FEATURE: Spotlight: Lindsay Lou — Music Musings & Such

FEATURE:

Spotlight

Lindsay Lou

__________

SOMEONE who is quite new to me…

I wanted to spend some time with Lindsay Lou. The child of a coal miner and millwright, she was born in Missouri and grew up in Michigan. It was here where she compiled her debut album, 2010's A Different Tune. I have only just discovered her music. I was compelled to dig deeper and find out more about her. Lindsay Lou is performing in the U.K. in February. A good chance to hear a remarkable artist. Lou released the new album, Queen of Time, in September. Someone who mixes Bluegrass with Folk, Americana and Country, there is this poetry, beauty and spirituality that comes from the music. I am going to get to some interviews with her. First, here is some background about the wonderful Lindsay Lou:

“I saw a literal manifestation of the sacred feminine, and had this profound sense that I was meant to embody it,” recalls celebrated singer-songwriter Lindsay Lou after journeying through a hallucinogenic ritual that would inform the way she processed waves of grief in the sea of change ahead of her. The loss of her grandmother, the end of her marriage, and the overwhelming turmoil of COVID lockdowns found the Nashville-based artist on a spiritual journey of self-knowledge and healing with this gift from the mystic swirl. On her new album Queen of Time (due September 29th from Kill Rock Stars), Lou explores that quest across ten tracks of tender, heartbreakingly beautiful music.

With this new vision of womanhood in mind, Lou began to see a throughline from her grandmother, to herself, to the art she was creating. Her 2018 release, Southland (recorded with her former band, The Flatbellys), felt like the first chapter to a greater story that was unfolding; with this release, the theme deepened. “It started with my grandma. She was the unattainable woman in a way,” Lou explains. “She had 12 kids and ran homeless shelters and was always taking people in. She felt that her calling was to be a mother to everyone – this communal caregiver – but it also meant that in belonging to everyone, she also belonged to no one. I realized that this is the catch-22 of anyone who is a woman unto herself. Women, first and foremost, belong to themselves, so nobody can really have them; but, there's also this element of self-sacrificing and giving to the idea of the feminine.”

Lou’s vocals are a powerful companion to her songwriting. “In an era when style and trends can become genericana, [Lou] focuses on the song,” said No Depression. “It is infectious and joyful, soulful even.” The undeniable centerpiece throughout Queen of Time, Lou’s voice is a molasses-sweet instrument equally capable of clarion ache, slicing deep into the soul. The daughter of a literal coal-miner and millwright, and the granddaughter of a teacher gone Rainbow Gathering healer, Lou honed her honest and resonant style with her bluegrass-inspired band, Lindsay Lou & The Flatbellys, and Michigan supergroup, Sweet Water Warblers (Rachael Davis, May Erlewine), excavating elements of bluegrass, folk, Americana, and soulful pop for their emotional depths. The Warblers’ debut album, The Dream That Holds This Child (2020), was dubbed “a testament to the trio’s range” by Billboard, running the gamut of blues, gospel, soul, and Appalachian folk.

On this latest record, Lou has refined those gemstones to a brilliant luster, holding the listener’s hand on the path filled with heartbreak, discovery, and resilience. On “Nothing Else Matters” (co-written by Nashville musicians Maya de Vitry and Phoebe Hunt), Lou blends those emotions into one vibrant present. The track features GRAMMY® Award winner Jerry Douglas, his immediately recognizable dobro work helping Lou tap into her bluegrass roots while she unravels this new vision of the world. “There is something incredibly iconic to Jerry’s playing; it’s unmistakable,” says Lou. “Like every touch of his bar to the string speaks exactly to the heart of the song. I feel really honored to have his musical voice among the players.”

