Cyndi Lauper
USA Today, May 3, 2016
This one doesn’t need too much introduction, other than to say I’ve loved Cyndi Lauper’s unique blend of courage, wackiness and vocal prowess. What other artist could leap from the playful anarchy of “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” to the heartbreak of “Time After Time” to “True Colors,” a paean for tolerance that was way ahead of its time and remains so today?
My recollection is that she and Madonna briefly shared the spotlight as exemplars of a new feminism – not just politically but more significantly through forcing a reconsideration of how free women could be in the public spotlight. While Madonna clearly made the bigger economic impact, I think Cyndi’s achievement was greater. In songs and videos such as “Like a Virgin” and “Material Girl,” Madonna’s appeal rested on a familiar foundation of sex appeal and seduction. Lauper’s music emanated more complex and authentic emotion, often tempered with a rare humor and self-deprecation.
I was curious to learn what it was like just to converse with this person. She had already been exploring different avenues of expression, having released a blues album (Memphis Blues) and an homage to the American Songbook (At Last). She was hardly the first rocker to follow these paths, but because of what she had already accomplished, I figured her take on, for her, an unfamiliar genre would be, to borrow from her debut album title, unusual.
As we spoke over the phone, I was ready to hear her thoughts on yet another genre, country music, the focus of her upcoming release, Detour. Although I was correct in assuming that this would be an atypical interview, I wasn’t expecting that her dogs would play their part in it too. As I began recording, we were talking about an earlier project of hers, The Body Acoustic, an early indication of how eclectic her range was about to become.
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… I was playing the dulcimer. And I was thinking how awesome that was that I get to play the dulcimer on the whole freaking record. I’m certainly not the student that [dulcimer virtuoso] David Schnaufer would have wanted me to be. You know, I love the [sounds like: bad] ones over in Arkansas. I’ve always been interested to see the ones from North Carolina because they’ve got that little space in the sound. Not that I’m a great player.
Was that your main inspiration to pursue that project?
Oh, jeez. I don’t know, Bob. But I like this cover. I want the cover in jeans. I tried to make a record that was more of a combination of music. I was playing this stuff live anyway and using my dulcimer more and more. I was doing benefits for people. Because they were benefits, you gotta work cheap. And I’m cheap! I’m a dulcimer player. I don’t have to hire one, you know? So I get my keyboard player and the guitar player, and that’s how we did it.
But what happened was, people started to come. David Massey [A&R, Epic Records] came and heard the stuff. Then the record idea came up. I had wanted to do a different kind of record. I wanted to make a blues record but that didn’t work out. I wanted to make a studio record but they didn’t think I had enough time and they wanted something out this year.
So they said, “Why don’t you do something that’s kind of live that’s like what you do live?” It became kind of an acoustic record because the dulcimer is an acoustic instrument and that’s what they like. They never really had a good recording of “Time After Time” acoustic. But I didn’t want to make it just a “best of.” I wanted to make it a different approach.
So I got us together. We did some of the old stuff. We did some of the stuff that never really had a chance because it was in the middle of a conflict like, “What is ‘Angela Shine’ and those kinds of songs? You know, the little engineers that could. And I also did ... wait a minute …
[Cyndi speaks to one of her dogs.] Joe! Stop eating that! Stop it, Joe! Just leave it there. I’m sorry. I’ve got a Labrador and he’s eating a lot of wood. I’m telling you, these dogs!
I just tried to make an album that will include more of the kinds of styles that I love because I feel like everything has its compartment so much. It drives somebody like me crazy because I never fit into a square peg or a round hole. As myself, I’m a bit of an oddball. I think that everybody’s an individual but nobody looks at people like that anymore. Nobody looks at music like that anymore. It’s gotta fit into something.
So I decided to take all the catchy things I love about all kinds of music and put ’em into a style. It’s nice to have Vivian Green singing on “Sisters of Avalon.” When I grew up, the Rolling Stones were doing a mixture of rock and they would have Merry Clayton singing. Everybody was mixed, you know what I mean? You’d listen to a radio station, you’d hear the Beatles, you’d hear James Brown, you’d hear Sly and the Family Stone. It was all on one station, you know what I mean? So I kind of tried to break down those walls.
