A founding member of the celebrated Carolina Chocolate Drops plays Grand Rapids on Friday, touring behind her solo album, “Tomorrow is My Turn.” Read the Local Spins interview.
Statement of Purpose: Rhiannon Giddens offers up her interpretations of works by iconic artists. (Photo/Dan Winters)
THE ARTIST: Rhiannon Giddens
WHAT SHE PLAYS: Folk, gospel, blues
WHERE YOU CAN SEE HER: 7:30 p.m. Friday at St. Cecilia Music Center in Grand Rapids
Support our coverage of
West Michigan's music scene
To put it very mildly, the music industry has a long history of mistreating female artists.
For every successful singer or songwriter who has received her proper due, there are artists like Geeshie Wiley, Odetta and Elizabeth Cotten — performers whose works were brilliant or influential, yet who through exploitation or circumstance have disappeared into the margins.
Whenever Rhiannon Giddens performs or records, the struggles of her forebears are top-of-mind.
Acoustic Cafe Performer: Rhiannon Giddens
“I’m aware of where I stand on the continuum,” she said last week. “It’s hard being a performer. It’s hard not to be exploited. It still is, but it was way harder back in the day for women and women of color. It makes me realize where I stand as a female artist and how lucky I am.”
With her current project, Giddens – best known as lead singer and multi-instrumentalist for the eclectic folk-blues powerhouse the Carolina Chocolate Drops – is paying tribute to some of the artists who paved the road she now travels.
Her debut solo album, “Tomorrow Is My Turn,” is a gripping collection of songs that spans a variety of American music traditions and were mostly written or popularized by women – some iconic, some relatively overlooked.
On Friday, Giddens plays the final Acoustic Café Folk Series concert of the season in St. Cecilia Music Center’s Royce Auditorium, a series hosted by Rob Reinhart of the nationally syndicated weekly radio show.
Speaking with Local Spins last week between East Coast tour dates (and the morning after performing at the White House during a tribute to American gospel music), Giddens talked about her experience working with T Bone Burnett, the famed producer who helmed “Tomorrow,” and how she selected material for the album.
Carolina Chocolate Drops: Eventually resuming the collaboration?
“It was stuff that, being on the road with the Chocolate Drops, or being at home, I’d kind of note, ‘Oh, I’d like to do that someday.’ That list started to grow and grow,” she said.
The finished album, assembled with the help of a band she described as “crackerjack,” includes inventive takes on some classic tunes, such as a rousing performance of the gospel standard “Up Above My Head,” a beat-driven interpretation of the traditional “Black Is the Color” and a stark, lovely rendition of Cotten’s “Shake Sugaree.” (Listen to “Shake Sugaree” below.)
Some of the most memorable tracks on “Tomorrow Is My Turn,” however, are versions of lesser-known works. The record leads off with a straightforward cover of Wiley’s “Last Kind Words Blues,” a strange, harrowing song whose author is almost completely lost to history, despite the significance of the piece to blues aficionados.
A ‘MYSTERIOUS SONG’ AND FINDING THE ‘EMOTIONAL LINCHPIN’ OF THE RECORD
When Giddens heard the song, she knew it would be the perfect way to start the album. And when it came to recording her version, she knew better than to try fixing something that wasn’t broken.
“Tomorrow is My Turn”
“With something like ‘Last Kind Words Blues,’ you want to let the song kind of speak for itself because not that many people might have heard it,” Giddens said. “It was the last song we recorded. We were at this point where we didn’t have a sequence yet. I got this email from T-Bone saying, what about ‘Last Kind Words’? I can’t really explain it. I just knew. It’s such a mysterious song. It’s so unusual, and it’s a statement of purpose: This is what we’re doing.”
Another key piece is the title track, which is the album’s centerpiece and whose classical-pop structure stands apart from the rest of the material stylistically. Originally sung by French crooner Charles Aznavour, the song got new life in the hands of Nina Simone, a singer who struggled throughout her life but whose legacy towers posthumously.
“It became the emotional linchpin of the record,” Giddens said. “I had started watching Nina Simone YouTubes, as you do, and I fell into this rabbit hole until I found a video of her performing (‘Tomorrow Is My Turn’) in London in 1968. I thought a lot about her career and her life and the struggles she went through and the recognition she never got that she deserved.”
Giddens (Photo/Dan Winters)
Giddens’ album has been heralded as a major step into the spotlight for one of folk music’s brightest stars. While she hopes to resume work with the Carolina Chocolate Drops (she would “neither confirm nor deny” a new album in the near future), her focus will be on touring through the end of the year.
The album was a close collaboration with Burnett, long one of the biggest names in Americana and folk. In 2013,
Giddens was among the performers at a New York City tribute concert for artists who inspired Joel and Ethan Coen’s folk-music film “Inside Llewyn Davis,” and brought down the house with a blistering performance of Odetta’s “Water Boy.” Burnett, who had produced the “Llewyn Davis” soundtrack and curated the tribute show, approached Giddens about working together on an album (on which “Water Boy” is yet another standout).
“I’d only worked with him in the studio once before (she contributed a track to the Burnett-produced ‘Lost on the River: The New Basement Tapes’), so this was a different kettle of fish,” Giddens said. “He really let me bring a lot to the record. He wasn’t telling me what to do all the time. He just expects you to perform at your highest.”
Giddens performs at 7:30 p.m. Friday at St. Cecilia Music Center, 24 Ransom Ave. NE, with opening act Bhi Bhiman, a folk artist from St. Louis. Tickets, $30, are available at scmc-online.org or at the door.
VIDEO: RHIANNON GIDDENS, “Shake Sugaree”
Copyright 2015, Spins on Music LLC