Lou explores the continued theme of duality on lead single and album namesake “Queen of Time”, her limber, golden vocals backed by a suite of acoustic guitar, psychedelic synth and an energetic rhythm section. The song’s lyrics play out like zen koans. “I’ve spent years at this point, listening and reflecting on this record. ‘Queen of Time’ seems to embody the entire work’s theme of self-discovery in a way that almost feels like a wake up slap in the face; like if it was a snake, it would have bit me,” says Lou. “And I think that’s kinda the nature of self-discovery. It’s discovering something you knew all along.”

On the radiant “On Your Side (Starman)”, Lou sings to a loved one through rose-colored glasses, as if they were her hero. “You can be the starman/ The lightning in the sky/ I will be a shelter/ ‘Cause I am on your side,'' she sings, a lithe mandolin bolstering her serene offer of support. Bathed in harmonies and supported by a honeyed troupe of pedal steel, guitars, and a splashy percussion section, Lou sounds like a heroine herself, a gleaming bastion of strength and love.

Elsewhere, “Nothing’s Working” finds Lou dueting with GRAMMY®-winning guitar virtuoso Billy Strings on their co-write. (You can hear String’s version of it, accompanying Lou, on his 2020 release Renewal). “This was another track that came together over the course of a few years; it lived as the first verse alone for a long time,” recalls Lou. “A suicide in our community stirred me to finish the lyrics, and pandemic gave Billy and I some extra time at home to flush it out.”

The message comes through in the lyrics as Lou sings, “Take time to listen to the quiet ones/ Watch how the rain gives up a chance to swim/ Burn the broken bridges and build them up again,” the duo crying out for change in the face of the endless pain and violence in personal lives and spread across the media. String’s flat-picked guitar ripples and writhes, a deep purple smoke pervading the track.

“I’ve been fortunate to have spent formative years surrounded by immensely talented friends and collaborators, who, like Billy, feel more like family at this point.” explains Lou. “Having them lend their voices to this record is very special to me.”

Lou’s devotion to understanding where she came from plays a central role not only in the ethos of Queen of Time, but in its sound. “I have 27 hours of conversations that I recorded with my grandma, her telling me her story and explaining how she developed her unorthodox, somewhat radical, somewhat fringe philosophy,” Lou says with a wistful smile. Snippets of those recordings are infused into the album, as in the delightfully Calypso-flecked “Love Calls”. And as the album nears its end, another call to grandma helps exorcize the pain of death. “Nothing can stay bad forever,” Grandma Nancy reminds us, and you can feel the tears being wiped aside and replaced by something new—hope and resilience.

Named among NPR’s “12 Best Live Performances” in 2015, Lou has long been beloved as a live performer, from Telluride Bluegrass Festival to Stagecoach, Celtic Connections to Australia’s National Folk Festival, and a “Can’t Miss Act” at AmericanaFest—not to mention acclaim from PBS, No Depression, Billboard, Holler, Paste, and The Bluegrass Situation, among other outlets. But on Queen of Time, Lou captures a new arc of haloed beauty, becoming unattainable in her own way—a vibrant, powerful woman who can share herself with the world, and yet define a mystic sense of inner self as well”.

I am going to move on a second. Before I do, there is a really interesting interview from Holler. that I want to include. We get to learn something new about Lindsay Lou. Such an interesting artist that I do feel everyone should follow and experienced:

“Another event that has informed this album was a hallucinogenic episode you had a few years back. Tell us about that - how did it impact your creative outlook and process?

It actually happened just before I recorded Southland, but it was sort of the beginning of my journey to understanding this notion of the sacred feminine. I did two DMT trips in the summer of 2016 with Billy Strings. He’d had similar psychedelic experiences so I asked if he could join and be my guide. We sat down in my backyard with a couple of books and I began reading Alan Watts’ The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety.

The first time I tripped I didn’t really go anywhere. The second time I did it I still didn’t leave my body, but I did see a really intense visual of this cat figure that eventually morphed into this goddess. Afterward I tried drawing the vision out on a piece of paper, but I couldn’t do more than a couple lines. Then this line about an unattainable woman from the Watts book popped into my head that brought it all together, so much so that I nearly named the album Unattainable Woman.