I thought, if I’m doing the old songs, I might as well have a celebration of my work. And if I’m gonna celebrate it, then have a party? I’m gonna invite friends — people I really like. They’re great! It’s not like, “Who’s your second choice?” I just really had an idea for these people.
I met Sarah McLachlan at this convention years ago, when I wrote “Water’s Edge.” She’s a friend of a friend of mine who worked in publishing. I met her when she’d just gotten married. We were hanging out and I sang “Water’s Edge.” She always remembered that song. When I played what we were doing and she heard it, she wanted to sing on it. I had invited her in the first place to sing on “Time After Time” because, in the end, we’re Joni Mitchell freaks. It’s pretty apparent to me. But then again, for people who don’t know music history, I don’t know. But her voice is so beautiful! She just sings clear as a bell.
I remember the night she went to Jersey. The studio was, like, right under the tunnel. It’s shorter to go to Jersey than it is to go to Long Island. I went with my dogs. She was so great and gracious. We were talking about different things, about timing and answer/response things that she could do, what we used to listen to as kids. I worked with her a little bit. And then she just sang. She wanted me in there because I was dancing the rhythm to her, to show her what I was doing. She interpreted it and did her thing.
Then she heard “Water’s Edge” again. I wanted to play what I was doing because sometimes, when you see a musician you haven’t seen for a while, you want to play what you’re working on for them. You don’t even have to ask anything; sometimes you just play it for them and they’ll get the feeling. She’s such a great musician. You want to just hear it through their ears … uh-oh.
What’s the matter?
I just heard a really weird-ass thing. Oh no! I was sitting here and I heard some kind of weird electric thing. Joe? Joe’s lying down. I don’t know what the hell it was. It’s like something weird happened in the back fence. It smelled like something burning down too.
Are you okay?
Yeah, but something burned down. I wonder if he had the heat on … No, he didn’t, because it smells like it was back here. Something burned down. It seems to be okay.
All right, anyway … Oh, it’s raining. Joe? Come on, Joe. [She brings her dog in.] He always sits in the kitchen, waiting, hoping that something will come his way.
Just like most of us in life.
I know, but after a while it’s like, “Come on, already, with the food.”
Can we back up for a second and talk about the dulcimer a little more?
Sure.
Mysteries of the Dulcimer
What drew you to the instrument in the first place?
When I was a kid I would always play folk instruments. But I had not idea about the dulcimer. I’d seen this movie Harold and Maude and it was a big influence for me because the Ruth Gordon character had this closet full of instruments. It was so fantastic. She really affected me. Yeah, it was a funny thing. They met at a funeral, and that was sick. But more than that, it wasn’t the storyline as much as what a free spirit she was, which is how I wanted to live my life.
After that, I always dreamed that maybe one day I could have a closetful of instruments. So when the time came, I went to Alex’s Guitars and bought all these instruments. I bought a Mel Bay book. The dulcimer was interesting to me. I didn’t realize it was tuned in fifths; it just sounded really beautiful.
From that I just started playing. At first I took a lot of grief for it. But I wrote “Kindred Spirit” on it. It started to waver more toward the way I was when I first started playing. When I was a kid at twelve years old, I picked up an acoustic guitar. My first little band was a duet, me and another girl. She would play the meat and potatoes, and I would play all the weird drone stuff. That was always what I played, whenever I felt it needed a rhythm that pulled the other way.
As I went along in my band, the textural things that I loved were always missing — the weird-ass that you get the utility players to play. But what happened was, I had this wonderful nine- or ten-piece band for Hat Full of Stars and I nearly lost my shirt. I had this tour with these utility people, these extra people. As I kept touring, I realized I couldn’t afford them. It was nice for a little bit because never, even in the hottest moments of my career, did I have a background singer. I was always singing lead and then catching up with singing a little bit in the background and then singing lead again. So I started to think, “Okay, let me hire women and they’ll be singing and playing. And I’ll play the texture.” That’s when I realized that I could play. I’m not Segovia but I play all the things a regular musician would not play. Everyone has a different style but you still have to explain, “No, not like that.” Then you find yourself saying, “Well, play like you can’t play!” They you’re like, “I can fit that bill! I’ve played that way since I was twelve! That’s perfect for me!”
