Corinne Bailey Rae independently released one of our favorite albums of 2023: Black Rainbows. Justin Richmond spoke to Corinne over Zoom at the end of the year about the place that inspired the album, the Stony Island Arts Bank in Chicago. And then when she came to Los Angeles around Grammy time they decided to meet up to discuss Reflections / Refractions At the Stony Island Arts Bank, a beautiful new book Corinne put together to catalogue the items that inspired her new music and creative awakening.
The conversation touches on Corinne recording her third album, The Heart Speaks in Whispers, at Capital in Hollywood, to finding her spiritual home in Chicago, to discovering a mid-century New York subway pageant that inspired her raucous song, “New York Transit Queen.”
You can hear a playlist of some of our favorite Corinne Bailey Rae songs HERE.
Pushkin. Krin Bailey Ray independently released one of my favorite albums of twenty twenty three, Black Rainbows. We had a chat over Zoom at the end of the year about the place that inspired the album, the Stony Island Arts Bank in Chicago, and then when she came to LA around Grammy time, we decided to meet up and continue our conversation, not only about the new album and what it meant to find her own artistic voice again, but also to discuss reflections Refractions at the Stony Island Arts Bank, a beautiful book Krin's put together, cataloging the items that inspired her new music and her creative awakening. The conversation takes us from Krinn recording her third album, The Heart Speaks and Whispers at Capitol in Hollywood, to finding a spiritual home in Chicago, to discovering a mid century New York subway pageant that led to one of my favorite songs on her new album, The rackus New York Transit Queen. This is broken record. I don't notes for the digital age. I'm justin Richmond. Here's my conversation with Corinne Bailey Ray. Have you recorded here much?
Yes, I have I did my third album, Capitol, so I loved being there. I mean, that's amazing. We came for seven weeks and we ended up saying for seven months, I mean, not all in studio A because it would have you know, bankrupted.
How much did you spend on?
Yes, it was a lot. It was a lot, but it was worth it because it was James Godson, you know, who's such a brilliant drummer. And it was just nice we all to be in that space and anything you played in there you just played G on acoustic guitar thing. Yeah, that's right, a song with just G. Everything sounded good. I really liked it. I'd like to go again when I was a bit more together, because we didn't quite know what we're doing. I'd like to go when it was like, we know what the songs are, let's work on the arrangements, you know, rehearse and then you can just be ready to go.
Yeah, a little room, I mean, I imagine there's some inspiration in that building. It's at room for.
Just the actual sound, you know, space and then the echo chamber. Yeah, it's really good. And we went into the echo chamber and it still smells of paint. Wow, from when it was painted.
That can't be good, can it. Yeah?
I guess that's probably lead paint or something. But where the air didn't go anywhere, you know, just let you just close the door. So yeah, amazing place.
I've only been there a few times, but it's so yeah. I still you know, I've lived here my whole life, but every time I passed that building, isn't it? And I always worry about now nowadays too, I worry about it when I passed, like I feel some sort of like hop you know, I doubt they're going to take it down, but I hope, Yeah, I know that.
Do you universal still own it or is it owned by someone else? And when I was working there, there was a big fuss because they were making big condos nearby, but it was disturbing all the underground stuff and that's where the echo chambers are. They were like, what's it going to do to like acoustics? But I think it's probably fine.
How's it been in town? It's so I forgot it was Grammy.
Yeah, yeah, I mean it's fun. I just won this award at the Resonator Awards, which is for women who produce an engineer. It's that organization called Move the Needle. I don't know if you've heard of it, but it's set up by Emily Lazarre. And so the main thing they've done is sort of analyzed music. So they made this analysis of everything that came out last year, and of all the songs that came out last year and all the records, there was only six just over six percent that either had a woman producer or engineer. So they're just looking at how they can kind of bring equity to these organizations, including mentorships for young women. And it's mostly coming out of school and you know, being the person who trains with a mixed engineer, because that's the seat you really want.
To be in, right, That's how you get there.
That's how you get experienced. You can learn all you want to college, but when you're actually working on records every single day and sitting in rooms and working with artists, that's when you really become a master. So I think they set up quite a few internships and there's camps, and then there were loads of big writers there, like Linda Perry was there. She's really good and she's really honest. And then alanis Morrissette was winning an award, a kind of trailblazer award, and she's such a big writer. Her record Jagged Little Pill is the second biggest selling record of all time?
Is that true?
Which I didn't see. It's like thriller then Jagged Little Pill. Whoa yeah, So when it was eighty eighty five million recorder, I could move for that record, and obviously all over the world eighty five million.
Records, five million thriller like below, just below thriller rilla.
Yeah, I was thinking, is it a Beatles record or but yeah, it's thriller, my yeah, I guess it's like it's also with how which chart you're looking at and all that sort of stuff. But yeah, that's a massive. But then they were just highlighting all these different engineers and producers that I'd never heard of that were doing big things. They're all sort of Grammy nominated this year. And this woman who's kind of Jack Antonof's right hand woman who does everything you know, yeah, exactly, Yeah, she's the mixed engineer and he just won't work with anyone Else's amazing.
Would you ever produce it? Would you ever work in that capacity? Like help another artist?
I mean, I just don't feel myself to be prolific enough to kind of be a producer for other people. But obviously I love producing my own music. I mean, maybe in the.
Future I could do that.
I just feel like it's not like, oh, I've got ten records out and then I've got, you know, two spare months to produce someone else. I feel like I'm always just trying to like get it right for myself. I did get asked recently to work with someone, and you know, maybe at a different point in my career I could do it. Or if I saw someone who thought, oh, they're really brilliant and they you know, they need a bit of help with the direction, and they were up for it. I think it's hard sometimes an artist producer. I've worked with artist producers before where they have a really strong opinion of how it should be. Whereas I feel like the best producers like we could do it like this or this or this or this, I've got all the different angles, Whereas I won't have loads of ideas. It's just with my own music, I just think it has to be this, you know direction.
