Features

Becky Warren: The Daily Vault Interview

by Jason Warburg

 

Becky Warren the singer-songwriter is a whip-smart, take-no-prisoners, reflexively charismatic performer with a novelist’s eye and a rock and roller’s heart. Her music, whether you cast it as Americana or alt-country or “catchy, guitar-driven rock” (her words), is filled with memorable characters and addictive hooks, penetrating lyrics and self-deprecating humor.

Becky Warren the person is both very much the same and completely different. Genuinely modest about her prodigious talents, she is also speaking publicly for the first time this year about a personal struggle with depression that has now lasted more than half her life. After a pair of albums fronting her college band The Great Unknowns, the first of which attracted the attention and support of Amy Ray of the Indigo Girls, Warren more recently struck out solo with a pair of concept albums. War Surplus (2016) won rave reviews for its fictionalized depiction of Warren’s brief, tumultuous marriage to an Iraq war veteran with PTSD. Her 2018 follow-up Undesirable won equally abundant praise for a set of songs bringing to life the stories of Nashville’s homeless.

Just as Undesirable was attracting attention, though, the depression that Warren had been wrestling with off and on since her teens descended again and refused to leave. After 16 months of being nearly housebound, late last fall the cloud finally lifted, leaving Warren with an album’s worth of songs about the most daunting subject of all: herself. Mostly recorded in January, a few weeks before the coronavirus put the whole world into lockdown, The Sick Season is an album about depression that’s anything but depressing, a sharp, sweet, rocking, brutally honest and frequently moving song cycle about doing battle with your own mind day after day.

Like the album itself, our recent conversation was intense but fun, full of both piercing insights and mischievous laughter. Becky Warren is the real deal, and if I wasn’t already a fan, I would have become one after spending the better part of an hour in conversation about music, writing, and her favorite Springsteen album.


Daily Vault: Your songs often feel like they uncover layers of meaning and emotion underneath everyday situations. I’d like to start with a question that used to feel routine, but doesn’t right now. Becky Warren, how are you?

Becky Warren: I feel a bit guilty because I’m actually doing really well. The story of the new album is that I had a pretty long period where I was very depressed. Luckily that lifted in November, so I had a couple of months before the lockdown started. In some ways the world right now does echo what my life was like then, because I was stuck at home—back then it was because I was feeling terrible, and now it’s for other reasons. But just to feel healthy and happy and able to cope with life makes everything so much better. It’s a daily lesson in gratitude, and I’m grateful that I’m in a much better place than I was a year ago.

Your website describes your music as “catchy, guitar-driven rock,” but I’ve seen it classified as Americana, alt-country, and roots-rock. It feels like the lines between those genres are blurry, maybe even more so because you’re based in Nashville. But how would you describe your music?

I agree with you—I don’t know where any one of those genres starts and the next one stops. The Americana scene, that radio format and that professional organization, have been where I’ve been the most at home. Those stations have been the biggest supporters of mine, so I definitely feel like I’m part of Americana. But it’s such a huge tent that I feel like it’s hard to know what someone means when they say they play Americana music—it could be almost anything.

I also feel really strongly that I play rock music. I want a guitar hook, and drums, and I’m very influenced by Bruce Springsteen—who nobody calls Americana! He gets to be “rock.” If I was a man playing what I play, I think people would probably call me rock. When I really have to pin it down I always say “I’m on the rock and roll side of Americana.” I think that’s a Venn diagram that overlaps, and I’m in both circles.


Sounds right to me. You mentioned Springsteen—who do you consider to be your main influences as a songwriter?

Springsteen is definitely a big influence because he’s a great writer, including of rock and roll songs, but also because he writes as other people a lot and he’s done concept albums. I think about the album Born In The USA all the time, and especially that title track, an incredible song about Vietnam veterans that he played in stadiums. People joke about how no one’s listening to the lyrics at stadium shows, but a lot of people know that song, and even if only five percent of them know anything about Vietnam veterans, that’s a lot of people. I really admire how he was able to talk about something so important in a very thoughtful and well-crafted way, but also a way that made a lot of people want to listen to it. I think about Springsteen’s music a lot when I write.

John Prine is one of my all-time favorite songwriters. He was a master at juxtaposing the tragic and the comic and I admire that so much. I’ve definitely tried to do that in places, especially on War Surplus. He was also phenomenal in the way he would surprise you and give you rhymes that you’ve heard before, but in a totally new way.

My other favorite writer is Brian Wilson, who’s almost the opposite. John Prine writes great lyrics and uses simple chords, and Brian Wilson’s lyrics sometimes aren’t that special, but his melodies and chords are amazing. I’m nowhere near as talented at composing music as Brian Wilson is, but I definitely admire his ability to surprise you with a chord change and I’m always trying to do that. Mine is usually the same surprise chord every time, but at least it’s a little bit of a surprise…!