It’s just the musicality of it. There’s a certain musical sense that every musician has, whether you’re a singer or whoever you are. There’s a sense of rhythm. That sense of rhythm is very much a part of what I do. So I put rhythm in with the dulcimer. I like when there’s a tug from each instrument, pulling and pushing each other. It creates an interior rhythm. And that interior rhythm is the place where I sing. If there is no interior rhythm, I can’t fall into it, so I create it, to make it easier. It’s all rhythm to me. A lot of musicians that I work with, they don’t really understand what the hell I’m doing because they’re not that open to it. But eventually they get it, that I’m making an interior rhythm.
I’ve had some wonderful musicians who have been almost like teachers who have said to me, “You can never use that chord, not in that way.” But I think you can break every rule and be adventurous. I did this thing with Allen Toussaint that I’d wanted to try. They wanted me to sing “I Know (You Don’t Love Me No More”), which is an old Barbara George record. It was very Sixties! When we did it, it seemed like art for art’s sake. When he turned around to me and said, “That’s very adventurous,” it was like being with a great teacher. He’s so learned on his instrument. He’s such a wonderful musician. It’s so amazing to be able to work with him.
You have an affinity for New Orleans and its music.
Well, I was always a fan of Cajun music. At one point I had Rockin’ Dopsie on A Night to Remember. I always felt inspired by Queen Ida. I like that kind of sound. I had done work with Ann Savoy, who’s from Louisiana. She worked on records with Vanguard. I sang two songs on the Creole record that she did [Creole Bred]. She helped me sing in Creole, which is a roughneck French. That works for me because anything roughneck, I can do, because I have a horrible accent. The French grammar tuning is pretty important and intense. I always mess up grammar in English, so I probably murder it in French. So I thought that the roughneck French suited me. Creole is rough and interesting and an American colloquialism that is an anomaly and a piece of Americana.
For instance, I tour my country a lot and I fall in love with sounds that I hear because I listen. When I did A Hat Full of Stars I was looking to make Cajun hip-hop. When I did Sisters of Avalon I listened to as much kind of music all over the world as I could buy on CDs. We wrote “Sisters of Avalon” while we were in Argentina and Hong Kong. All over the world, we were writing. So when I listen to Americana music, it’s kind of all together. It’s everyone’s influence, be it the indigenous population of the Native Americans or the African-American who came here or the Irish-American. Now, in the Italian sense, the only thing I did where you could hear the influence in my work is the training of my voice. I trained in an Italian way. I don’t sing opera, but I do all the exercises.
How do you work with musicians on your sessions who may not be as familiar with these various influences and how they might be blended together?
Sometimes you run into people who are more rigid. They don’t get it and they get upset because you want it to go this way and they believe it should go that way. They think that you’re telling them that they don’t know what they’re doing, but that isn’t what I’m saying at all. I’m just saying, “Please go this way because I’m gonna find an interior rhythm. I just need some push and pull.”
When I played with Jamie, it was something that Rick heard when he saw me live, because he hadn’t seen me in a long time. It was something that Bill knew from playing me live. It just developed over the years. I guess I really put my foot forward in Sisters of Avalon. I picked up a lot of instruments. There were some songs where you can tell what instruments you wrote them on because the chord structure or the melody is the scale of the particular instrument.
Like, “I’ll Be Your River.” I wrote that with Tom Hammer on the piano. I didn’t have an instrument with me to add to that. Later on, in my head, I heard what it should be, that it had to be a bit like old Laura Nyro or Joni Mitchell: a bit of dulcimer, a bit of R&B. The R&B bottom had to carry it so it could live in between and create the rhythm on the bottom so that the top could waver and the middle-range instruments can push and pull. the bottom had to carry it in one direction and the other stuff had to play against it. It’s like a juxtaposition: If you tell a story, you don’t want to go all one way. If you go all one way, it’s flat. It has no depth. With a lot of different levels, it has more depth, it has more story. For me, it’s more compelling to sing because I can get lost in it because there are spots in places where there’s a rhythm that you hear but it isn’t played.