You know. It's funny. I re listened again to like every record in chronological way. Every record is different. Yeah. Yeah, so you at least got four different you know angles.
Yeah, yeah, No, I do really love it. I just think it takes it takes me a long time, you know, with Hero and the Tortoise or something.
Do you feel like you're always like writing.
I feel like I'm always in phases. So I think with this record, I'm still very much in the phase of tell the stories, communicate the stories. It feels much bigger than me. It's really different from talking about your own life compared to talking about these stories in this place, and I feel like I'm in the business of connecting people.
You know.
I spoke to a radio presenter who's just over at Tavis Smiley's radio station. But I remember specifically the interview what we talked about. You know, we talked about Aretha Franklin's Amazing Grace.
Grace read it for you, didn't.
He He was like, do you know about this record? And I said, yes, I love that record, and we got to talk about that. You know, remember, so this what's sacred, what spiritual, how people come out of the church and they kind of punished for it to a certain extent, or you know, you're really on your own, But how can you ever separate music from spirituality and all this?
That's blowing my mind because that's actually the conversation. I completely forgot about it. You said, that's how I discovered that record.
Really from that conversation. Really, yeah, you guys talking about Wow. So he was, yeah, that works then, right, he was recommending it to me. But whoever was watching it, Yeah, that's such a good album. And it's just a community choir who were.
Excellent, insanely good.
Yeah, but you know they just live nearby and they go to that church. Yeah, you know, it's not the all star gospel choir of you know, it's just not local people.
Speaking of like spiritual homes. Got to look through the book. It's wild how Chicago became this kind of spiritual home. It's a second home for either way you're I.
Mean, Chicago just became and still is for me. It's kind of the center of the world for black stuff for me. You know, in terms of thinking about the huge migration that happened after the Civil War and after abolition, where did the majority of people from the South want to go? The enslaved people Obviously a lot of people stayed in the South and really identified with those states and being in the land and being farmers and being close to nature. But so many people wanted to go to Chicago, you know, the big city. So many people came, and so you think of all those the mixture of all those different cultures. I mean, I sort of think it's all those different Africans that have lived in America for generations, and all the cultures of the various states, and even the cultures of the various plantations, you know, impacting to what extent people were allowed freedom to move around because of course some enslaved people were hired out, you know, on different jobs. They drove the masses around, you know, Dave the Potter who made pots for people around around the plantation delivered them and so just what that was like. And then coming to Chicago and then what they brought with them, their traditions, their culture, their food. But yeah, Chicago, I mean I feel like I knew of Chicago as a you know, being a British person, a European person, as like the mab the Mafia, Yeah, the Windy City, you know, the musical Chicago. I didn't think of it as being this center of Black thought and space. You know, I certainly wouldn't have thought, oh, Ebony Magazine was Chicago, and then was it? Yeah? Yeah, So the headquarters of Ebony Magazine were in Chicago, and John Johnson had this building that he bought and sort of decked it out. You know. He became a really wealthy man. The whole family were wealthy because they had Jet and Ebony, Negro Digest and they would send them all over the world. So he would go to all these fancy places and all these bands, and they would have all this European art on the walls. And he thought, when I get my own place, I want it to be contemporary Black artists and African pieces. So when you see photographs of that building, the Johnson Publishing Building, every floor had its own character. There was like swirly carpets that had commissioned, the furniture was specially made. There was the glass ash trays, and the art on the wall, and the dog One statues and the Marlean statues. It was like being in an art installation. And the photos it also looked like something from two thousand and one, a Space Odyssey, you know, just really like futuristic sixties. They really heavily documented it. And it also was a center for black Chicago. So when Muhammad Ali was in town, he would go to the Johnson Building or when you know sha Ka Khan or whoever was passing through, those people were always the building was always fizzing with these entertainers. So I really liked the idea of that. And then just to know the library from that building had gone to the Arts Bank, Wow, you know, and that's what the library was. It had been people who had sent their books to try and hope that Ebonie would review it, the magazine would review it. So I just couldn't believe the amount of literature in this library. It was a new another look at Chicago for me.
How much time have you spent there? Now?
I spent loads of time though, because we you know, obviously I went on that first visit and then I came back and did a two week residency, which really was immersive. It was freezing cold. It snowed on the first day, and the snow didn't melt all the time we were there. It never snowed again, but it was banked up, you know, it was weak solid. It was frozen in England, if you drive into a bank of snow, you kind of you know, the car crushes the snow. But in Chicago it was so frozen the car would just kind of ramp up, like a four wheel drive would just kind of ramp up on these huge snow drifts, and it was freezing. You know, your eyes would freeze. It was November or December when we went. But just to be in that building and see people who'd come out out and the cold to come to this building because there was a dance event happening, because there was a music event happening. Carolinia had put this tea party and that had it had dance, she was singing, It had a contemporary dance performance. It had this tea ceremony that everyone engaged in. There was just always so much going on. You know. There was this artist who was commissioned once a week. He would just do these pop ups in various parts of the building and you would go and you wouldn't sure whether it's going to be in the library or it's going to be in this room or that room. You'd just be able to hear the singing and kind of follow.
Hopefully.
I just followed to where it was, and it felt so special that all this was happening in this really beautiful space.
You mentioned in the book too by car Laney that there was some like singing exercise.
