Being herself Inside Out
by Matteo Bossi
“I’m over the moon, I wanted to play at Umbria Jazz for so long…and the fact that I get to open for Elvis Costello is fantastic.” We have reached Judith Owen, from her home in New Orleans, to talk about her new record, Suit Yourself, an album she’s rightly very proud of. The summer will take her back in Europe with a gig at the Umbria jazz festival. “And it’s such a small world and friend of mine is very good friend with him, so it’s gonna be nice, it also turns out that Elvis is a huge Big Band fan which I didn’t know. It really thrills me when people love that thing. And Jon Batiste is gonna be there too a few days earlier, I’m a huge fan of him and the message he sends out. Nobody questions his ability to do whatever he wants to do and I just love that…funny enough my drummer Jamison Ross is gonna be playing with him at that show. I share Jamison with Jon Batiste, Snarky Puppy and Boz Scaggs, so I’m in very good company.”
It seems to me that the “Come On And Get It” record kind of freed yourself up to be fully yourself.
You’re absolutely right…it was the album tha allowed me to be my true self. I was always myself but to be my biggest, bravest self and to do what I wanted to do, like those women that I covered. It allowed me to step away from the piano, stand up and be an entertainer, a performer, a dancer, an actress… with no fear. Then to get back to the piano, which is my first love and bring back my songs, my music, my arrangements. And the piano too. All the aspects of who I am and have that same fearlessness in everything I do. It was turning point for me. To have spent your whole life behind the piano, which is of course security, safety, a place to hide a little bit…but I wanted to be free, smile with my music, find that joy, be a front woman in control of the stage, having the best time and wanting the audience to have the best time.
Also having toured a lot with The Callers a great band led by David Torkanowsky has probably been an enriching experience.
Yes, it allowed me to be more free and yet more in control of the whole thing. It’s interesting, like the freedom has given me a greater power on stage. So being able to inhabit almost channel those women who I loved so much since I was a little girl, play that part and find myself in it it was totally liberating. I had that look, that feeling of another time I went to the extreme. Now what you see is that same woman but it’s funny when I was a little girl I was imagining me on stage singing like Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Nellie Lutcher, Frank Sinatra… but the person I saw looked like the person I am today. That’s who I saw. And it’s taken my whole life to get there. It was such a hard road, but you’re on a journey as an artist and musician, and human being…I had to pull all these things that I learned. Music was my personal joy, it all made sense.
And it’s happening thirty years into your career, your first record came out in 1996.
Yes, it’s extraordinary and here I am. You think what the fuck…I could not fake it, pretend to be someone I am not. I’m myself on stage and the audience knows what’s real. I could not pretend to be powerful and confident even that was inside, I had too much work to do. Last time I saw you at the Blue Note I had this young woman, I always have young women in the audience and I love that, come to me and say I want to be like you, confident. How do I become like that in my life? And that’s make me feel so right, because that’s how I felt when I was young.
How do I become that woman that I’m hearing? I don’t want to be broken, depressed or sad, I want to feel that joy and I had to learn the hard way and I love that I can now say to people of any age you are enough and you’re here to be your best self, you are worthy, you don’t have to be a pleaser or put other people before you all the time. And you don’t need to make everyone happy. I thought I had to please the world but it’s OK not to. The freedom that you have and the understanding you have comes from age but also from a little help from people around you to know that you really are here on this life and you have to be true to who you are and not what everybody thinks and says.
It means a lot when you have this connection with the audience.
Yes, because music is a shared experience, this is a conversation, I have no interest in playing music just for myself. I need people, I need communication. We’re all struggling in this life, and right now we’re struggling more than ever it’s a very strange time in the world we live in. But when you’re in a room together and you are hearing music it is the human connection that we all need so badly. It is the thing that takes us out of our worries, out of our problems, that’s the escapism we all need. That’s why we’been doing it forever.
It’s probably the reason why your record is full of life, even though we’re living in dark times.
That’s what it is. Life is up and downs…I’m sitting here in New Orleans and this city knows more about finding joy in the face of adversity than any other place I’ve ever been in my life. It is the most life fulfilling, life inspiring city, everything is about living now, in this moment. It has taught me everything about inhabiting the moment you’re in, because it’s all that you have….and do not wasted. No more. The antidote to everything that makes us sad and ill, it is music, the arts…the shared experience. The thing that counteracts that sadness for me is music, it has been like that all my life. And that is my job.
What was going through your mind when you went into the studio to make this record?