That Laura Nyro spirit is clear at the top of “I’ll Be Your River,” but the music quickly takes you beyond that into several different directions.
Well, that’s the story. I tried to make it so you could follow the story. I was tortured in that song because you want to make everybody happy but sometimes it’s like somebody telling you … For a long time somebody was telling me, “You never start a song with you.” I was so tied into what I was saying but I was trying to be easier to work with. As opposed to “No, I hear it this way,” I would listen because I always think that everybody has something to say and you can get a different idea.
I guess that guy never heard the song “Since I Don’t Have You.”
Or “You Are the Sunshine of My Life.” It just bugged him. So I kept changing the story and finally, when I demoed the thing and I put the rhythm on there, I made it come alive and I said, “What am I singing about? I know what I’m singing about!” And then I put the words back to the way they were. All of a sudden it came alive again. When you start to rewrite it and pull it apart, the thread starts to unravel and all of a sudden everything falls apart.
I hear what you’re saying about the dulcimer creating or finding a rhythm pocket for you. But I think its sound is just as critical throughout this album.
I love the dulcimer because it just has this sound. “Dulcimer” means “sweet.” It’s an American instrument. It was cheaper for immigrants than the bagpipe, you know? When they heard the zither going through Pennsylvania Dutch land on the way to Appalachia to work in the mines, they made this other instrument, which became the dulcimer. There are other versions of the dulcimer, just like when the banjo started from Africa with four strings. Then the Irish heard the four-string banjo and added the fifth string, the drone. That’s real Americana because it was made from two groups of people, the African-Americans and the Irish.
Nobody really plays the dulcimer. There are people who kind of play it. Dolly Parton plays it. There are some rockers that play it. I hear it more like an instrument that could fit in folk and rock and anything. It depends on how you play it. Me, I believe in a little more of a guerrilla style. I like roughness as opposed to very polished. Even the ballads: They’re all wonderful but they’re a little rough, you know? They’re not perfect. Now, Jeff Beck played perfectly [on “Above the Clouds”]. I gotta say, that was amazing.
How did you and Jeff get together?
I met him at the Sunset Marquis. He was going someplace with this guy Jeff Leiber, who I wound up writing with.
The son of Jerry Leiber.
Yeah, his son. That B-flat minor chord in the chorus, they’re wonderful. There are some chords in there that are definitely from his lineage. With things where I pushed him and things that Jeff did, it’s a nice combination. But for this song, I had heard this piece of music that they had worked on. That particular song just came to me. It was one of those things where I just had to get it down because it just came, and it was gonna go as soon as it came. When you can hear it and see it, you gotta write that stuff down.
It’s like trying to remember a dream after you woke up.
Well, that’s most of my stuff is like that, when you’re mostly in a trance. It depends on where it comes from. That one in particular just came all at once to me, where I heard the melody and I heard the words and was writing them down. I kind of did it in a trance and then just tried to catch up to myself, to think but not think and not get in the way of what it was. It was one of those magical songs.
I did put dulcimer on it because I heard dulcimer. But there’s no guitar but Jeff. There’s bass guitar that this guy Mark Egan played. Steve Gaboury played the piano. Steve plays with my band and he is a wonderful piano player. You watch him play and his feet and his hands are kind of connected. You look at him and he’s hugging the piano, you know what I mean?
The other part of it was, I didn’t get to use my band but this guy Jamie [West-Oram] came and played. He had a really interesting sense with me. I’ve played with a lot of guitar players, but this guy kind of got the dulcimer and my rhythm. I felt sorry for him because he had to play with me [laughs] because he’s a great guitar player. But we played it and played it until a thing happened. Mostly what I care about is that thing happening, that magical thing that happens between the players. That’s where you really find something great: You start to feel each other and you start to breathe together. That, to me, when you do music, is the most important thing.