Yeah, she is a I guess she's an artist, but she also teaches vocals and they have this choir that would meet every every week, and they were doing this exercise where you moved around the building. We moved around this one room and he had to make a single sound. I can't remember if she gave you the sound or that you just chose it. Maybe you just chose it, but it was just, you know, one syllable, and you had to have an object that you interacted with as you walked around the space. So it might have been that rocking chair, you know. That might have been my object. So I had to make the sound as I went around, and then each time I came to the object had to interact with it. Maybe I sat in it, maybe I climbed over it, maybe I crawled under it, maybe I turned it upside down. But each time it was something. And because you were so focused on this object and doing your thing each time, the part of your brain that was concentrating on the singing just became really loosened, and so I found the things I was doing when I eventually kind of checked back in with it, it was really free and really loose, And of course everyone else was making their sound as well, so we were all kind of singing together as a choir, but not really paying attention to each other consciously but unconsciously in our music world, we were so just to hear, like all these harmonies and sounds and rhythms and textures, and you know, you'd be challenged, like the more weird someone else's sound was, the more permission it gave you to do your weird growl or screech or bark or whatever it was, because it was all about what am I going to do with this chair? Kind of fit my body through that side. So it was really mind opening. And I also remember saying I wish this was my life, and then saying to myself, wait, this is my life. So I felt like there was this huge contrast between maybe the way I had thought about my music making practice, which at that time had really become try and write those hits, you know, sit down and really concentrate and really make it happen, and really put this pressure on yourself and.
Was that pressure coming from you?
It didn't start off coming from me, but it was very much absorbed by me. When I was making my third record, when we came over to Capital in Los Angeles, you know, bless a record label, I think they had seen that I had been successful and they really wanted it for me and for themselves again. So definitely with that third record, I was kind of how can we make this work? And you know, I'd had lots of times of either playing people music had recorded, or sitting there with my guitar in a room full of important dudes who were all sort of older than me and more powerful, who would just sort of say at the end of a song they'd say, I just don't think it's the first single. That's what I'd get all the time, and so I would definitely be in that position of thinking, well, what is this elusive song that's kind of kind of smashed the doors in, and of course for me on my first record that had been put your records on?
And did you know when you wrote that, like, were you like, oh, this is a single or no, no all?
I mean, I guess I was definitely thinking the album that I had written because everything else was done, I was definitely thinking we need another kind of up tempo song, so that's all we were thinking. Really was kind of the pace. But it came about really easily and it was really fun. It was really conversational and I liked it. So it wasn't labored, whereas I think with my third record it was just every try it just felt there was so much pressure on it and bless the label again. You know, the more time and money you sort of spend on the thing really wanting to it's like gambling, right, You just like keep putting the chips down.
But at a certain point you're so for you have so many chips in it's like.
Whoa, yeah, it going exactly. It got in a sort of too big to Veil's situation for me where it's just I just it just can't it just can't not have an international megasmash on because it's taken so long and it's got so much money, and you know, I'm a people person. People would lose their jobs if you don't do well at a certain point in a label. You know, if someone's your guid at the label and they've kept saying no She'll do it, you know, just keep we just need another one hundred thousand dollars.
You know.
It's like the heads will roll, and head did roll. So I just was always, you know, like lying in bed with that kind of weight of responsibility, like I am my failing pop star and my friends are losing their jobs because of my inability to produce this thing. They pull this thing out of the bag. So then yeah, walking around with Kiara just singing these crazy bits of music and being with other artists who I thought were brilliant, I just thought, yeah, I really remember this thing of music being freeing and playful and creative and pressureless and fun, and I really want to get into that. I want that to be my life. And then of course being that was my life in Chicago and that building was my life, and that led to a whole creative, free project in Black Rainbows where I didn't feel the same pressures as I did when I was making The Heart Speaks and Whispers.
So so that was the thought, like that I wish that music making was fun.
Yeah, I wish I could sort of get back to my first love without thinking this is really important, because this is it's for your career and it's for the people, you know's livelihood.
Yeah, that's scary. Yeah. I read a book on Moe Austin or maybe it's about one the Warner Brothers label and but had a lot to do about Mo Austin, And there was a story about when they were starting some A and R guy did a produced a Van Dyke Parks record. I think it was like Van Dyke Park's first record, and it's very experimental and very cool. I think it was like the most most money they'd ever spent on like a record too, and it didn't sell at all, but it was very cool, and so he kind of sheepishly went to like Mo and was like, hey, like, you know, god of I fucked up, Like you know, this was really expensive and it didn't sell, and apparently Mo said, well, this is the album good and then he was like yeah, it's amazing. He's like, that's all we can do it? Yes, where's that kind of an executive these days?
You know, It's just it's an important thing to say, I think to be fair to music executives. The way that people buy music means that there is and the money stream coming in in the same way, you know, I always say to people with my first record, if you wanted to hear, for example, like a star, you could sit by the radio and hope it came one, or you could go to the shop and buy the CD or vinyl or in India tape. But now if you want to hear a song, you can just stream it. But of course the streaming the record doesn't bring that much money to the artist. Yeah, there's a big gap now between I love that song, I have to hear it right now, or you could listen to it on YouTube, which is completely free and none of the money goes to artist.
But is the money going to the label though?
Now the money is going to label. Yeah, but it's the same amount of money going Maybe maybe it is, and maybe they're sort of all good, but the artists aren't. Like I would love to know more about it. I feel like someone like Taylor Swift would know the breakdown.
What she knows she's thinking account of everything that's going on.
Yeah, she's like, let me just rerecord all my records, you know. But yeah, I think there is money somewhere, but it's definitely not with the artist. I mean, I feel really lucky because I got to have that phase. But I think for new artists it can sometimes feel for them that the making of the music is just the start, and that if they can then spin their good music into kind of making themselves a cool brand, then maybe they can get the sponsorship that they need to go on tour to Yeah. You know, so it's really hard for artists. They're like, Okay, I've made a great record, but now I need to I don't know, get my Instagram figures up so that I can where these trainers to pay to go on the road. I don't know.