A couple of days later I went to my friend Maya de Vitry’s house and told her about what I’d seen. She gave me this Sue Monk Kidd book called The Dance of the Dissident Daughter that further led me down this path of understanding the sacred feminine.

Then in 2021 I had another, drug-free, psychedelic experience where I saw this vision again and realized that I am that goddess. This whole record is a lot about self-discovery, understanding and knowledge, and it’s my purpose to see and embody that. The tripping experience set me on a course of understanding femininity within the scope of divinity. It’s a snapshot of where I am at this point in my story. It set me on this path to understanding myself and understanding the spiritual narratives that I lean on in times of both hardship and joy.

Speaking of Billy Strings, what was the writing process for ‘Nothing’s Working’ like and what made you want to put your own spin on the song?

We started writing that back in 2016 or 2017 not long after we both moved to Nashville from Michigan. We wrote the first verse and it sat in the voice memos on my phone for years before I finished it in 2019 when I was on a plane traveling to a benefit concert for Jeff Austin in Denver. In 2020 Billy and I got back together again, finally putting the words to music and adding a couple instrumental parts to it.

When it came to me wanting to record the song, I reached out to Billy to ask about recording a stripped-down duet version of it, similar to how we recorded early versions of ‘Freedom’ [a co-write included on Strings Grammy winning album Home]. He immediately replied, “Hell yeah!”. It feels nice giving people a look into how the song came to be and what it sounded like when it was being workshopped. Back in the day, if a song was great everyone would record it, but I feel like we’ve been getting away from that.

For example, on [de Vitry and Phoebe Hunt co-write] ‘Nothing Else Matters’ I really thought that song was written specifically for me, because that’s what a good song does. It’s nice to have different versions because it's reflective of the true nature of a song when it's doing its thing, living many lives. For that reason, I was glad that Billy was so encouraging in recording my own version of the song.

One of my favorite moments on the record comes on your Billy Swan cover, ‘I Can Help’. What made you want to include that song and how do you feel it fits into the album’s overall narrative?

Sierra Ferrell actually showed the song to me one day when we were headed out to the river. We were doing a lot of kayaking early in the pandemic and she put it on the radio. I may have heard it before, but hearing it then was just what I needed at the time.

My producer, Dave O'Donnell, was actually the one who asked about including the song on the record because he had recently heard me perform it during a live session raising awareness for musician suicides. I played the song there because I thought it would be an appropriate fit for the event and love how it fits into this album as well.

The song ‘Shame’ sounds different from the rest of Queen of Time. Was its angsty feel a result of your divorce, the pandemic and everything else thrown at you in recent years, or something else?

It’s kind of like my punk rock song. ‘Everything Changed’ was my punk rock song on [2015’s] Ionia. Punk was such a huge part of my musical experience growing up, so it feels proper to have that included in anything I do. As far as what inspired the song, I’ll leave that up to interpretation from the listener because I don’t want to ruin it. Sometimes it’s best to not know.

What has music taught you about yourself, especially in terms of Queen of Time?

It’s taught me that I'm exactly who I thought I was all along. I plan to spend the rest of my life continuing to figure that out in different ways”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Dana Kalachnik

Someone I may have otherwise missed; I am glad I get to discuss Lindsay Lou. She is such a brilliant songwriter. A voice that is so distinct and filled with so many colours, shades, emotions and layers. Regardless of your music tastes, she is someone who I would recommend. The Bluegrass Station spoke with Lindsay Lou around the release of her latest studio album:

“On Queen of Time, Lou welcomes herself to that new identity (and all who care to follow), doing so with a fresh sound and some old friends. Featuring Billy Strings and Jerry Douglas, 11 thought-provoking tracks infuse her bluegrass roots with atmospheric folk, back-porch psychedelia, and more, as lyrics and voice weave together into something like a sonic dreamcatcher – snatching ethereal truths from the cosmos and translating them in ways the mind can just begin to process.

