation and his restraint away on the “great sin” of fornication outside of wedlock.
Sad Woman On A Train was a song I wrote after meeting this extraordinarily beautiful ballet dancer named Lenka, on a train, on my trip to Prague back in the late 90’s. It was a true story she told me about the fact that her estranged husband (who she said looked just like me -and was also from a town in Wisconsin near where I grew up) had taken their only son and fled to the United States with him. Lenka told me he had disappeared and she did not know how to find him. It really struck me. I couldn’t believe something so tragic could happen to someone so beautiful. That song came out in 15 minutes when go to our apartment in Prague. I wish they all came that quickly.
Where do you want your music to take you? In 2 years? In 5? In 10?
I want it take me all over the world. I want it to get bigger and better and bring in all kinds of other musicians: classical players for sure. I’d like a career and a band like Paul Simon or Leonard Cohen had. It’s an insane dream at my age. But that’s what I want.