I love Paul Simon, too; he can give you a song-length metaphor. But I don’t think I’d be doing what I’m doing today without Lucinda Williams. Presenting The Great Unknowns is almost a Lucinda Williams tribute album. I was writing songs before I heard her, but it always felt like wearing someone else’s clothes. When I heard Car Wheels On A Gravel Road it really changed the way that I thought about songwriting. I was floored by how she could just come out and tell you how she felt in the most simple way. That really changed the way I wrote.


Car Wheels is an amazing album. I wanted to mention a few other names that feel like they could be influences. Tom Petty?

Thank you! I love to be mentioned with Tom Petty.


And then in that Americana family, Jason Isbell and Amanda Shires?

Thank you, I’ll take that one too! I love them.


You’ve made three concept albums in a row, each with a different narrative approach to addressing a theme. What are your favorite concept albums?

I don’t know if everyone agrees it’s a concept album, but my favorite Springsteen album is The Rising. To me it feels like a concept album about 9/11, and I love that record, in part because it was such an audacious thing to do, to say “I’m going to make an album about 9/11,” especially so soon after it happened. But he just really nailed it. I don’t think anyone else could have done that, and it’s not political at all, it’s just so human. I think it’s an amazing concept album.

I’m also a fan of The Who’s Tommy. The first time I heard it was because my grandmother told me she liked it! [laughter] She had seen the show on Broadway and I was going to New York so she told me to go see it. She’s a very hip woman, so I went, and loved it, and got into all the other variations like the original Who album and the movie soundtrack. I love that it’s a very different kind of concept album; it’s a great example of using different characters and singing from different points of view, and having the main character of Tommy be fleshed out by the characters around him.


Shifting gears again, I collected a few favorite quotes from your songs and I’d like to run them by you and see what they spark—maybe a memory of writing them, of what inspired them, or what felt most important to you about them.

This is every writer’s dream, to have someone read their work closely and come at them with quotes. I love it!


From “Anything That Lasts” on War Surplus, I love the line “I went away and came back gone.”

A lot of people like that line—I like it, too. I honestly don’t know where it came from. I wrote that song in such a weird circumstance.

I was at a songwriting program that ended up having a huge impact on me—it was a lot of musical theater writers, so it got me interested in concept albums. But we were supposed to come in with a new song every day, and we were at this workshop all day long. I kept trying to write something and everyone else kept coming in with these genius ideas. And the first day I came in with nothing, and the second day I came in with something the class hated. I spent that whole next night thinking “I have to come in with something good tomorrow.”

I stayed up late, got nowhere, and then set the alarm for 6:00 a.m. I thought I was going to end up coming in empty-handed again, because the workshop started at 9:00 a.m. And then somehow, that song just came to me, almost fully formed. In fact, when I was done writing it, after I’d saved it I hit “Undo” and went back to the beginning and screen-captured the process of writing it, just so I could keep it for myself and remember how fully formed it came out.

I literally have no idea where it came from. It’s still hard for me to believe I didn’t steal it from somebody—if I did, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to! [laughter] It was just one of those magical moments where a song arrives in your brain from nowhere.


From “We’re All We’ve Got” on Undesirable: “My bones are tired, but my heart’s an unpinned hand grenade.”

I think I had tried to put that line in another song before and it hadn’t really worked. There were a lot of grenades on War Surplus, so they were still in my head. And so many people I met while writing Undesirable were in situations that were not good. The particular guy in that song was living on the street and riding the bus two hours every day to get to where he sold the paper [The Contributor, a newspaper published by homeless people in Nashville]. He was older, in his 60s, but he and everyone I talked with had such hope and faith that they were going to turn things around and get into housing and get a car and all of those things.

I just found that stunning, because I’m so fortunate and my life in most ways is so easy by comparison, and yet I sometimes struggle to feel like I’m going to be okay one day to the next. So many people I interviewed for that album were in really difficult circumstances, but were still so optimistic. That line felt like it captured that feeling.


From “Me And These Jeans” on The Sick Season: “Regret’s a hell of a jailer.”

It is, isn’t it? Especially when you’re not in a good headspace. I can get so paralyzed by all the things I feel I did wrong and all the ways I’ve failed. And then I can even pre-regret things that I’m sure I will fail at in the future. And then before you know it, I can’t do anything.

Please tell us more about your collaboration with Mary Bragg, The Reckless Electric. What led to that? Does it feel like that was a one-shot, or is it something you guys might do again some time?

I don’t typically do a lot of co-writing, but at that time Mary and I were writing together almost every week and enjoying it. A couple of songs we co-wrote ended up on Mary’s album, but then we wrote some goofier songs that weren’t really right for either of our albums. After we’d done a few of those, we thought “What if we just did a whole album of these kind of goofy songs?”

