MOLLY HAMILTON & ROBERT EARL THOMAS OF WIDOWSPEAK
Delving into the minds of creatives is endlessly fascinating and infinity revealing. There are often similarities in the ways artists approach musical creations and there are of course idiosyncratic methods musicians employ that are wholly unique to an individual or group. Add to this the form of creativity drawn upon when having already explored so many different methods in earlier works and one begins to truly see the inner workings of an artist. This is most certainly Molly Hamilton and Robert Earl Thomas of Widowspeak and their sixth studio album The Jacket.
Fabricating a fictitious world became the foundation for their latest album. Starting broad and coalescing random thoughts, the framework of the album began to take shape as founding member Molly explains. “In a lot of ways the narrative for this one was always vague and mostly just ideas floating through my head; I never quite pinned down the details, but the initial concept is what got the wheels turning on how the songs would work together, and motivated me to keep writing until the record felt finished. But, most of the actual details got abandoned along the way. The story essentially revolved around a fictional city where there are different parts of town devoted to different trades (like in New York City, where there is a diamond district, a flower district, a garment district), and one such neighborhood being a “satin district” where by night there are cowboy and ye-ye cover bands playing all the bars on a single street (like Beale in Memphis, 6th St in Austin, etc), and by day there are custom embroidery shops that make the costumes for the bands, in the vein of Nudie suits and the like. One of the chainstitchers ends up joining a band “Le Tex” that is breaking out of the scene, hitting the road, off to make in the real Texas or maybe LA, and it’s sort of about the internal relationships of that experience, the rise and fall. I’d sort of imagined it as a cross between Urban Cowboy, The Warriors, Paris Texas, and the band itself being something of an art rock band like the B52s or Talking Heads.” A wildly imaginative and broad storyboard but as Molly goes on to say. “Because we’re something of an understated band ourselves, it was really inspiring to me to put myself in a different frame of reference, thinking about the power of costumes and performance and kitsch and all the ways that music is tied up in these symbols of its history. And of course the songs are speaking to my own experience in a band, at least the early years of Widowspeak, underneath the lyrics bits that survived from that earlier concept.”
When contemplating the lyrics for The Jacket, it begs the question what similarities do they share with Widowspeaks’s previous works and where do depart into a new realm? Molly answers by saying. “I think having the narrative in place as a sort of metaphor allowed me to be a little less guarded with lyrics, at least when I was speaking about things that were more personal. I try to be honest in songs, but I don’t necessarily like to reveal every detail, and the “concept” really just allowed me to talk about different experiences, relationships, and moments without having to completely ground the songs in my own reality.” That slight separation between fact and fiction, complete truth and relevant details is a line that Widowspeak straddles well. It also puts into perspective where The Jacket falls in the continuum of Widowspeak’s records. For Molly, it was a case of enjoying the pursuit of a new creative approach whilst retaining some of the core elements. “I think this one is sort of digging into the basics of what makes us a band; it’s relatively unadorned in terms of how we wrote and recorded and produced it, and for us that was a really important move to make. We wanted to make something that felt like the most natural expression of where we are right now, after making five other records and sort of recognizing that it’s a long journey, and we can take our time getting to all the places we might go. Having finished it, and it being released out into the world now, it’s been a sort of stabilizing force in terms of how we think about the future; by writing an album that captured exactly where we were in that moment, we feel a little more inspired by the idea of more experimentation, folding in new things to the Widowspeak sound.” Such experimentation and exploration into sound carry over to the instrumentation harnessed on The Jacket.
Especially so considering what elements Widowspeak wished to explore on this record that until now had not been experimented with. As Molly explains, “We used some Mellotron plug-in sounds on songs like ‘While You Wait’ and ‘Unwind’, and also some piano and organ on ‘Everything is Simple’, ‘The Drive’, and few others, but we’ve actually brought all those sounds into records previously, though perhaps not the exact tape loop for the Mellotron, or the exact organ sound. I think revisiting those textures on this record specifically made them feel less like novelties to us, and more like they were already part of our own toolbox. Mostly, it’s a four-piece guitar band record, recorded mostly live in a pretty straightforward way, and that approach on its own was really refreshing to us because it felt true to the moment, and to us.” A sentiment that features heavily throughout the record and a focus that remained ever-present in producing the album. Crystalizing a time, a moment, and a feeling is never an easy task however for The Jacket it was almost a primary directive.
This point is echoed by how vigilant and committed Widowspeak remains to their vision. Uncompromising towards their creative goals and in equal measure unfettered by reliance on their music as a sole source of income. Molly explains the delicate balancing act by sharing how she and her cohort Robert Earl Thomas maintain dual careers. “Well, I think the fact that we balance other jobs with our music has definitely made us work really hard at what we do, and has kept us releasing records pretty steadily regardless of any external factors. It’s also been empowering in a way by taking the financial expectations off the table. When the band started out we didn’t necessarily know what our goals or aspirations were, and in some ways, we’ve been obstinate over the years about avoiding situations where we have to compromise our values for exposure. We’ve sort of committed to doing things a certain way, a way that makes us feel proud of the work we do, and hopefully makes this band something sustainable and that we can keep doing for years and years. I think because I’m not only living in and navigating the music industry, I am really inspired by everyday experiences. And with this album, and the last (Plum) I think I was sort of making peace with the ways it can be a struggle to balance creative work with actually making a living, paying rent. At this point I feel like I’m on the other side of that, and realizing how free we feel to do things our own way.”
