Life of the Record

The Making of ESCONDIDA - featuring Jolie Holland

Intro

Dan Nordheim:

You’re listening to Life of the Record. A podcast celebrating classic albums, as told by the people who made them. My name is Dan Nordheim.

Jolie Holland grew up playing music in Houston, Texas and was a traveling musician as a teenager. She formed The Be Good Tanyas with Samantha Parton in Vancouver in 1999. Shortly before The Be Good Tanyas released their debut record, Blue Horse, in 2001, Jolie Holland settled in San Francisco. It was there that she recorded the songs that eventually became Catalpa, released in 2003. As the album became an unexpected success, Jolie Holland signed to ANTI- Records and released her first studio album, Escondida in 2004.

In this episode, Jolie Holland talks through the making of Escondida on its 15th anniversary.

Jolie Holland: This is Jolie Holland. Escondida was made in four and a half days and it was my attempt at bringing something that was really alive and wild into a studio. And I didn’t know if that was going to work or not.

I had this crazy experience when we were going out to Forestville to record it. I had an anxiety dream that morning that red-winged blackbirds had gone extinct. And then I had to wake up and I had this really packed to-do list of all these things to get ready to go out to Forestville. And one of things I had to do was get a lot of groceries because we were cooking for everybody. So I had two big bags of groceries and I was standing on the street in the Sunset District. This was before I had a cell phone so I had to call somebody at a certain time so I was at a payphone talking to somebody. And just right at that moment, a red-winged blackbird flew over my head and landed in this branch next to me. I really had probably seen a red-winged blackbird like five times in my life. I didn’t know what their habitat was. And I had forgotten about the dream. I just woke up and was so crazy and just had so many things to do. And that was two hours later after I dreamed that red-winged blackbirds had gone extinct but this one buzzed over my head. And to me, that was a sign of, I was worried that something was going to go extinct, but it’s not, it just shows up. The studio doesn’t have to be a place where music dies. I had never recorded something in the studio before. I wanted it to feel really alive. I didn’t know if it was going to be possible to do that. 

The band I had on Escondida is this great cross-section of all of these beautiful musicians who were playing in San Francisco at the time. David Mihaly was this great jazz composer who played drums with us, he also played marimba. Ara Anderson and Paul Scriver, beautiful horn players that were around at the time. Enzo Garcia on saw. Some of the best intonation I’ve ever heard on saw. Really beautiful player. Brian Miller, he had a band called The Speakers. And of course Keith Cary, who plays upright bass. With all these musicians, we had these incredibly diverse sets. Seth Augustus, who helped me do the layout for the record, he was playing with Paul Pena at the time and he was like a tooth and throat singing blues musician. Yeah it was just this incredibly diverse, weird moment. 

“Sascha”

Ara Anderson sounds good. Yeah I never play that anymore. 

“Black Stars” 

Almost everything was recorded in Forestville, in the redwoods, we were just sort of all holed up in this place. We were renting a house around the corner. It was so isolated that we had to cook everything. There were no restaurants, there was no delivery. We recorded everything except “Darlin Ukelele” in four and a half days and then the rest of the time we had out there, we just mixed. 

“Black Stars” is almost like a poem. I wrote it really quickly, I wrote it within fifteen or twenty minutes. And it does this thing where the center of the song, the tonal center shifts back and forth. I just played that song with one of my favorite musicians, Doug Wieselman, and he said, “Oh, you are doing something with the structure where it ends in the middle.” And at first I thought he was talking about the tonal structure shifting, but he meant that I had sort of come back to a central, like how I had reiterated part of the lyrics were an expression of that. So I thought that was an interesting take. 

“Old Fashioned Morphine”

I wrote “Old Fashioned Morphine” in my head on the city bus on my way to an early morning waitressing gig. And I had just been reading about the history of medicine or something so that’s where it came from. 