I have a friend who I didn't really know to be a music person, but all of a sudden they have a job now as an A and R person, And they were on Instagram on their little story complaining the video themselves, saying, you know, I'm spending all day long going through music, and I'm founding artists and I really like their music, and then I'm going to their page and they're not promoting themselves. So why would I invest in you if you really Oh.
Wait wait wait wait wait wait, yeah, that's the whole deal. I'm going to a page and they're not. It's almost as though they're spending all the time recording music, you know, all the time sitting in front of a camera telling us what shoes they're like, or like what products are using there. Yeah, I think that's really crazy. And also being a self publicist is in I feel it's kind of counter to the feeling of being an artist, right. The feeling of being an artist is like here I am with my cup full. I humbly bring it to the world as an offering. You know, it's being a promoter. It's like I am the ship. You need to listen to me. This is the best thing you've ever you know, some aret takes out, like certain certain wedges of hip hop like that have that.
Like you know that might have been a reserve space for like the superstar at some point, like the Bruce Springsteen. I can kind of be both the little.
Bit here I am the boss, yeah or whatever, or like a Kanye is you know where he was at one point with just like people love that kind of swagger. But if you're just sitting in your room playing a song on your acoustic guitar or you on your sampler or whatever, you've got to just hope that someone's into it. And I don't know, are we getting. Are we only getting artists who have got a kind of a weird distance between what they who they are and they making and then who they are looking at themselves from the outside thinking what are my marketable traits? Yeah, I just feel like there's something really ill at ease with that for me. But yeah, I know that that's how a in our works. It's like they look at the numbers and they say, well, if you haven't got enough followers, then there must be something wrong. Instead of thinking we can help you get followers, we can invest your platform. Yeah. Yeah, so I think it's hard for new artists. But I mean, obviously there are lots of great artists coming through, but it's generally people who know how to get that ring light on and get that content done, and that maybe be prohibitive to other kinds of artists.
Yeah. Yeah, after the break, we'll be back with more of my conversation with Karen Bailey Ray. We're back with Karen Bailey Ray in the book too. You say it's been a real journey for me in music in terms of what I've wanted to say and how much space there is for it. Yeah, just struck me.
What did you mean by that, I feel like, now it's a revelation. There's as much space as you imagine there to be if you can uncouple from the idea that you're trying to make massive hit music, Like I love this Andre three thousand record, which is just like I really tried to make a hip hop record, but I actually wanted to just sit cross legged and play my bass clarinet.
Yeah.
Why shouldn't a music maker have that phase in their career, especially someone who's already packed the dance floors and there's already been the music you have to play your wedding and your party and you're getting ready to go out. It's like, why should we expect artists anything else of artists except kind of evolution. The artists are meant to be the weirdos, the strange ones, the ones who are kind of like listening to the muse, the ones who are a bit out there. And so I think there is as much space as you imagine, and you can say anything you imagine. You just have to not think that people a large amount of people are going to actually care, you know, but some people will care and that will make a deep connection and that's really valuable.
So how have you experienced, then, the reception of your new album, Black Rainbow.
I mean, I've experienced it in a really profound and rewarding way. I mean I think I've experienced it in two ways, maybe three. One is actually live, you know, going to a room, like traveling somewhere on a tour bus, getting out of the bus, getting our stuff ready, getting my clothes on, getting my makeup done, and then working on to that stage and just being there and saying I stories for you, I've got some things I want to say, and seeing people react. You know, when we first started our tour, our last US tour, it was before the record had even come out, and I knew I was playing the whole thing, so it was just you know, you may have heard two songs off this whole album, but here we are just bringing it to you and this.
We recorded it and everything.
But yeah, I mean the album wasn't out yet, so the tour went just ahead of when the album was out, So I think maybe people would have heard if they were really looking for it, they would have heard New York Transit Queen and maybe Peach Velvet Sky, but nothing else. And just to be able to play the songs and see people's reaction and feel like you're in it with people you know. To be able to play, he will folly with his eyes and go from this kind of dreamy section into the more disjointed music at the end where I'm singing abby hit with my plum red lipstick, my black hair kinking, my black skin gleaming, And just to say that over and over again and to hear people like start clapping and cheering and like standing up, and just to feel that in real time that gave me so much, you know, maybe think this is striking a chord. That's all I want. All I want is to connect with people. And I get that feeling in a room of five hundred people, eight hundred people, one thousand people, twelve hundred people, just small intimate rooms that meant the world to me. Doing those places, or being able to hear a song and you can hear a pin drop, no one's talking, no one's at the bar, you know, just a song they've never heard that meant a lot. So that's one way I've received it. I think another way is getting to talk to people like yourself or been requested to talk with people like yourself, that's meant a lot to me that the phone has kept ringing, or that you know, say can you come on this? Can you come on this? Can you come in this? Can you can you talk? Can you talk? That's been amazing just to say like, oh, it has connected in certain places. That means a world. And then yeah, the same getting to be on radio and play the music and then have like the feedback come through, or you know, we just did a session for Joe Wiley and she's on Radio two in the UK and I had played for her in two thousand and five. I mean, I've been back since, but just to think, gosh, I've been in this space many times, but this is doing a really different thing. And to have people, you know, phoning in.
Does it feel like a first record again for you in a way like does it feel it does.
Feel like a first record? Yeah? And it also feels I think because it's different to what people might have expected. It feels like not cheeky but risky. You know, it feels like a risky thing to do good.
Even in a meta way as a listener of your music beyond like just really liking the set of music. What's exciting about it? For me is seeing someone that's been in your life for as long as you've been in our lives take that risk. It's thrilling and it makes you know myself. I'm sure other people too who listen like, yeah, fuck it, I want to try something different because it's really out there and it's really fucking good.
Thank you, Yeah, thanks, It's just been good for me. I just feel like, what do I want to do with my time here? I don't want to forensically pour over what I've done before and try and make it enough the same that it's going to catch those people. And that's why I tried to always talk to the label people about the people who bought my first record. They're not even the same now, Like who a listener was in two thousand and six, it's not the same as who they are in twenty twenty four. So it's like even your audience has changed in terms of who they are.