Old Songs, New Life
Some of the songs on The Body Acoustic are very familiar to your fans. They might be very emotionally connected to the original arrangements. But somehow you liberated yourself from that, to the point that these feel like brand new songs?
You know, we’re living in a different time now. You don’t wear the same clothes you had on a long time ago, do you? You don’t wear your hair the same. You don’t look the same. You don’t feel the same. I’ve been working all these years, and everything comes from the spirit when you play live. Whatever the spirit dictates, with whatever you naturally do, is it true? If you stay true to the bone, it’s good. You want to keep the spirit and the joy alive and fresh. This is what was happening live. That’s where it stems from. These ideas worked live, and as they started to work and people saw the other way you could do it, they became interested in recording it that way.
Like “She Bop” I was playing acoustically for the longest period. There were so many different versions of it. I always felt like fans are very adventurous and, what the hell, they love Jerry Lee Lewis [laughs], so why wouldn’t they love this? I did a techno/kind of acoustic version of “She Bop,” based on the open-string tuning that I have, which stems out of me wanting to tune the dulcimer in fifths. Then I was working with an Irish guitar player who asked me, “Why not tune it all fifths and these two strings the same?”
The open tuning was always great for me, but I always hated the third in the chord, because once you’re in the third it’s gotta be more of a traditional chord, whereas open fifths are more freedom. They’re more fun, more adventurous. I love that droning thing, even though I’m Italian — what can I tell you?
The minor feel of “She Bop” really comes out strongly in this arrangement, much more than in the original version.
I don’t know. I think it’s very funny. Rick plays a piano part that’s like the Kubrick film, Eyes Wide Open. I said, “Yeah. Eyes Wide Open could create tension. That’s very funny.” But they always say you could go blind. I always thought it should be a plaintive folk song anyway, being that it did stir up so much commotion.
It was a great idea to bring Tom Malone to play the synthesizer solo on trombone in “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.”
Oh, man! I love trombone! There’s a trombone all through it. And it’s ska! In ska music there are trombones and trumpets. That was the Japanese version. We had an American version, but the Japanese version became so much fun that we just decided to use it. And there are lots of Japanese people in America. That’s what American music is: It’s a combination of a lot of different people who came to a place, looking for creative freedom, freedom of thought, freedom of speech and freedom of religion.
Every time I go to do my work, I always try my best to be free. [She sings: “What is America to me?”] That was Frank Sinatra, but hey [laughs]. I’m from Hoboken too, come on. We made some of the record in Hoboken. We had Chubby’s Meatballs. In fact, what’s not on “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” is me saying, “Big ups to Chubby.”
How did you set up the session in the studio, to get that celebratory feeling you were hoping to get?
Well, for the most part, I like live music. When you start to layer it with the rhythm first, I’m still singing with the person doing the rhythm, to make sure the rhythm is right. But I find it’s more alive, it’s more exciting to me, when I’m working with a group of musicians. I was playing dulcimer and singing with them, so the rhythm was right. It was mostly live-tracked. “She Bop” is a live track and a live vocal. “True Colors” is a live track and a live vocal. Not “Time after Time” but pretty much all of them are pretty much live.
What was it like to work with people on these sessions that you hadn’t seen in a number of years? How did that help define the creative energy of this project?
It has been a long time now. We’ve all been off working and producing and doing stuff. When we came together again, it was kind of great because we’re all producers. But as time went by, we started to appreciate what each one of us does, so when somebody else has an idea that sparks another idea, it’s like, “Yeah, that’s why he’s here.” I mean, I know why I put people together. In the end, I’ve got to get from Point A to Point C. I know which way I’m going, so I oversee it. I step back and think about it. I mean, I like working with Bill [Wittman]. Bill brought Rick [CHertoff] in. That’s kind of great because I got to develop my relationship with Rick again, because I hadn’t seen him for a long time. It was good to go back and revisit some old friendships that had kind of fallen by the wayside because everybody is so busy all the time.
Specifically, you share a lot of history with these folks on much of the material from The Body Acoustic.
