** Janis Ian at Old Town School of Folk Music, ( 773 ) 728-6000, April 25th
At the time that I interviewed Janis Ian in early February of 2004, her live CD, Working Without A Net, was number seven on the Outvoice top 40 album chart of LGBT music. Her previous studio album, God & The FBI, was also a longtime presence on the Outvoice chart. All of that bodes well for her new studio disc Billie's Bones ( Rude Girl/Oh Boy ) . A Janis Ian concert at the Arie Crown Theater in Chicago was one of the first live music shows I ever attended as a kid and as I was beginning my career in journalism in 1993, Ms. Ian was the first person I ever interviewed. Therefore, it meant a lot to me be able to speak with her again, especially about an album as wonderful as Billie's Bones.
Gregg Shapiro: Working Without A Net, the live disc you released in 2003 is not your first live set. There was The Bottom Line Encore Collection from 1995, for example. Do you have a fondness for live albums, and if so, what is the attraction?
Janis Ian: It's the first live album that I've released that I had control over that is actually culled from the best shows and the best takes. In that sense, it's real different from the Remember album that was done over a period of two shows and is out of print, or The Bottom Line Collection, which was recorded at a time when live recording wasn't anything to brag about. The opportunity to do a live double album that was culled from the best shows we could find was attractive to me. And the opportunity to use that as a bridge, because I hadn't had an album out in a couple of years, to satisfy the fans who were waiting for Billie's Bones, was also really attractive to me. Beyond that, I think it's nice for fans to have a memento of shows that's as close to the actual shows as possible. That's the feeling that we were going for.
GS: You have a fascinating record label history, having recorded for Verve, Columbia, and Windham Hill, to mention a few. Both Working Without A Net and your amazing new studio disc Billie's Bones are on your label Rude Girl, released through John Prine's Oh Boy Records. With Oh Boy's incredible roster, do you feel like you have finally found a label on which you feel at home and have a connection?
JI: Yeah. I had the opportunity to go with Oh Boy back in '92. We went with Morgan Creek instead because Oh Boy didn't have anything approaching their ( domestic or ) international distribution, and it was really important to me to have that international distribution. What we did this time was go with four separate companies. Oh Boy for America and Australia and three others around the world. It's a real good blend for me because Oh Boy is much respected. It's a small companythere are only seven employees, which means I can get a hold of somebody to find out what's going on, unlike at Windham Hill. The chance of everybody being fired, like everybody was with both my albums at Windham Hill is next to nil. I think that it's an opportunity for me to work in an environment where I have complete control over the creative end and a fair amount of control over the rest without making anybody angry at me.
GS: No discussion of your new CD would be complete without first talking about the title track. In it you sing about Billie Holiday, 'I would tell her how I've yearned to be worthy of the grail/All these years and all I've learned is just how brilliantly I fail.' What can you tell me about your relationship to Billie Holiday?
JI: I felt there was a connection from the time that I first heard her. In that mystical way of a 12 year old, I thought that the fact that we were both born on April 7 meant something deep. She's just the best. I don't think there's another singer out there who can touch her. She and George Jones, I'd say. To try and come up to the standard that Billie hit is a worthy endeavor, although fraught with difficulty.
GS: You've been living in Nashville for a number of years and Tennessee really comes through loud and clear on the new disc. It is especially audible on 'My Tennessee Hills,' a duet you sing with Dolly Parton.
JI: I'd been fooling with the song for about six years, unable to write a verse. Then one day last January I sat down and thought, 'Well, I should write this like a George Jones song.' The minute I thought that the song just wrote itself over a period of a couple of days. I really wanted to do it as a duet. My partner said, 'Dolly would sound great on that.' We called her and ( laughs ) much to everyone's shock, she said yes. It was one of the best studio experiences of my life. She's a pro from the word go. Just amazing to work with; a real pleasure.
GS: Buddy Mondlock, with whom you co-wrote 'Amsterdam,' is also a part of the Nashville songwriters' scene. What was your co-writing experience like?
JI: Buddy's great! We wrote that song back when he first came to town about 10, 12 years ago. He's just a wonderful resource in this community and a wonderful person to know. We love Buddy around here.
GS: There is another interesting collaboration on the disc, the song 'I Hear You Sing Again' …
JI: … my co-write with Woody ( Guthrie ) . ... The Guthrie Foundation approached me and asked whether I would write music to lyrics of Woody's that went unfinished. I said that it depends on the lyric obviously, send me some. It also depends on whether I feel like the lyric needs work, because those lyrics are really tied to the time. Nora Guthrie sent me 13 songs to choose from and none of them did a whole lot for me but two. The minute I saw 'I Hear You Sing Again,' I thought, 'I need to write this one. This one's mine.' It was just a perfect fit. That song, again, wrote itself really quickly. I didn't expect that it would go as fast as it did.
GS: Matthew Shepard continues to be a source of powerful music. Like you, both gay band The Aluminum Group ( 'Motorcycles' ) and straight emo band Thursday ( 'M. Shepard' ) have songs about him on their new CDs. Can you say something about your contribution to the canon of songs about Matthew?
JI: I think I was disturbed that so many of the songs about him made him heroic and made it like, 'Well, this was a terrible thing, but on the other hand, good came out of it.' While that's true, that wasn't the issue for me. The issue for me was just the horror of it; that this could happen at all. I doubt that if Matthew had the choice, he would have chosen this, no matter how famous it made his name. I wanted to talk about that part of it and just find a way to cope with my own personal reaction, which was, like everyone else's, absolute horror.
GS: Is there a Janis Ian Columbia-years box set lurking in the wings?
JI: I doubt it, just because Columbia won't do it with us. Sony doesn't have any interest in working with us on it. They just want us to approve some piece of crap that they slap together ( laughs ) . The albums are being re-released in every country but North America. There will be a best-of ( collection ) called Souvenir out, in every country but North America, this coming fall. It will have 'At Seventeen' and 'Fly Too High' and 'The Other Side Of The Sun' and 'Jesse' and all of the other hits. People will be able to buy it off Web sites such as Amazon or Amazon UK. But, unfortunately, Sony is a very big company that has no interest in working with smaller companies.
GS: What can people expect from the Janis Ian concert tour of 2004?
JI: They can expect a lot of good guitar work ( laughs ) . And they can expect a combination of the old songs and the new songs. We're taking out some songs that I'm really tired of doing, like 'Jesse.' We're leaving in 'At Seventeen' and I think I'm going to start doing 'Stars' every night; a bunch of stuff from the new CD. I try to keep it a blend of the old and the new. I've got 20 or 23 albums out in general release, in one form or another, so I don't really feel the need to go out on tour and do every song from the new album. I'm just trying to pick the best songs from the entire catalog.