Way so I would have been like sixteen whenever came out. I loved it. Now I'm an almost thirty five year old dad of two girls whatever, but like listening to it makes me feel sixteen again because it makes me excited. It's like something new you know.
So I think it's sort of patronizing to kind of imagine that your listeners, you know, everyone's kind of in a Belgia, are like just waiting for the same thing again. I mean, who even wants the same to buy a same record even if I made it carbon copy? You know, like the Disney films that they do where it's like it's The Little Mermaid but it's live action, but it's exactly the same, but it's different, but it's you know, I wouldn't. So it's like, how can you ever compete with the really you know, the thing that you already did and it's just Better's like, make a new movie. See what that's like? Yeah, the Little Moment will still exist. I mean I did actually like the Little Moment, but as an example of the whole way that things are being kind of remade, you know, why not just do something new? Well, the reason is because it's more of a risk, But what the benefit is that it's new art in the world, which is good for everybody.
Yeah, you do take your time, and you alluded to that a bit earlier. Do you feel that like you've found a rhythm in a way that will allow things to come a little easier.
Yes, I definitely feel that. And I think part of the reason the third album took so long is because it was actually a combination of songs that weren't rejected by either myself or a team, you know, So I could have written three records in that space. You know, there were definitely songs that were just like a wounded bird that you just kind of lay by the side of the road and throw out something else. So I think I will never go back to that place. However, I make my records now, even whether it's with a major label or not. I like the thing of making the record without anyone. I really enjoyed that this time, so you may and that's how did my first record. So you make it and then you sort of take it around like you're a traveling salesperson, you know, you say it's this, it's weird, it's different, is it good? Is it bad? And some people say no, and then some people say yes. And then when you find someone who says yes and you can work from there. I think that's a way that I want to carry on doing it. And you know, having you know, made a studio and invest made those kind of investments I think that it's possible. So yeah, I'm just trying to work out what to do next.
Have you heard from labels, either your old.
Well, I've heard from different people who are at the different labels, and it's been really positive. I mean I haven't heard from any sort of like the giants of any of the labels, and you know, you think, I wonder if they have you even heard it or not? But or even like my old manager, my first manager is like, I'm so happy you made this. It really sounds like you and it sounds like you're having a good time and that means a lot to me that it's come from historic me as well, that's not like a reinventor. Yea.
Yeah, I read in the book that you felt like even the way you wrote the songs was different, I mean basing this rather than the songs coming from some internal sense of how you're feeling or something that's happened in your life, You're you're pulling the inspiration for the songs from outside sources, from these items you discovered at the archive in Chicago. Did you enjoy writing that way and is that something you keep doing as well?
I really enjoyed writing that way, because I really didn't try to write that way. And I think I hear about people who I don't know write books or write films, or they say I was on the tube and I overheard so and so, and a lot of songwriters work like that as well. Right, So, I think because I wasn't trying to write songs when I was looking at that stuff, you know, that first day, I was just curious or nose even just pulling open drawers and like that, like certain things would interest me, certain things wouldn't. And I guess I was drawn to my own things that fascinate me.
You know.
I looked at a lot of women. I looked at children, I looked at particular eras of America. I looked for beauty, you know. I was really interested in the glamour and fashion of ebony from the forties and fifties. You know, I hadn't seen imagery of like black women in elegance and gloves and pillbox hats, and I hadn't seen enough pictures like that.
Seen more of that, because every time it's flashed back to the fifties with black America, it's the black and white dogs.
I mean, that's what I mean, so I think I had seen so much, Yeah, vintage blackness that was really framed around civil rights struggle or violent oppression. They were the images that went all over the world for all the reasons. But I think what that does is it makes blackness into a kind of perpetual struggle, you know, like the work of being black in the fifties is to struggle. And I remember talking to Miss Audrey Smaltz, who was Miss New York Transit Queen nineteen fifty three.
That's a real thing.
Yeah, there was a competition and it was Miss New York Transit. So that's what was the competition that she won, and that's how I found her. It was the black equivalent of Miss Subways. When I left the Arts Bank, I was googling like Mistransit, Mistransit. All I could have found was these two articles that were in Ebony magazine, so it was the only source on the entire Internet. But I would keep coming across Miss Subways, which was all of these kind of Doris Day types, you know, sort of posing and their photos will be plastered all over the tube, and so you could vote for who you thought was Miss Subway of any particular year, and I think the prize was, you know, free ride on the subway or whatever for the years. So a lot of these women, you know there were secretary, they were teachers, they were you know, they were going to their work, and they you know, beautiful women and immaculately dressed. But the competition, even if though it was in New York, the competition wasn't open to black women in the fifties in New York. So the black transit workers of New York got together and made Miss Transit. And that's why we see Audrey Smaltz. I think she's a fourth winner ever of Miss Transit. But yeah, because of that and because of ebony, and because someone put it on the internet, I was able to find out about it and actually find Audrey Smaltz, you know, because she became a very famous woman in fashion and media.
Was that the impetus four or I mean imagine she was probably glamorous before, if that's how that's how she won.