To elaborate further and explain how the dynamism between herself, Robert Earl Thomas, James Jano and Willy Muse bring their individual parts to produce the Widowspeak collective, Molly provides an overview of the band’s methodology. “I tend to be something of the ephemeral ideas sort of person, and usually our process starts with me in that I kind of get the ball rolling on chord progressions, lyrics, and moods for a song ideas. Sometimes a song will be done right away, written in one sitting, but other times I’ll come up with something more vague that I’m not sure what to do with and hand over very rough demos and voice memos to Rob, who will make his own demo versions that interpret those ideas as slightly more concrete songs. Then we might take those ideas to the band to work out how they will actually sound being performed or recorded, or we might go back to the demo process, and hand the songs back and forth until they feel like they’re on their way. Even though we live together, we don’t really work on these songs together in the same room until later on, mostly because I tend to feel more creative when I’m alone, in my own head. So, the ideas come from us individually, and they become actual finished songs collaboratively.”
That collaborative process could best be summed up in terms of how the band performs live and that of their stagecraft. Understanding how Widowspeak chooses and performs their music live is another revealing insight into how live shows can influence the music they produce and ultimately how that is translated into their recordings. Molly sums it up when saying, “I definitely think our live shows are where we explore where songs can go, beyond the formal elements of their structure or instrumentation, and I really wish it made sense to tour songs for years before recording them for an album. Even by the end of a tour, all the songs from the set will have morphed into slightly different versions of themselves. And sometimes reviving a very old song and reimagining what it can be years later is the coolest feeling, like covering yourself. We had sort of taken a long break from touring after Expect the Best, and of course over the last two years, and so putting together our live bands for the recording of Plum and The Jacket was sort of strange in that we weren’t sure how much the songs could be played live. Especially for The Jacket, we really workshopped them a lot with the band over a few weeks, to get them feeling comfortable and at the same time locked-in, tour-tight without a tour. In that sense, The Jacket feels the most like how we sound live, of all our records.” And as with any band that has spent an extensive period of their lives touring, certain unusual shows occur, often randomly but with a lasting memory as Molly recalls one particular show. “I think one of our favorite shows of all time was on our first tour in Europe, after our first record came out, in Bologna, Italy. The original venue for the show wasn’t an option anymore, so we ended up playing in the cellar of a men’s clothing shop in the old part of town, in this very very old building. It was essentially a house show, just a PA and us and a bunch of people crowded into a small space, but it was just very special. There are actually a lot of shows that we’ve played like that, where it’s not really about the venue or the number of people in the crowd, but about the completely unique moment you’re in that can’t be compared to anything else and won’t be recreated. Those are the shows I remember most vividly, and that feels the most exciting when they are happening.” It is moments like these that linger long after the fact and that can be said for the people Widowspeak have encountered over the years and the inspiration they have drawn from them.
Gleaming insights and learning from others in the industry takes many shapes and forms and as Molly suggests, “I think generally it’s been more actions than words that have inspired us in terms of seeing how other artists live and work, how they approach their own careers and canons of work. At first, when we started, we were definitely inspired by more tangible “scenes”, bands finding new sounds, capturing the feeling of the zeitgeist. But twelve years later, some of those band’s kind of fizzled out or moved on from music, and others totally shifted course to different projects and sounds. I think seeing bands that stay true to their own basic sense of intention, and continue to exist despite maybe losing that initial “buzz”, enduring despite the ways the industry can be frustrating and difficult to navigate, is really inspiring to us. I think about that more so than any singular advice, or approach to music-making itself, because the thing that keeps you going is yourself. I like seeing how bands and artists grow and shift into new territory over twenty, thirty, forty years. I hope we will still be a band for that long, hopefully continuing to hone our craft. Becoming better with age!” A wise outlook to have considering the frivolity and fickleness of both musicians and the music industry but it is on a more philosophical note about what does music give Molly that nothing else does that unearths a deep insight into how she appreciates music and what it affords her in life when she says. “Music gives me a way of capturing a feeling in a more ephemeral way; I’m not much of a journal-writer because I tend to shy away from really specific and factual descriptions of moments, and in the same way I tend to move on from different experiences with these more general emotional takes on what happened, what it meant. So I think songwriting gives me this way of preserving a snapshot of a mood that also isn’t so tied to something so personal that I lose interest in it because it represents a past. Recorded songs are a snapshot, and become something totally different to everyone who listens, and every time the band plays it. But the songs themselves are something like a living document, where they can become different vessels for my own changing perspectives over time. So in that sense, music gives me a way to express ideas that doesn’t require them to be concrete and completely defined.” And it is this living document that Molly describes which is perhaps the aptest way of describing not just her views, processes and approaches but of the moment The Jacket is capturing. Converse to the previous methods of writing and recording, this album has been road-tested and hardened before it hits the ground and in light of how the world has changed in the last couple of years, it truly has captured a moment in time and serves as an eternal reference point to the early 2020’s and what it means to Widowspeak and the listening world.
