onstage. You’re imagining playing live instead of just about what’s happening in the room. Jack was hugely helpful in helping me feel I could achieve some larger goals. Everybody works differently, and every situation is different. Jack had a track prepared, and I wrote the melody and lyrics with him involved. It felt like it was very collaborative. MC: What was it like working with producer John O’Mahoney? Bareilles: Awesome. It was very easy. We met through mutual friends. He’s a really thoughtful producer. He has strong opinions and doesn’t sugarcoat anything. If you work well with that, it’s a great fit. John helped me strip away some of my fear about being vulnerable and being wrong. It felt very collaborative. MC: What about producer Mark Endert? How did his style differ from O’Mahoney’s, and why work with multiple producers? Bareilles: Like an artist, every producer has a different style. Working with Mark, I let go of the reins a little more. He had a specific vision, so it was a practice in letting go for me. Of course I’m kind of a control freak as well, and I want to have my hands all over everything. It was very different. With John, I felt like we were building a castle block by block together, and with Mark, I felt like he constructed a lot of the castle, and I came in and made my changes. Both were rewarding in their own ways. MC: Why do you like to co-produce your records? Bareilles: I have concrete opinions on the way something sounds, the way the arrangement feels, the structure and foundation of the music. It’s not just coming in and singing vocals. MC: Your voice is so pure. Were you trained to sing professionally? Do you still work with a vocal coach? Bareilles: I wasn’t trained professionally. I did start taking lessons later in my career, which was helpful in building stamina and strength. I started singing very young as a kid. My older sister was very involved in theater; she was a singer. There was always music around the house, and I just fell into that. I’ve worked with John Deaver out of L.A. I’ve worked with Liz Caplan, and I’ve worked with Wendy Parr. Now I’m in a new environment and just seeing what teaching styles are like [in New York]. MC: What role does your record label play in your career? Is Epic Records very hands-on in working with you? Bareilles: They are hands-on. I think one of the things they’ve done well on this record is they’ve left me to my own devices, and that was really important. Feeling a lot of pressure and like timelines are coming down on you or that you’re disappointing the business on some level is disruptive to the creative part of my brain. They were gentle and left me alone for the most part. The industry is going through so many changes and Epic is still in flux, and they made me feel like I was welcome. MC: How has moving to New York City impacted your music? Bareilles: I moved to New York in January of this year, and it is incredibly different. It’s different in terms of timbre and cadence and energetic vibrations, to sound really hippie dippie. It couldn’t be more opposite. It felt more chaotic, with so many people all on top of each other. There’s a web of lives and stories happening around you. Los Angeles is much more solitary, at least for me. I had a little house there. Your car separates you from people. I think in L.A. I had a little more of a lethargic lifestyle. Some of that was good, cozy, comfortable. There was an incredible network of friends I miss dearly, but creatively I needed a jumpstart into something else, and New York gave me that leg up. MC: How did the production and writing of this record differ from pass efforts? Bareilles: Recording this record was quite different from my previous records in that this one happened in installments. I used a variety of producers and recording studios over a period of about four months and took the whole of the record in bite-sized chunks. I think, in some ways, this was how the record stayed so fresh for me, but I have to admit that by the end of the recording process, it felt like I had been recording forever. I was happy to step away and get back onstage to connect with live performance. Overall, the writing process and recording process were both much more collaborative for me this time around, and that was also a big difference. I ended up co-writing about half the record, and I’m very proud of that. I loved my collaborators, and I feel like I learned a lot through working with each and every one of them. MC: Do you have a process or particular conditions for songwriting? Bareilles: Songwriting is different each time, but the great majority of the time, I start with my piano at home. I love writing in the mornings, with a cup of coffee and no agenda. I like to see what falls out. It’s usually a melody that comes first, and then the words will follow. If I am really focused and patient, I can sometimes get through a song in one sitting, but usually it takes me a longer time than that. Sometimes years, even. That is why I enjoyed co-writing so much on this record. The process was accelerated in a really fascinating way. So fun. MC: What influences, musical and otherwise, informed the writing of this record? Bareilles: The influences on this record are very much inspired by the sounds of my collaborators. Jack Antonoff and his band, Fun., were a great influence on the tracks we wrote, and the songs I wrote with Matt Hales were heavily influenced by my “fangirl” relationship to the music of his project, Aqualung. In addition to that, I think the influences run the gamut of the kind of music I love––everything from Arcade Fire and Sigur Ros to Prince and Raphael Saadiq. MC: Your debut sold over a million copies and received Grammy nominations. Your second record debuted at number one. What were your expectations for yourself for your third album? How did you realize those expectations or work around them? Bareilles: I think it goes without saying that you hope your work is successful. For me, it’s always been a challenge to distance myself from what came before and to detach my expectations from everything. “Love Song” was an amazing first step in my career, and it’s been a huge blessing, but also the one thing that everything gets compared to. I wrote that song 10 years ago at this point. I think I wanted to allow myself as an artist, to show different sides of my creative self and allow myself to grow up a little bit, and I feel that was achieved. I’m so proud of this body of work. I think it reflects a really exploratory time in my life, and the new ones are some of my favorite songs I’ve ever written. I’m really happy with this album. Contact dvora. englefield@42west.net Quick Facts Family Guy Music Is Better Than Words Mickey Mouse Club Little Shop of Horrors - - - 30 Rock 38 September 2013 musicconnection.com
September 2013 musicconnection.com 39
Change language