Yeah, she wasn't. She was seventeen and she was an art student and she had entered this beauty competition because it lists her as being I mean, I don't know feet and inches because we're metric in England. It's five eleven one one in shorter of six foot. Yeah, okay, but she is actually six foot but they thought it wasn't feminine enough. Sa, So it's like she's five to eleven but she was. Yeah, it didn't be intimidated fellas. But yeah, she's she was the six foots of Amazonian beauty. But she won the competition. I mean obviously because of her looks, but also she had this fold. She was an art student, so she drew and so that was her. You know, you had to show your kind of studies or special interests. And really I liked the idea of that. But yeah, going back to when you think, you close your eyes and think of black American in the fifties and the sixties, it is kind of a police dog. So seeing all this glamor and seeing all this beauty. But I said to Audrey Smult's, you know, what was it like growing up in Harlem in the in the forties the fifties, you know, was racism? I kind of was it an everyday you know struggle with me being this you know, black English girl. She's like, honey, no, She's like, I've lived in Harlem. We were fantastic we lived in that. I didn't know it was the projects. We thought we were muck aty Mac. She said, we had a live in the basement, we had black artists on the wall, and she was painting this segregated world of Harlem, saying our teachers were black, our doctors were black, our bankers were black, our lawyers were black. We lived in this relatively safe space where actually our every day was not thinking about the struggle. We were just getting on with our lives. And that really blew my mind to think about these some black spaces were safe to the extent that it wasn't the defining factor of a person's life. You know. They went to finishing school. She went to Miss Celia Devors finishing school. She just painted this picture which made me realize that we're always overlaying the kind of political struggle on top of the everyday lives of black people at that time. That's why I loved Ebony magazine because it's of course it's talking about politics, but it's also talking about the black families that are putting on an art expission in the house, and it's took about the Black doctrine Canada and it's talking about hem lengths and wigs and makeup and nail varnish and where you can buy the best powder deodron, just the real everyday things of black life. So I just, I mean ebony was just this amazing, glamorous, brilliant sauce for me, it's beautiful.
I' have to go back and look at some of the sometimes I'm like Google books. I'll go back to some old stuff and look at those. But I should pick them up at like a store and look at them.
Yeah. Yeah, there's still a few around because I got one last time I was in Chicago, which on that tour, you know, in November, I managed to pick one up and then now it's mine.
You know.
It's like nineteen sixty five and front covers gorgeous.
That's great.
That's really a real piece of history.
Does every song on the album correspond to some thing or things in the archive?
Yeah, So every song on the record is directly influenced by an object or a group of objects, or the events in that arts Bank. So that song put it down comes from those experiences like with Carolinia or this dance party that happened in Arts Bank where you had to write down your woes and put them in this big vessel on the way into the party. And I love the party because it was a proper mixture of the hip art crowd who liked the esta and admire his work. He's internationally collected, is represented by White Cube and so those people and then local community people who you know that is the South side of Chicago, so it's an underserved community, is the current title. And then just like black hip uptown people, people from the university. So it was a real mixture when you looked around the room and everyone was just dancing to this FRANKI Knuckles archive for like three four hours, sweating it out in this building, you know, like freezing outside of condensation on the walls on the inside, and then they set fire to all the woes at the end. And the thing that I had put in there, the burden that I had been carrying, I never experienced it the same after that event, you know, like the actual cathartic thing of dancing it out, being in that building, being around those people burning it. That was it, you know, done for me. So I'm a real believer in dancing out your woes, and that's what came into that song. You know, when I've gathered up all my woes, I put it down. I'm like a burden of all my woes and put it down, and then you know, too much inside. I got to dance it out and then into the end, you know, I feel so free.
I put it down in hindsight. Was the work? Was it small in hindsight or was it something it was big?
Definitely, Yeah, it was of getting in the way. It was blocking What then became all this new stuff, you know, just a perception of myself. And I just recently went to this meditation class as well, and they talked about a Hindu god whose work is to slice through the false narratives that you have of yourself. And I remember, I think she's called Shapti, and I'm thinking, yeah, I want that, you know, just just like burn away all the stuff that's not relevant.
After this last break, we'll be back with the rest of my conversation with Krin Bailey Ray. Here's the rest of my conversation with Grinn Bailey Ray. What about the song Urthline? What would inspire that Earthlings?
I really, I mean, there was a lot of stuff in the record of what's time and where are we? So are we here now but with the future for our ancestors, and we're sort of in communication with them. I think that, you know, you can reach backwards, you can kind of tell them where you are and how far we've come, and that we're safe. I don't know, I really feel that, and I've felt that a lot after I'd had my children as well, felt really connected to the kind of line going far, far back. But I think with the earth things, I thought a lot about utopias. You know, in the library, there's a big conversation going on over about two hundred and fifty years between black thinkers. You know, a classic example would be an early Malcolm X and Martin Luther King position versus separatism. You know, we find ourselves to be here. This similation argument says, here we are outside of West Africa, in America, in Europe, in South America, black people, but we find ourselves alongside our neighbor. We are human and they are human. Let's find a way to live together and move forward from this moment. The separatist argument says, we are here in this hostile environment, how can we possibly survive? The only way to survive is to turn inwards and separate ourselves from everyone else. Whether that's a geographical place like Marcus Garvey back to Africa, or whether that's a spiritual idea like the separatist communities that sprung up in the sixties and seventies, or whether it's economically when people talk about trading only withinside the community. All these different ideas and back and forth in the library. Before emancipation and then from there on, there were different Black thinkers, some saying we can make it work. We're all brothers and sisters, and some saying no, we have to be separate. And so Earthlings is looking at utopia and looking at all these different attempts at utopia, like the Black pioneers going west and making their own all black towns, some of which were really successful, some of which still exist, some of which were crushed and destroyed, like Greenwood, which was the first incident of fire bombing that happened.
Is not what is Greenwood.
Greenwood was an all black town that existed that was a very wealthy town, and there was an incident where a black man was accused of interacting with a white woman in a lift, a sexual aggression towards this white woman, and a lynch mob came for this man into Greenwood where he lived, and the Greenwood citizens defended him, said they were not going to hand him over to you false accusation, and the rumors grew and developed, and eventually the area of Greenwood was firebombed by the people who were outside of the community, and it's the first incident of fire bombing used in America, these agricultural planes. So I think there are some utopias which worked, some didn't. But I think the song Earthlings is about how to make utopia, sort of knowing that it's impossible, but it's asking, you know, can we eat pineapples in the sun? Can we dig our gardens and live? Can we find work and time to dance? You know? How much do we need to work to survive? How much freedom is possible in the world? How much can we share our resources and all have enough? So I was kind of I am really interested in those.