Recently, Lou spoke with BGS about this heady transformation, working with her friends, and how her “teacher-turned-Rainbow-Gathering-healer” of a grandma helped shape her radical spirituality.

BGS: Tell me how you’re feeling about music making these days? I know this album comes after a lot of change in your life, personally and professionally. Has the way you feel about making music changed, too?

Lindsay Lou: It felt like the most freeing recording endeavor that I have ever set out on. Working with [producer] Dave O’Donnell was really great. He held a ton of space for me creatively and emotionally and just in all the ways. So it was really nice. I brought in all of my friends, and what drew me to music to begin with was jams that my family would have, so feeling among my chosen family, being able to bring in the people who I’ve been jamming with in living rooms and on stages for the last several years, was really, really sweet.

Honestly, I’m feeling really inspired and just really happy about music. All of the tours have felt like they were in really good flow, and spiritually, it just feels very open and satisfying. I sort of blew up my life a few years ago, and the last three years or so I’ve been gestating and rebuilding my path. It was rebuilding on the foundation I had laid down with the Flatbellys and the Warblers, so it wasn’t out of nowhere, but it felt like there was a lot of unknown – and there were times where I felt there’s just some fear that goes into it. But now I’m on the cusp of watching all of this be born and come to life, and it feels so good. It’s like everything that I could have hoped for.

Seeing the record in the hands of people and hearing all the stories they send me about how it’s touched their lives has been very, very fulfilling. And I’m watching the album chart and watching different things on the horizon, different gigs and stuff – it’s just really inspiring, and I feel really excited to follow this new path that I’ve laid out for myself.

I know your grandmother had a big part in influencing the record. But on top of everything else she was to you, did she also help you get into music?

I guess in a roundabout way, she did. Her greatest influence on me was spiritually. She was a preacher woman, and she lived her life the best that she could in the literal footstep of Jesus. So she took everyone in and she welcomed everyone. She was always preaching that [unless] you have not sinned, don’t cast the first stone and really strongly believed that no one will be left behind. Like if God said the greatest commandment was to love God and to love your brother, then she spent her whole life practicing that. Now, I call myself a praying atheist. I don’t necessarily connect with any institution of religion, but I do connect with the practice of spirituality and of love. Even Christianity says that God is love. So in my mind it’s like, “Well, then let’s just get right to the heart of the matter and call it love!” If we’re living in love and if we’re thinking critically and we’re following our radical truth, then we’re doing it right.

I noticed a lot of hard bluegrass influence on tracks like “Rules,” and along with Billy you have a collab with Jerry Douglas. Do you still feel like you can be creative in the bluegrass form these days? Or is it harder to do that as you grow as an artist?

Bluegrass gave me a lot of tools and a home. It gave me a place to belong and an opportunity to hone my craft, just in terms of tightening up rhythm and getting better at playing the guitar – and having an entire world of people I can get together with anytime, anywhere, and play any one of the many songs in the bluegrass canon and sing three-part harmony, like we’ve been a band our whole lives. It gave me so much, but I didn’t grow up in a family or a community that played bluegrass music. It was something I found in my early 20s. I’ve never been like people like Billy and Molly [Tuttle] – [bluegrass] is not just a part of their history, it’s like their earliest memories.

I grew up doing acoustic music, so there’s always going to be some element of that in my music. And I’m so grateful to have bluegrass now as a tool of expressing myself. But I don’t think I find it harder as I get older. I just find it easier to connect more authentically with my own voice, and bluegrass is a tool of doing that – but it’s not the only tool”.