So I wrote the song in my head on the bus and then a few days later, I was at a party at a big house in Pacific Heights. This is back when artists could afford to live in Pacific Heights. And I think I was just playing this song. I think Enzo Garcia was there with the saw and then Ara Anderson and Paul Scriver just showed up out of different places at the party with saxophone and trumpet and just started doing New Orleans-style cacophony. So the arrangement just arose so naturally. 

You’re supposed to put the biggest song as third. Who knows if you changed the order, I don’t think if you changed the order, “Old Fashioned Morphine” wouldn’t stand out. I had some friends die of overdoses so I felt bad about, I don’t really like romanticizing drugs. People are so literal and if something is a joke, it almost has to hit people over the head. 

I mean, it’s kind of shocking to me that that’s my sort of most well-known song. My friend Keith Cary, who plays upright bass on that song, he was just telling me yesterday, “you know, people play that around campfires.” I mean that’s weird and cool to me. Nobody’s ever done that in front of me (laughs), so it just seems like a mysterious thing. 

“Amen”

“Amen” is the first song that I wrote under the influence of Michael Hurley. I was like a deadhead for Michael Hurley for ten years and that’s right when it started. Something about his sense of structure got into that song. And I’m not sure how that imprint comes across. I think it was just something in the structure. 

“Amen” is sort of about this one time when I drove down or up the 5, I can’t remember. Probably up the 5 on a full moon night and Mount Shasta was covered in snow. And it kept reappearing and disappearing when you’re in the foothills. Because the foothills were all dark and then Mount Shasta was covered in white and just reappearing every once in a while. It was so entrancing, it was incredible. 

“Mad Tom of Bedlam”

“Mad Tom of Bedlam” is an unrehearsed first take. And I remember seeing some review from Australia, where it was like somebody who probably expected me to be a very uptight kind of folkie or whatever or maybe they’re just an uptight folkie, but they were like, “it sounds like she’s just singing whatever she wants to sing and then banging on some stuff and then…” It was like, “yeah.” (laughs). Anyway, I can’t play the drums like that, nobody can play the drums like that, that’s David Mihaly. 

Everything was totally planned out before we went in. The only thing that wasn’t planned was “Mad Tom of Bedlam” and that was really just blowing off steam. Recording can be so detail oriented and intense. And we were working very quickly. Yeah “Mad Tom of Bedlam” was just blowing off steam and just fooling around. 

“Poor Girl’s Blues”

I wrote “Poor Girl’s Blues” when I was seventeen and a homeless teenager. 

Wow, 2004 feels so long ago. My boyfriend at the time had this attic in a house, the attic of this old Victorian, so it was the size of a very large studio apartment. Just the one room. The rent was from the seventies. I paid $150 a month and I remember my boyfriend at the time had some family money and he was going to buy a house in San Francisco. But he said, “Wouldn’t that just be a waste of money? I mean, this is probably just a bubble.” (laughs) Which is really grotesque to think about that now. 

Overdubbed vocals almost never sound good to my ears. At least not for the aesthetic that I was looking for. Somebody who can do really good overdubbed vocals, it’s like you’re being a great actor or something. Like you can just pull yourself into the environment completely. I’ve taken what I thought of as vocals that needed to be fixed and tried to sing over them to fix parts or whatever but in my estimation, almost nothing is as good as the live take with the band. 

“Goodbye California”

“Goodbye California” represents my greatest failure as a producer on this album. I really wanted to cut it again and everybody said, “No, it sounds great!” (laughs). And to this day, I wish I hadn’t listened to them. I wish that I had recorded it again. Nobody was calling the shots over my head except for I let people talk me into leaving that take of “Goodbye California.” And most people wouldn’t regard that as a failure, but I do (sighs). 

I think I was nervous and my accent kind of got carried away. I don’t know why I’m so critical of that take. I recorded it again on something that never got re-released so maybe someday I’ll release a version that I like and nobody will care (laughs). It’s like the Director’s Cut, like who cares? (laughs)

But my great consolation prize is that Bob Dylan played that track on his radio show and he talked about me. That was really exciting. That’s the only reason I’m not 100% ashamed of it.