Questions, pragmatic view of utopia. It's like, you know, it would be nice.
The basics, well it's the basis, but he asked us questions. So I'm the optimist who says, you know, I know it won't be long, like we can make this happen. And then I know other people who are close to the song who say when they imagine it, they kind of imagine it coming through the speakers on the sort of spaceship where you know, all the astronauts have died and they just kind of floating around and nothingness, you know, like we we didn't do it, We missed our chance. We're on the planet and the planet's destroyed, you know, by it essentially our own selfishness, however that comes out. You know, selfishness is manifesting in racism, doesn't it The separation of ourselves from other people, the imagination that they're not other people. Yeah, we can't because then when we don't have to imagine them as people, then we don't have to share anything with them, land, food, resources, love, and so yeah, that song. I'm an optimist. That's what I have to be that to get up in the morning.
I like that. It's more and more of like a like a Curtis.
Mayfield, Yeah exactly.
Yeah, there is a train coming, you know.
Yeah, exactly, we can get on board. We can all get in. The don't all he needs faith? You know, you don't need a ticket. Yeah, really, I like that. It's a kind of I don't know, I guess for Curtis Mayfield, it's a specifically you know, Christian gospel message. But I think it has the resonance, you know, so what's the train? The train is kind of psychological. It's a moment, it's consciousness. So I'm optimistic in that way.
That's cool. I want to ask you about another song. But before that, they reminded him talking about Curtis reminded me that you did an song with Al Green. I don't know if you were actually with Al Green.
Yeah, I was with that. I was with Al Green. It's terrifying, tell me, okay, it was. It was a questlove. It was a mer who asked me to do it. I can't remember if i'd even I think i'd met him. Then I had met him. We met a few things, and maybe a Music Cares thing and a Grammy thing, and obviously it's a mea and it's the roots and he was producing this al Green Records. So it came to me like, oh, they want you to write a song with Al Green, and I thought okay. So I had to fly to New York and walk into the room and there's al Green and he says like, yeah, you know, it's really softly spoken, and he's like, you know, don't you worry about anything? You know when al Gren is in the room. You know, when al Green is here, there's all everything's fine, and he talks about himself in the third person?
Does have glasses? Aren't too? In the studio?
I can't remember if you had glasses or it. I remember thinking, you know, I'd worked on some chords at home because I'm not the best guitarist, and also I thought, you know, I'm really actually going to be there with al Green. I don't want to be scratching my head. So we'd worked, you know, on these chords for Take Your Time.
How did you present the chords to it?
I was just played them. We know, I had a Spanish guitar, and I was like, you know, mister al Green, are you feeling these?
Like?
Do you like this? James Poiser was there. He obviously plays with the roots, and he's a brilliant organist and keep up player of all kinds and obviously questlove. So we were the band kind of jamming this song and I sang a few lines.
He sang some lines and how did the words come thready?
I didn't have the words already. No, So it ended up being a kind of I guess. You know, it's a duet, but there's this big age difference between us, so it wasn't like we were in love with each other. It's more that we were reflecting on you know, do you remember when we used to take our time, you know, I'd write you a letter and you'd or we'd stay up all night, or you know, now it seems everything's going too fast, and so it's kind of both of us reflecting on longing for a time when I guess love and communication could unravel in this real slow longing, which you know so much about Algreen's music, that that feeling of hot, damp southern air and love and waiting. You know, it's it's so amazing and it doesn't take much to kind of set it on fire. And so it's all about the anticipation with his music, and so, yeah, I can't believe that it came together, and I remember just sort of thinking, I believe this is really happening. It's really al Green and of couest Of was brilliant obviously on the session, he got the different people and I think John Legend was on that album as well, So there was all these kind of you felt like everybody in this room knows what they're doing, even if I don't, and I just have to you know. It's like a sink or swim.
Yeah.
Yeah, was like you just don't worry about anything, you know, when Al Green is here, we can just relax. And you know he's a reverend, so his actual pastor. And then years later I went to his church. Did you that's my next I mean, you got, yeah, You've got to go because it's a real church in a real building and people are there with their baby, women are fanning themselves. I didn't know it's going to be there. I think he just that is his job. So he's there, you know, if he's not on tour, he's just in the church leading the service, you know, and he speaks. There's a you know when those organists who like plays behind the sermon and swells and the passionate partson and he holds it down. And then he said, Karin, would you like to come up and sing something? I was singing, Oh my gosh, you know, this is the real gospel church. My Christian background is not gospel music. It's like a white Baptist church. You know, someone with a guitar and a rainbow guitar strap and someone playing a tambourine. That is what I know, you know. So it's like my black church experience comes from listening to records, it doesn't come from singing pews. So I was like, oh, was it gonna ask me? But it was amazing grace, which I of course know, so yeah, and I remember thinking, don't try and don't try and make all these crazy runs. Just just sing this song. And I think they thought they maybe you couldn't do that. So it was really it was really simple how he made it. But I wasn't about to be like if you major, you know, I just I was happy I sang my song. You know, it was a church. I wasn't trying to dazzle. But yeah, I also didn't fall on my face, which is good. But yeah, out in the bag at this point, I'll just stick to it, I know.
You know what's surprised me?
I was.
I think about this kind of often, and going back to Aretha was like Ariana Grande Atrea's funeral.