I call them goofy, but I’m still really proud of them—some are really hilarious! Usually the most hilarious parts are the parts Mary wrote, but they were just really fun to work on together. I would say “Couldn’t we write a song about ice cream and liquor?” And Mary would say “It’s hard to rhyme liquor…” and I’d say “I don’t care, let’s try it!” It was a ridiculous idea, but we did it and it worked. I don’t know that we’ll ever do it again, but it was a really fun record to make.


Now I have to go back and refresh my memory about what you rhymed with liquor…

There’s a few lines! “The first taste’s slow, and the second one’s quicker”—which doesn’t mean anything. Mary said “What does that mean?” and I said “I don’t know, but it sounds cool.” [laughter] “Thought we’d clash, but we hardly ever bicker” – I was proud of that one! [laughter] Quicker, bicker, liquor.


Before going solo, you fronted a group called The Great Unknowns. What was the genesis of that group, and what were the highlights of that experience?

It feels like a theme of all my musical projects is that I don’t think much about it and then accidentally stumble into things. [laughter] In college I had been writing other stuff, and then, like I said, I heard Car Wheels On A Gravel Road and that really changed how I was writing. I’d been playing with a few musicians at school, and the four of us that kept playing together became The Great Unknowns.

We were all living in Boston, but I had decided I couldn’t stay in Boston anymore. It was expensive, and dark in the winter, and I wasn’t being medicated for depression yet, so I was depressed a lot of the time. Sometimes when you’re depressed you look for things to blame it on, other than the fact that you’re depressed, and I think I had decided to blame it on Boston.

By the way, it’s so much easier to talk about these things now that I can admit I was depressed! [laughter] I used to talk around it.

But I wanted to leave Boston, and we recorded an album [Presenting The Great Unknowns] as kind of a last thing to do together. I wasn’t sure I would ever play music again. We liked the songs and we thought “We’ll make this record as a memory for ourselves, and make a few copies so our parents and our grandparents can have them.” And then I moved away.

And then, it was the kind of thing that only happens in the movies—someone gave that album to Amy Ray of the Indigo Girls, and she signed us to her label, Daemon Records, and that completely changed my life. I don’t know what would have happened to that album, or that band, or my music, if Amy hadn’t heard it and believed in it.


Now I have to ask: what were you planning to do instead of music?

When we were recording that album, I was in a master’s program to become a teacher. In fact, I was in my first year of classroom teaching while we were recording which, looking back, is insane. I don’t know when we slept, but that’s what we did! [laughter] I was only 22, so maybe that explains it.

Then I left Boston and drove to my mom’s house in Florida. It’s a very long drive and along the way I thought “I don’t want to be a classroom teacher. What I really like is museums, so I think I’ll be a museum educator.” I got to Florida and it was really late and I’d been driving a long time and my mom waited up for me. She wanted me to apply to teach at schools near there so I would be near her and I said “Nope, I’m going into museum education!” [laughter]

She thought I was crazy, but I applied for every museum education job that was open in the US, and I ended up getting one in Statesburg, Georgia. That’s where I was living when Amy heard our album.


And that eventually led you to D.C. and then Nashville?

D.C. was because I ended up getting married to a guy who was in the Army, and when he got out that was the best place for him to be because of his background in the military. After we split up I was in D.C. for a while more, and then it occurred to me one day, I’ve worked all these jobs from all these places, why don’t I just work from Nashville, so I can be around more musicians? And that’s why I moved here.

Here’s a question I think not just musicians, but everyone is asking themselves right now: how do you plan for the future at a time like this?

Maybe it’s fortunate for me that I’ve never followed the traditional path—to my detriment, most of the time. I don’t tour a lot, I have a day job that I really like, I like being at home, and I’m not good at social media. I just really like to write songs and record them with my friends! And then I kind of do the best I can after that.

The good thing for me is that this situation doesn’t affect my ability to write songs. I can’t tour, and that’s a bummer, but that’s not why I’m in it; I’m in it because I love writing songs, and I can still do that. I have no idea what will happen to the rest of the industry, but that scares me more for my friends than for myself, because I’m in the lucky position of having a day job that I like. The main thing is that the part that’s really important to me, writing songs, is always there. I can write no matter what’s going on.


Finally, during this period of time when live music is out of the picture, what are the best ways fans can support the artists whose work inspires us?

Keep listening to music, especially if you can buy it on Bandcamp on the first Friday of every month when they pass a little bit more money along to musicians. If you can buy an album or a t-shirt or anything, that is helping a lot of people get through this. Also, I haven’t been doing many livestreams, but a lot of my friends are getting through that way, so if musicians that you like are doing livestreams, tune in and tip them, even if it’s only what you would have spent on a beer at their shows. If everybody gives a little bit of a tip, it can add up.

And if you can’t do that—I know times are hard for everyone—just sharing the music that you love with other people and turning other people on to the music you like is really helpful for artists at my level. Word of mouth is big because we’re obviously not on The Today Show or anything like that. We just rely on enthusiastic fans telling other people, who hopefully also become enthusiastic fans. That’s a great service to the musicians that you love, just to tell other people to check them out.