“Do You?”

I was rehearsing “Do You?” Yesterday with this great pedal steel player. It sounded so good. It’s sort of from the perspective of when you’re a teenager and you have sort of hopes and dreams and then one of your friends becomes a boring old alcoholic and you’re like why? (laughs) That’s your life. That’s kind of where it’s coming from but obviously it’s open to whatever people might feel about it. 

The line, “big stars falling…,” it’s a reference to a Blind Willie McTell song. It’s called “Mama, Tain’t Long For’ Day.” It was recorded in I think 1927 and it’s when Blind Wille McTell just sounds like a kid, he sounds like a young prince or something. He has this intense, magical quality to the way he plays and sings. 

I remember when Escondida was featured on United Airlines. They had a picture of me in the United Magazine. They had taken two songs out of the tracklisting. They took “Do You?” out and they took “Old Fashioned Morphine” out to make it Mormon-safe or whatever (laughs).

“Darlin Ukelele”

The beginning has improvisational elements to it. David Mihaly’s playing this really beautiful rosewood marimba that he had so it has sections that are open for improvisation but it does have a structure. I feel like those kind of structures in my music are a nod to Don Cherry or something. Those kind of folk-ish improvisations. 

“Darlin Ukelele” was actually recorded as part of Catalpa and then it just made sense to mix it for this record. It was sort of one of the most interesting tracks that we got when we were recording stuff for Catalpa. It was about this little red ukulele that somebody gave me. 

Catalpa was like bits and pieces. I had a friend in town who was a noise artist and he also made quilts. And he would raffle off his quilts to survive (laughs). He’s kind of a really obnoxious person to have at a show. He would come to the show and try to tell you what to do using very oblique, weird language and you wouldn’t change a thing and then he would say, “That’s right, that’s right, do it like that.” As if you had understood this crazy thing that he told you to do. He’s hilarious, he’s a total character. This guy Chris Arnold. Like as an art project, I just gave him a bunch of tracks and it was almost like the kind of stuff that any songwriter just has around. Like all these stray recordings and I said, “Why don’t you put this together? Would you arrange this as a record for me?” And he put it together and he said, “What do you think?” And I didn’t even listen to it and I said, “It’s great, that’s fine. Awesome, thanks.” I didn’t care. It was just like I let him put it together. And then I was just selling it at shows. And then when I finally did listen to it, I was like, “Why did you put all the coughs in there?” There’s two coughs. He’s a filmmaker too so he has that perspective of the document of the moment is more important than something being polished. I think that’s part of it, that’s part of why Catalpa is so interesting is because it doesn’t have these aesthetics of other records. And I remember when Escondida and Catalpa were so successful when they were kind of generated in this really non-traditional way. Working so fast and working live and not working to a click. These other artists would ask me for advice and I would tell them, “Don’t work with a click, just do it live.” And nobody wanted to do that. They didn’t believe me. And I don’t know, it is very naked. 

“Damn Shame”

“Damn Shame” was about, I was dating this dude who went to go work in Russia for almost a year. And so it was like autobiographical. I had just written it. I think that’s the newest song on Escondida. I think I had only written it like a month before the recording. Which is why it’s so extremely bare bones. It’s pretty much just me playing the piano. 

I recorded “Damn Shame” on the record just to keep that sense of freshness and just that open-endedness and that kind of mystery in the music. And I’ve always valued that. I mean it’s really hard to approach things that you really admire because your ego sort of gets in the way. You think, “Oh I really want to do this thing but because I’m doing it, it won’t be great.” So you kind of have to trick yourself into doing certain things sometimes. Just to sidestep your ego. Have you heard that thing that they say about Thelonius Monk? That he looked at the piano as though it were a mystery. And you feel that in his playing. It’s like he’s like, “what’s going to happen?” (laughs). There’s power in that, there’s this kind of really fresh energy in that. There’s so few avenues to that experience as a professional musician. Because most people are not going to let themselves feel that vulnerable in front of people. (laughs)

At home, I had this really crazy old upright that was like a player piano and the insides hadn’t been taken out. So it had this extra weird, boomy quality to it. It had a great sound but it was sort of hard to capture. And then the piano in the studio sounded too good. And to some extent, Escondida is a little bit too polished in a certain way, compared to Catalpa. But it still has some mystery and depth. 