In an extensive and deep interview, Atwood Magazine gave us new insight and perspective of an artist who should be known to us all. Such is the quality of her music. I am looking forward to seeing what might come from Lindsay Lou next year. An exciting artist that already has a busy tour diary. Taking her latest album to the fans:

“Queen of Time feels like a whole new beginning for the Nashville-based singer/songwriter, whose roots have grown over the years in the bluegrass and Americana worlds. Produced by Dave O’Donnell (James Taylor, Sheryl Crow, Heart) and featuring collaborations with Grammy Award-winners Billy Strings and Jerry Douglas, Lou’s first full length solo release in five years – since 2018’s critically acclaimed Southland – focuses on her ability to bring a song to the table and see it blossom with a full band or guest appearance.

What a thrill it is to not be needed

What a drag it is to be all thrills

I’m a wishing well, I’m a wishing well

Check it out, here’s a moment to be still

Call it loneliness, call it what you will

I’m the queen of time, I’m the queen of time

Who are you? Who are you?

Who are you?

– “Queen of Time,” Lindsay Lou

Born in Missouri and raised in Michigan, Lou relocated to Nashville in 2015, and has found not only a home in Music City, but also a nurturing environment that has enabled her to embrace her voice and take her musical talent to a whole new level. Whether she is “picking” with friends on a front porch or in the studio, she brings a song to life and makes it her own.

Queen of Time is a particularly intimate album that finds Lou diving deep into herself and her emotions, exploring her spiritual being in depth.

“I lost my grandmother, I got divorced, and went through the pandemic, sort of had this rebirth of myself, within myself,” she tells Atwood Magazine. “There’s a lot of hope and grief, in the whole transition. Losing my grandmother and getting a divorce is very heavy; this record has a lot of emotional value to me”.

ATWOOD MAGAZINE: WHO WAS THE FIRST SINGER SONGWRITER THAT MADE YOU WANT TO DO THIS AS A CAREER?

Lindsay Lou: They both happened around the same time. It was two women who I was in a band with called The Sweet Water Warblers. Before I was in a band with them, I was a really big fan of theirs. It was a very transitional period of my life in East Lansing, Michigan when I was attending college. Their names are May Erlewine and Rachael Davis. Their music totally changed my life because I always wanted to be a singer and be a part of music. The way I grew up you were either a pop star or you just jammed at home with your family. I wasn’t sure if “pop star” was the thing for me, I was a punk rocker. I turned my nose up at fame and the sort of commercialism. I loved science so I went to college to become a doctor (pre-med). When I was in college I met May and Rachael along with The Flatbellys. That’s when I finally saw myself being a part of this world, the bluegrass world, making this my life. That’s exactly what I did.

WHEN LISTENERS HAVEN’T HEARD FROM AN ARTIST FOR A COUPLE OF YEARS, SOME DON’T KNOW WHERE THEY ARE EMOTIONALLY.

Lindsay Lou: Even though it’s been since 2018 since I’ve released a full-length, I did have three “A-Side + B-Side” singles and a four song EP, so I’ve sort or released a whole record just a couple songs at a time. All of the songs on the new record are not going to be versions of those. They’re all new songs, like “Nothing’s Working,” another tune I did with Billy Strings who he put on his record that we wrote together. I get “demotitis,” attached to the demo version of how it sounds, with Billy playing the guitar part he had written and the me singing the lyrics I had written.

I remember our two bands were playing a gig at a theater in Wisconsin. They started to do some really shreddy metal things, with my drummer Alex doing the hi-hat really fast and Billy was doing the really metal guitar. I wanted my version of “Nothing’s Working” to embody that. Dave (O’Donnell) helped me craft that with the band. They (the band and Dave producing) really helped my vision come to life. A couple of friends have written songs that speak to my heart so I have some of those songs on the album, with some co-writes.

DO YOU HAVE ANY ADVICE FOR YOUNG ARTISTS IN THE BLUEGRASS / AMERICANA SCENE?

Lindsay Lou: Some high schoolers (who just graduated) stopped me in a coffee shop the other day and asked me if they could interview me.