We’d invented a style of music! I remember Rob Hyman sitting back, listening to “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” and going, “What the heck kind of music is this anyway?” I said, “Well, it’s catchy isn’t it? We’re making catchy music.” In the beginning, when I was working with them and telling them, “No, no, it’s like this,” people were taken aback by my demeanor. At the beginning of my career I would be fighting for this and fighting for that. Then there just comes a point in time where it’s, “No, no, no. This is the way it is.”
I had been there in a few situations where the artist has no control. Then you don’t really need an artist. Then you have a certain kind of music where it’s just a manufactured person. It’s not really their music. It’s not their sense of style. It’s a combination of their sense of what they can sing over somebody else’s music — a completely different thing than what I do. I’ve never done that. I come from bands. I drove in a van. Bill came from a band. Rick came from a band. All of us came from collaborative groups. It’s a mindset, so the band thing is always important.
Goin’ Up the Country
On Detour, though, you’re focusing on other people’s material, as you did on At Last and The American Songbook.
But this wasn’t really about the American songbook. I thought it was, but that wasn’t what they were thinking. They were thinking, they heard “At Last.” They were thinking it was gonna be more like Rod Stewart. But I didn’t want to sing bad jazz.
You gotta keep in mind that I came to Tennessee quite often. I recorded some of Sisters of Avalon here. I also recorded some of Shine. For me, it’s odd to now be on the inside. I was outside. Listen, you’re in Tennessee with two incredibly prolific but soulful cities. One is Memphis and one is Nashville. It is true that at some point they walk hand-in-hand. Seymour [Stein, owner of Sire Records] felt that it was around the time that Elvis kicked the doors in. To me, Elvis was the big sensation, but there was also Wanda Jackson, who I love. And she was at the beginning of rock. But she’s also this country thing that was happening here, which was kind of rock & roll, kind of country, kind of rhythm and blues. So it wasn’t a far stretch.
“I want to be who I can’t be. I don’t think I have to join the Army. I think I can join my own army.”
I always did want to sing a little country. Ironically, she chose the same time period that I chose for the blues stuff. So I thought this would be a great piece if you wanted to put it together in a box set called Tennessee. I thought it would be unbelievable to come down and play with the Nashville cats. You know what? I wanted to go [sounds like: buy them] especially when i saw the documentary. I was like, “Why haven’t [unintelligible] too?” It was kind of a bucket list. I don’t want to miss out on stuff. And I don’t want people to tell me what I have to do. If you tell me I can’t do something, you can just rest assured I will be doing it. It’s not just … what do you call it? … oppositional? … It’s some stupid name that some freaking psychologist said, [in German accent] “We’ll just name every condition these people have!” I want to be who I can’t be. I don’t think I have to join the Army. I think I can join my own army [laughs].
I felt I had to diversify. I just wanted to be on fire. This was a way to appease what Seymour wanted. Seymour thinks I can sing anything. I don’t know if that’s so. I kind wish I’d done this like twenty years ago, but maybe it’s supposed to be now. I go searching for everything, but everything I search for is right back in the same damn period of when I was growing up. He sent a ton of songs. I went through them and started picking the ones that had stories, just like the blues thing — the ones that had stories. Even At Last — the ones that had stories.
Can you compare recording in New York to recording in Nashville?
When I came down there, they were all set. They’re in, they play the song, they’re out. That doesn’t work for me and I said that to them. I said, right up front on the second day, “It’s starting to feel like a boys’ club. You guys connect but not with me. And if we don’t connect, there’s nothing.” I wanted to go through the keys with them but they weren’t going to sit and go through everything. Steve Nathan tried but …
So there were two songs that worked and one magical — that was “Funnel of Love” and “The End of the World.” Once we had those, I found a way to connect with them. It was just a simple thing, like listening to what the drummer was playing and then responding, like call-and-response. Then all of a sudden they’re listening.
“I’m not a Southern woman at all. I’m very straightforward. I know what I want. ”
For “The End of the World,” Steve Nathan got on the Prophet [synthesizer]. Tony Brown wanted to change it from the Farfisa to a synthesizer. I said, “I think it should be the Prophet.” Because Prophet has a great pad sound that’s thick and wooly and transparent. You lay it in there and there’s room. I can easily match my sound to it because that sound was very round with a lot of air and yet a little compression in the low midrange. Once I heard it and found it, I had to stay with it, so it had to be consistent all the way through. When everybody heard it, they were like, “Oh, wow! It’s magical!” And I said, “Yeah. And the others aren’t. We’re telling stories and we want to evoke a little magic, a little imagination, and everybody tells the story going through.”