"Tiny Idyll/Lil Missy"

“Tiny Idyll and Lil Missy,” the piano intro is a song that I wrote when I was four years old. No, I was six. Which is totally ridiculous that I included it on here. Because they had the exact same model of toy piano that I had so I just recorded it and then decided to use it as the intro for “Lil Missy.” And that’s again, something I wrote in like five minutes. And it was just like our friend was moving away and I just wrote her this song. And the instrumental I actually wrote about some kid I met in first grade who was moving away. And it was going to be a present for him and I was sad that he was moving away. And I was so shocked that I had written a song that I didn’t tell anybody. I was like, “I can’t let that get out.” or something. (laughs). I definitely never showed it to him. 

"Faded Coat of Blue" 

I don’t even think I knew what “Faded Coat of Blue” was about. I mean it’s obviously a Civil War song but it’s about Gettysburg. My friend, Stefan Jecusco did all the illustrations on Escondida. The tarot card things. They’re actually part of a tarot set. So I was a homeless teenager and the very first squat I ever stayed at was Stefan’s squat. And he had made this amazing, he made two amazing tarot card decks and that was the second one. And Stefan had written this really sad love song to the tune of “Faded Coat of Blue” and I was like, “I love that song. What is that about?” And you know, it was like some super sad romantic song and he was like, “Yeah it’s one of the saddest songs I ever heard.” 

On “Faded Coat of Blue,” I had never even sung the lyrics before that recording. I had never practiced the entire song with people. So I just had the lyrics out and the lyrics are just so heart rending that I didn’t want to milk them for sentimentality. I just wanted it to be a super fresh performance, like stumbling into the song. Yeah so much longing in that song. 

Keith Cary plays banjo on that song. It’s his grandfather’s banjo from 1867. It’s a fretless banjo. Keith plays upright bass on the record as well. The bass that Keith played was an aluminum bass so it’s like this striped silver aluminum bass, upright bass. They made them to play on ships. But normally, they’re painted to look like a bass you know, to look like wood. And he stripped it off and it looks so beautiful. 

I probably made a really bad decision or I’m sure I did. Daniel Lanois wanted to produce my next record after this and I said, “no.” And I’ll never get that chance ever again (laughs). So I met him shortly after Escondida came out and he was like, “Yeah it sounds...it sounds fine.” (laughs). He said if he recorded my next record that he wanted to put in a lot more sense of depth and space and I’m an idiot for passing that chance up (laughs). But I just never...this was like a co-production with me and Lemon DeGeorge and I just wanted to produce an album myself. So I wanted to do Springtime Can Kill You from scratch. 

It was my first studio album and I remember just being so amazed at having made it. I stayed up the entire night after we left, when we drove back from Forestville. I just kept listening to it all night and was like, “What is this thing that we just did?”

Outro

Dan Nordheim: Visit lifeoftherecord.com for more information about Jolie Holland. You'll also find a link to stream or purchase Escondida. Thanks for listening.

Credits:

"Sascha"

"Black Stars" 

"Old Fashioned Morphine"

"Amen" 

"Mad Tom of Bedlam" (Traditional)

"Poor Girl's Blues" 

"Goodbye California"

"Do You?"

"Darlin Ukelele" 

"Damn Shame" 

"Tiny Idyll/Lil Missy"

"Faded Coat of Blue" (Traditional)

Words and music by Jolie Holland

Songs Music Publishing, LLC

© ANTI- Records

Intro Music:

“Winter Cold” by North Home

Intro/Outro Music: 

“Oh, Batflower” by The Batflowers

Produced, edited and mixed by Dan Nordheim

Mastered by Jeremy Whitwam