A Conversation with Laura Cantrell (continued)

PM: A friend of mine is making a record with Dan Huff here in town at the moment. And she said, "Yeah, he likes me to sing it about thirty-seven times." And I said, "You got to be kidding me. Thirty-seven times, I'd want to kill him after thirty-seven times." But everybody has got their own m.o. That's a great story. J.D. Foster, jeez. I love that.

LC: Yeah.

PM: Because, I mean, the track that you ended up with on "14th Street" is obviously just amazing. And would you tell us something about the author, Emily Spray? Is she a friend of yours?

LC: Yes, she's a friend. She's actually from Portland, Oregon.

PM: Is she married to Matt Keating?

LC: Yes, she is.

PM: Because he's a guy I met when I spent a recent summer in the city. He's a very nice guy and a good songwriter, too.

LC: Oh, yeah. A very good songwriter. And Emily has been writing more, and I think because Matt is so active as a performer, he's really encouraged Emily to continue performing and writing. They have a daughter. And often when he performs, I think Emily gets up and does some stuff, and they sometimes perform as a duo, or do shows together, which is cool. She hasn't yet made a record on her own.

PM: Yeah, I couldn't find one. So there isn't one.

LC: I don't believe so.

PM: Before we get off "14th Street"--how long did it take to mix that song?

LC: I think we spent probably a day on that.

PM: A day. One whole day, yeah.

LC: I think that they did some stuff--well, there's a lot going on in that song.

PM: There's a lot going on. That's why I asked, yeah.

LC: So I think that the actual mix day was a day. But I also think that they previously had done some editing and done kind of getting in place all the parts, because there are a lot of keyboards on the record, particularly on that song. Rob Burger played on that. He's a wonderful--

PM: Oh, jeez! [He's one of the geniuses in the Tin Hat Trio. He's pretty unbelievable. ]

LC: --local keyboardist. And he's playing B3 here and there. And he's got another thing going on. So there was some kind of arrangement sussing before we actually went into the actual mix. And of course, all the background parts. Mary Lee Cortes--I think she probably has about four parts on there.

PM: And they're great.

LC: Yeah, she does a lovely job. And she really got into it. It's something that Mary Lee does so beautifully that I could never do. She'd come in and say, "Okay, now I'm going to put this on there." It was cool, because she basically arranged her own part, and made suggestions as she went along. We had sort of a basic harmony thing that we wanted to hear in certain places, and she had a lot of great ideas for how to make that cooler and poppier.

PM: She sure did. Boy, did they work.

LC: Yeah.

PM: A friend of mine, and one of our favorite artists, also has a song on your new record, Jenifer Jackson.

LC: Oh, yes.

PM: We're very big on her. Is she a buddy of yours?

LC: Oh, yes. In fact, we were on tour last year in Italy, and Jenifer was doing a whole tour of Italy while we were there. She happened to be playing when we were in Rome on the same night that we were. Our show was early, and hers was late, so we actually got to go and hang out and see her do her show to a room of Italian bohemians. [laughs]

PM: Oh, really?

LC: It was really cool to see her singing in Italian. It was really, really impressive.

PM: Wow. Did she do a bunch of her more Bossa-type stuff, too?

LC: She did some of that stuff.

PM: Yeah.

LC: And she did some of her songs that just kill me, like "The Whole Wide World"--

PM: Oh, yeah.

LC: The one that's from her first record. But I had really always loved "What You Said." It was from her album Birds [see our review], and it had actually been made in Nashville, and it had a more country take on it, even on her record.

PM: Right. Although you country it up quite a bit more.

LC: Oh, we twanged it up even more. I wanted to have Kenny Kosek come and play fiddle on it, and I thought he did a lovely job.

PM: Terrific, yeah.

LC: And also Rob Burger plays accordion on that. So it comes off with this nice breezy feel, and I just thought it had a really sweet sound. Jennifer's way of writing is simple, but at the same time it's evocative and sweet without lots of words and tricky bits. She's not trying to out-clever everyone, but it's very effective, I think.

PM: Yeah. I thought you did a fantastic job on "What You Said, " that's just a great song.   continue

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