The thought was drawing from everything I learned from Come On And Get It and the Big Band, but also myself back at the piano. And being me, to embrace life and bring that feeling…I know that I would be going out touring this record, and I love to do that more than everything and I think that the audience will get the emotions from this record.
What about the song you do with Davell Crawford, “Today I Sing The Blues”, he’s a New Orleans icon, you go way back with him or did you meet him more recently?
Well, I think I know him since the Nineties, I’ve been a fan of his for a long time…how could you not be, he’s extraordinary! Every note out of his mouth, every note he plays is a like a direct connection with God, a higher place and I don’t even believe in that, music is my religion! But that’s how he makes me feel. It comes from church and from here in New Orleans. I didn’t know that he loved my music and my songs, so it was reciprocated, which was fantastic.
There’s a thing in New Orleans called piano night during Jazz Fest, we got together on one of the piano nights, you play by yourself for thirty minutes and at the end we played together on another song with a similar vibe, truly from the church, secular but a mix of gospel and blues…our voices blended so beautifully and I knew that we had to to something for this album. We sit at the piano together and we get it. That’s how I record anyway, one take. With somebody like him you have to be in the moment, than he sat at the B 3 Hammond which takes you to that special place. It’s a jam, like from another time and place. I want to make music that is fresh and will be fresh in many years, that’s what music is to me. I feel like the best music is forever is not timed. For many people it’s the highlight of the album which makes me so happy.
Judith Owen photo Steve Rapport
You’ve done a new version of your song “That’s Why I Love My Baby”, it was on “Somebody’s Child”.
Yes, it was interesting because as I wrote it, it was always a jazz song…but the way I recorded it with James Taylor rhythm section and so the feeling of it was different, kind like a cross of jazz and american folk. But many of my songs I wrote them as jazz songs, first and foremost. This was great to be able to to step away and have Dave Torkanowsky on the piano do that thing. I think I was so glad to have a classic sounding torch song like “Have A Good Life”, like a Shirley Horn song…then with the last song, “Inside Out”, which is probably my favorite.
You have a choir on that one.
Yes, and I’ve just done a video, it’s gonna come out in august. That to me says everything that the album is about. Being your authentic self, and how much happier your life will be, how people will appreciate you for being yourself. We’re all thinking we need to be invited to the party, but it’s not like that…the minute you are your real self people will go “oh my God, I feel that way too.” That’s what I’ve learned and that’s why it’s the last song on the record. And Tonya Boyd-Cannon is extraordinary, a great choir master, she’s been on the semifinal of The Voice…she’s always at my Christmas Extravaganza every year….again, this city, as you know, there’s no problem in finding ridiculous talent in every aspect, not just in music, it’s such a nurturing place as a musician.
Joe Bonamassa plays on the Mose Allison song and it really fits.
Yes, he’s the one that’s outside but not really…A good friend of mine, a wonderful singer, Danielle DeAndrea is one of his backing singers. They came to New Orleans and played at a big theater here and so I went over and it was fantastic. And after that I said to her, do you think Joe would ever consider put some guitar on one of my songs? There’s something about Your Mind Is On Vacation, it needed a snarky guitar part…It would be great to have him”. I think an album should have sounds that you are not expecting, it keeps things interesting…luckily he’s a very generous musician who loves playing on other people records.
And it’s a great Mose Allison song.
Again, it’s very personal to me. I don’t cover a song that doesn’t mean something to me or has affected mes someway in my life. When you cover other people music you have to believe it, it has to be about your experience in life. Even if it didn’t start with the same meaning it will become my meaning, I will do my treatment of it. I saw Mose Allison, in the late Nineties, I saw Blossom Dearie, Nina Simone as a child in London, I met Aretha, Etta James…and it meant the world to me. Mose wash such a stylist and I have love this song forever. There are two songs on this album that speak about how the world make me feel when I wake up in the morning: “Moanin’” of course, and “Your Mind Is On Vacation”.
It’s about all this noise, lies and fabrication…it’s very timely really and it’s how I choose these songs. “Blues Skies” is another one, a song that is nearly one hundred years old, but the way I see it is not as a love song, but about how to remain hopeful in such hard times. It’s like when you’re on a plane and it goes through clouds and suddenly there’s this blue sky and the sun…you got to imagine that the blue sky is there and reach for it. So it becomes a different song. I know about depression and mental illness, heartbreak…how you can’t see how the hell you’re gonna be back up. But that’s the other side of the coin.
Judith Owen
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