They asked me “If you could tell your younger self what would it be?” It was a difficult question because you can’t really tell your younger self anything because you have to go through everything to get to where you want to be. I had to go through everything to be able to get here. I would tell myself to have faith and everything is going to be alright.

The best advice is giving people their own space for their own emotions. Emotional over-involvement hit me like a ton of bricks. I’m a very emotional person, and there’s a serious line between being creative with the human spirit and their emotions. Don’t take it upon myself. It’s one of those simple things: Don’t confuse someone’s bad day with anything that you’re doing. Realize where that boundary is and respect it. Have your own emotions and performance; don’t try to control someone else’s perspective. If you’re doing your job, you’re going to get exactly what you need”.

I want to end with a review for Queen of Time. No Depression provided their thoughts. Although it did not really penetrate the mainstream music press in the U.K. – they tend to focus too heavily on certain genres and overlook others -, it is well worth seeking out and playing Queen of Time. A stunning album that I have visited a few times:

“On Queen of Time, her first album without the Flatbellys, Lindsay Lou tracks her progress through recent turmoil and grief that led to songs of hope and realization. In this album of self-discovery, she addresses the competing tensions women face.

In the title song, she explores the paradoxes:

What a thrill it is to not be needed

What a drag it is to be all thrills

. . .

I have learned to love the work that I do

I have not yet learned to love it when you make it harder

Throughout the album, though, the messages of her lyrics prove more universal: People need to listen to each other, to take care of each other. “Love Calls” opens with a calypso-inspired beat. A synthesizer and an array of world music instruments — caxixi, pandeiro, djembe — augment the more traditional guitar and mandolin. Lou’s voice itself rings like an instrument in the song, a foil to her late grandmother’s voice reproduced here from fragments of recordings of their phone calls. In the song, the older woman tells Lou about chance encounter with a man at a gathering who later tells her she saved his life. The lyrics describe a strong woman, presumably Lou’s Grandma Nancy, then the repeated phrase:

Love calls, you’re gonna answer.

Near the end of the album, the grandmother speaks again, preparing Lou for loss, reminding her, “This too shall pass.”

Queen of Time contains a carefully curated collection of songs matched to Lou’s clear, powerful voice. It opens with “Nothing Else Matters,” setting the tone of loss and acceptance. Phoebe Hunt, one of the song’s co-writers, recently included a stripped-down rendition of the song on her recent album, which shares the song’s title (ND review). Lou’s version, featuring dobro master Jerry Douglas, has a fuller instrumental background and harmony, softening the plaintive tone.

Billy Strings also joins Lou on vocals and guitar on “Nothing’s Working,” a song they co-wrote during the pandemic and finished after a tragedy in the neighborhood they share. The song advocates “taking time to listen to the quiet ones.” Strings included the song on his 2020 album Renewal (ND review). He also plays on “Shame,” a song challenging the idea that that emotion has any value.

While most of the tracks were written or co-written by Lou, she gives a fresh spin to Billy Swan’s “I Can Help.” Her rendition sounds more like a genuine offer of help than a pick-up line. Throughout the album, in fact, Lou offers her presence and reassurance. In “On Your Side (Starman)” she repeats, “Time is on our side … I am on your side.”

On Queen of Time, Lindsay Lou sounds like a woman who has taken control of her future. She’s looking back, but not letting what’s behind her weigh her down. “Rules,” she declares in the track by that name, “are made for breaking.” She looks back at where she’s been, noting, “I’ve been a long time gone.” Looking forward now, she adds, she’s “wondering what’s home”.

There are so many artists we should keep an eye out for as we go into the new year. Lindsay Lou is someone I am invested in now and will follow. An experienced and awesome songwriter whose words and songs have an incredible power and importance. I love Queen of Time. Such a rich and rewarding album that will reveal something new each time you pass through. If you have not discovered her yet then go and…