Folk musician Natalie Spears will perform songs from her newest album at The Arts Campus at Willits (TACAW) this Friday.
The record is called “Hymn of the Wild Things,” and it draws on the sights and sounds of the natural world. It’s also marketed as an exploration of the balance between opposites, pairing “love with loss, tradition with innovation, and the human experience with a more-than-human world.”
Spears, who lives in the Roaring Fork Valley, says she wanted to integrate different parts of herself into the record.
“I think I'm a nostalgic person that's trying to reconcile with a contemporary world, and so that I think is coming through in the music,” Spears told Aspen Public Radio.
The full collection of songs will be released on June 28; it will be available early to attendees of the concert at TACAW this week.
In this interview with Aspen Public Radio, Spears shares her inspirations for the record.
I just really wanted to try and capture that feeling of what it was like to sort of be shaken out of the mundane, of the everyday, into a greater awareness of what's actually going on in the world around us.Natalie Spears, on the inspiration for “Hymn of Wild Things”
Kaya Williams: I'd love to start with the title of this album, which is also a title track that's been released already, “Hymn of Wild Things.” Tell me a little bit about the premise behind that.
Natalie Spears: I feel like that song is a great gateway into the album, because so much of the record is about kind of reconnecting to wildness, whether it's wildness of place, or wildness of ourselves or others. And that song was inspired by the sandhill crane. Very few overwinter here, and so for us, here, they're sort of this, like, transitional presence through the valley. And their calls are so unique. They’re this, like, crazy combination of sort of this awkward chortle, and they're also really beautiful and haunting. And every time I hear them, I just stop in my tracks.
I just really wanted to try and capture that feeling of what it was like to sort of be shaken out of the mundane, of the everyday, into a greater awareness of what's actually going on in the world around us.
Williams: Now, this album is being marketed as kind of a connection between opposites, and you have some very modern songs on here, you have some very traditional songs on here. There's one track, it's a sample from a Hobart Smith song coming from a collection at the American Folklife Center. I’m curious, what is it that draws you to the history and the sounds of folk music as a contemporary artist?
Spears: I mean, it threads back to my family, I think. My dad was 60 when I was born, and my mom was 45. And so when my dad passed away, when he was 90, I'd had this sort of long life with someone who had lived so many generations and I think I just grew up in a household with this history.
I think that has been a big part of me forming this relationship with, you know, roots music. And that music in particular, I think has been a really incredible way to connect to the history of this country and to connect with the history of music, and the banjo being a really big part of that.
I’m a banjo player, and when I started playing old time-music and I learned songs like “Last Chance,” which is on the record, which is written by Hobart Smith, I felt like all of a sudden, I had this broader lens into the history of the world.
Williams: You mentioned your father a few moments ago. He is also a central theme, a central figure in this album. A few different songs grapple with the loss of your father, the onset of (his) Alzheimer's. What was it like to write these songs about such deeply personal experiences?
Spears: Yeah, he had a big influence on this album. And like you mentioned, there are definitely some songs that are tending towards the more tender part of, of human emotion. And that is grief. And it's super vulnerable to put such tender stuff out there.
I always say, at shows, I'm like, “I'm sorry, if I make you cry.” But my hope is that it helps people to feel less alone, that this story is other people's stories. And that this music that's really tender, you know, that has my dad's voice in it and sort of is telling the story of his Alzheimer's, can also sit beside these really joyful songs on the record that were also inspired by him.
He was this classical and jazz pianist, not professionally, but just had a deep love of the music. And we listened to a lot of, like, 1930s, 1940s old swing. And so I wrote kind of a 1930s-inspired swing tune about like a flirty dance floor romance that is so connected to my dad's spirit. And so I think I'm really pleased with how this record turned out. And just the collection of songs and how they can all live side by side.
Williams: Well, I'd love to return as we start to wrap up our conversation to the album itself, and one of the tracks on it. It’s called “To Know the Dark,” and it takes the words of a Wendell Berry poem, and it turns them into lyrics and into music. What drew you to this poem and what resonated with you?
Spears: I love Wendell Berry. And this song was shared with me by a friend. And it's a song that sort of circulates through these different wilderness education communities that I've been a part of over the years, where people just kind of have an awareness of a certain song repertoire. And so for me, it very much represents sort of this communal singing moment. And the lyrics feel like a Gordian knot almost, kind of describing this relationship between the light and the dark.
And I wanted to place it after this song I wrote about losing my dad, because it felt like this opening that gets to take place after one moves through grief. And I invited my best friends to sing on the record with me, which just felt like such a gift after being in this, like, hermit-y space for a year, having to practice and get ready for the album. And so at the show, there will be a whole collection of friends that are up on stage singing that song.
