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Jolie Holland

A Conversation with Jolie Holland (continued)

PM: I thought the CD said something about Forestville [an hour or so north of San Francisco]. Didn't something happen up there?

JH: That's where the fancy studio is.

PM: Oh, so who's joint was that?

JH: This guy named Gregory. And it's an all vintage studio. It's pretty amazing.

PM: Is it an analog thing or a computer driven thing?

JH: You can do anything you need to. But we put it all on digital. It was my decision.

PM: It's better for editing and stuff.

JH: Yeah, and I couldn't really afford to do everything the fancy way. The place was going to sound warm enough.

PM: And besides, the music is warm enough. It starts there. You take really warm music and a really quiet beautiful singer and you put it through the right mic in the digital domain, it sounds fine. You put shitty pop music in the digital domain, and it sounds like a cracker box, of course it does.

JH: Right.

[laughter]

PM: Let's talk about "Darlin Ukelele," because that's a really precious song, especially the way you guys cut it. The interplay between the ukelele and Mihaly's marimba and Enzo Garcia's musical saw, I mean, it's incredible. How did that all come together that way?

JH: There's this kind of secret sound on that song, too, that's Brian Miller on the guitar.

PM: What's he doing?

JH: He's just got effects, this sound.

PM: See, because he got right by me. I didn't even name him as one of the elements.

JH: Yeah.

PM: But he's doing something remarkable in there.

JH: Yeah, he's like the bass sound, like (singing) bom, bom, bom, bom, bom, you know. He's such a beautiful guitar player. We all have such different aesthetics, but he's the most pop influenced one of us. He listens to The Innocence Mission and The Cure and all that. And he's just got this really pure way of thinking about sound. Then Dave [Mihaly, drums] comes from this avant-garde jazz background. Dave could, like, sing you an Ornette Coleman song.

[laughter]

PM: It's not everybody who'll do that for you.

JH: No. But Dave also does this great hip-hop kind of thing.

PM: Interesting guys.

JH: So actually, when I wrote "Darlin Ukelele"--well, it's a crazy story. I just got this kind of wild hair that I was going to tempt fate and insist that the universe give me something.

PM: [laughs] 'Atta girl.

JH: I was insisting that the universe give me a red ukelele. And then it did!

PM: Oh, I'm going to try something like that. That's a great idea.

JH: Yeah. And just do it totally confidently. And then, after that happened, I thought, you know, a red ukulele is pretty insignificant. So then I decided I was going to try to get a hold of this person that I haven't been able to talk to for five years, somebody I lost contact with who's really important to me.

And then within a week it happened. I was over at this friend's house whom I hadn't seen in a while, and this other friend of ours walked in the door and said, "Hey, I saw somebody up in Portland that knows you." And I just screamed. I was like, "Oh, my God! It was Stephan, right?" And it was. It was the guy that I wanted to get a hold of.

PM: Wow.

JH: It's amazing how things like that really do happen.

PM: So once you commanded it from the universe, how did the red ukulele show up?

JH: Somebody gave it to me. And so as soon as I picked up the ukelele, I played that song. I just started playing it. I didn't even really think about it. And then I was like, "Wow, I ought to write a couple verses for this." And then it turned into that song. So I'm crazy enough to believe in that stuff.

PM: Oh, me too, absolutely. continue

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