Finding sounds is like finding songs. This album is about going back to the best that a certain era had to offer.
But there are many more than that. I’m still pissed I didn’t get a chance to sing “Just Because I’m a Woman.”
You respect things that endure in music and art even as you explore new things.
You have to make it endure. Art and music export people’s imaginations. It inspires them. And it’s hopeful. It helps you see around the bend sometime. It helped me, so why not give the same back.
We’ve seen a lot of artists cross over to country. It’s like carpetbagging.
I don’t feel like that and here’s why. I didn’t think of myself as an insider. I thought of myself as an outsider. I’ve always been on the outside. I just thought of it as good music. I know that you have to mix commerce with music. But I’m telling you that what I want to leave behind is something that people will remember as quality.
When I was growing up, these country singers, they weren’t country singers to me. They were freaking pop stars. And they’re TV stars. And they were glamorous. That’s how I remember it. That’s what Detour is: an homage to those singers. But I didn’t know all of them. I didn’t know Ray Price. My God, when I heard Ray Price, I was like, “Omigod, omigod, omigod!” Then you try and sing like Ray Price and you sound something like Ethel Merman. You’re not gonna sound like Ray Price. So I had to try and find the key and how I would sing that. Then I realized, “You know what? If I was in Blue Angel, I’d sing it like this.” And that’s how I sang it. And all of a sudden, I found the story, who the guy was, who I was, what was going on, the whole thing.
That’s how I approach everything. Listen, I was a complete outsider in the blues. But it’s good to shine a light on things. For me, this is a singer’s record. I love to sing. There’s some stuff on this album that’s basically singing. I wanted to put some Dolly on it because I love me some Dolly. I had to have that song on this record because they wanted a Christmas song. I listened to that and even though it’s really sad, it ain’t so sad. It’s hopeful. Because she gets through. I know that woman. I’ve seen her pull over the car on the side of the road and be depressed for a second and then get back on and go. I saw that before. I know those women. And each one was a different person. Alison too: She was telling me, “I know that person but she’ll never leave.”
“I’m not gonna reinvent the wheel. This is an homage to songs that were from a simpler time.”
Did you record your duet with Willie live?
He came in! I sang it already because he was doing two records at once. Me, I wait like an idiot in front. They pull up in the bus in the back. And he walks in. You get tears in your eyes. You do. Of course, I didn’t cry because I’m a professional. But it was like Yoda walking in, you know what I mean? And this “Night Life” is one of the most beautiful songs! I’d never heard it before, but when I heard that song I said, “I’m singing that song! And I’m singing Willie’s version.” I did it as close as I could, in such a respectful way so that if I asked him to come and sing on that record, it would feel natural and he would feel at home. I’m not gonna reinvent the wheel. This is an homage to songs that were from a simpler time.
I see this as an Americana record. And I’m an American. I’m a singer.
PHOTOS
Straight blonde hair, toothy smile, black shirt:
At the red carpet premiere of Kinky Boots, Capitol Theatre, Sydney, Australia, April 2017. Photoby Eva Rinaldi via Creative Commons Attribution - Share Alike 2.0.
Wrestling:
As Hulk Hogan’s “manager,” May 1985 (l-r) wrestler Wendi Richter, Lauper, Hogan & wrestler Dave Wolff. Public domain via Wikimedia.
Megaphone:
As grand marshal, NYC Pride Parade, June 2012. Photo by Bob Johnson via Creative Commons Attribution - Share Alike 4.0.
Leaning back on piano:
Onstage as Glastonbury Festival, Pilton, England, June 2024. Photo by Ralph_PH via Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.
Lips pursed, onstage:
Performing at London’s Royal Albert Hall, June 2024. Photo by Raph_PH via Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.
Good interview of a fascinating artist