Is that what happened. I didn't watch Aretha's funeral, but occasionally, okay, more than occasionally, just sort of here and Aretha Franklin vocal. I can't remember what it was the other day, and I was just like, holy ship, she's totally unparalleled, a total master in her own lane. And just the ability to control, you know, it's like it's delicate, is burbling. You know what it was? It was her and Smoking Robinson singing Babby duet version. It's a duet that they just did totally spontaneously, and you can tell it is because Smokey sort of waits for the first note before he was a harmony and it was on Soul Train. You've got to watch it. I'm going to yeah, and she sat seeing and he said, oh, we should have been a duo and he says, it's not too late, baby, and I hadn't quite got them right in time. So it's like Smokey's a bit older than her, and he kind of looks older. He's wearing a jumper and I don't know, he might be like forty, and she looks like she's I don't know, twenty nine or something, and she's just like her skin's all just like beautiful and chotchy, and she just it's amazing seeing like a woman and she's, you know, a serious statued woman. And then Smoky looks kind of small next to her, and she's the piano player and he's kind of perched on the end of the thing. It's just like something you maybe hadn't even seen in terms of gender.
On TV reversal. Yeah, you're right, Oh, that version as like, holy shit, her piano playing.
Just everything, and like just thinking of her being in church, you know, with a hair pulled back, playing behind her father, who was like a superstar Cel Franklin, wasn't he, which you sort of forget about that. She really came up through gospel music and kind of the business of gospel music, right, people travel far and white to see him. His daughter that could also sing was kind of the side side showed to him. He was the main artist. And just to think coming up under that training just you cannot go wrong from there. But yet I think Areatha is probably the absolute pinnacle, you know, the top, and you always feel like you feel like she's there, you know that, Oh, she's reached kind of the top of her range and then the show was just like seventeen more, you know, like hold tones from there, just like she just shifts a gear. Yeah, so maybe, yeah. I always worry wonder I shouldn't say I worried. I wonder about the later part of her career, And it sort of makes me feel sad for music that in a way, like in the eighties it was sort of less room for a singer. There was less room for I don't know, late phrasing or taking your time or space, like the arrangements became really dense, and the only type of voice that could sit on top of it would be like a sort of Michael Jackson's voice. You know, there's loads of air in there. It's really like course Michael stabs through important times. But I felt like in the eighties there wasn't really the room in production in hip music. I always feel sad when music kind of takes a turn and it means like an artist just gets sort of chucked away, like how it was for Bill Withers, kind of so are you going to do disco? Bill?
No?
Okay, Well, you know by and then you don't really hear his records, you know, into the nineties, and obviously then there's a cover of Lovely Day and he's sort of back out.
You know.
That's again another thing I think of as artist, you know, was Bill Withers' label saying, we'll look how well Stevie's doing, will look how well this person's doing, and you're I mean, Live from Carnegie Hall didn't have a good reception, and it's one of my favorite records of all time.
That's an insane right, yeah, but it was.
It wasn't well received because my dad's got these magazines and it wasn't sort of well reviewed, you know. Oh you know, it's old material and it didn't have the spot I was thinking it all.
But it's elevating all the songs that if they get to all the songs, you know, but just I don't want to say better, but it's just.
Another talking about grandma's hands for longer than the length of Grandma's hands. But that's the version I played to my kids, and they know that speaking part as well as they know the song, you know, and it's like I love that old lady, Love that old lady. Just his rap he's talking is it's as great as a song. What a good person, what a good human? So that's the other thing I think of as an artist is you can be in a moment and think, oh, well, my work is not as well known or as popular as X, Y Z, A, B, C, D and E. That's not why you're doing your thing. You're doing your thing because you're doing your And I think there's always time. You know, sometimes people might not get into a record till the person's died, but then it's it's made, it's there.
Do you think of yourself as a singer.
I think of myself as I guess I think of myself as a singer, and I think of myself as a music maker. You know, I like my voice. I don't know. I remember doing loads of award shows and stuff with my first record and thinking, oh, it's funny when you're divorced from like, it's not your song, it's not your arrangement, it's not your production. I'm not playing my guitar, it's not with my band, you know. I'd feel really like, well, what can I bring to this? They literally want me to sort of put a dress on and heels and just kind of go. But I did find that I had something to say, so yeah, I do see myself as a singer.
What were the best versions of that in your mind?
Oh gosh, I mean I got to sing in a Wreatha Franklin song. I got to say, I'm trying to think angel. It was a music Cares was honoring a reutha Franklin. So although I never got to meet her, I was kind of like I was next to her, you know, in the red carpet. So she had this white fur coat on this like it was kind of split low so you can see her, you know, a beautiful figure. And she played a few songs at the end of the night and that was amazing. But yeah, I remember singing I just played. It was Abe Laboreal Junior and La Boreal Senior and so yeah, he plays with mcartney and then I think his dad plays guitar, so that even just the band was ridiculous. And I think I had my guitar. I don't even know I did, but I just was playing the cruds really simply. But yeah, getting to do that and knowing she was there that that was really amazing.
And it worked. Do you feel like it worked? Yeah?
It worked. It worked, and I heard she liked it, you know, So that's all you can. I think a lot of people were really trying to like sang like out sing Aretha kind of thing, like in Aretha Franklin tribute. But I think everyone was just trying to shine. My way of shining was like trying not to do that. Don't try to do that thing, just trying you know, this is a good song I was sort of honoring as a songwriters.
Yeah that's great. Yeah cool.
Well, thanks so much, Thank you, Thank you.
Thanks Bim Bailey Ray for meeting up in La to chat about her book Reflections Refractions at the Stony Allen Arts Bank with us. You can hear a playlist of our favorite songs from Krim Daily Ray at broken Record podcast dot com. Subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash broken Record Podcast, where you can find all of our new episodes. You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is produced and edited by Leah Rose, with marketing help from Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer is Ben Tollinday. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content and ad free listening for four ninety nine a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple podcast subscriptions, and if you like this show, please remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast app. Our theme music's by Anny Beats. I'm justin Richmond.