Bowlegs caught up with Sharon Van Etten, New Jersey girl turned Brooklynite, on the release of her excellent third album, Tramp. We wanted to ask her about the record and how it felt to be held in demand by such American luminaries as The National, Justin Vernon and even Jimmy Fallon. She opened up about that and much more, including her regular stage fright and just how much she loves her label.
Bowlegs: Hi Sharon, what are you up to?
SEV: Right now … I’ve just had rehearsal, and I’m getting ready to have a jog.
Bowlegs: It looked like you enjoyed your appearance on The Jimmy Fallon Show recently. How is playing on TV as a live experience?
SEV: It’s very weird. It’s not second nature to me to play television. I really like Jimmy Fallon, which is why I agreed to do it. But I’m very uncomfortable, usually, performing, so to do it for TV was really strange. But everyone at Jimmy Fallon was really amazing, so it was not a scary experience considering what it could have been like.
Bowlegs: Was it quite stop-start, recording for TV?
SEV: I had to do it twice because I got stage fright a little bit, and … everyone there was really great about it, because they’re really big on everyone being happy with their performance. Even the acts, the other guests on the show, when we all made mistakes they encouraged us, because it was all going to go out on television. So, I got stage fright as soon as I got up there, and I forgot like the whole first line of my song. And then I mouthed the ‘F’ word to somebody on my left, forgetting that I was on television! I was so nervous that by the end I had even hit my head on the microphone. It was absolutely the worst thing I could have done. Totally. But everyone was sweet about me doing it one more time, so … I got it on the second take. I’m not very rock ’n’ roll!
Bowlegs: And nobody will ever know…
SEV: Well, until you tell everyone!
Bowlegs: That was promo work for your new album, Tramp – as a woman, is that a provocative title?
SEV: Well, yes and no. That word has so many meanings. I mean, obviously I’m making it because I write a lot about love. And I’m also poking fun a little bit at, you know, when a man is called a tramp it’s seen as more endearing. With a woman it’s more negative. But the original meaning of ‘tramp’ means to be homeless, and it’s not gender-specific at all, it’s just someone who’s a traveller. And during the making of the record, I was couch-surfing a lot of the time, or touring, so it made sense to call it that. But I like double meanings of words because they make people think more.
Bowlegs: Of course, in Britain a tramp can still mean a wandering, meandering walk, with no fixed itinerary, in a similar fashion to the several layers of the songs…
SEV: Yeah, I see that, sort of. I’m still figuring out what my patterns are, but I naturally write around melody, and develop that. Everything grows around that. It’s kind of hard to say that’s what I’m trying for, because that’s just what I’m doing naturally right now. The melody is the best bit, and I’m still working on everything else.
Bowlegs: And how do you fit words into that?
SEV: I usually write because I’m going through a hard time. Depending on what it is I’m feeling I’ll write stream-of-consciousness for myself, without it being for anything at first. And then when I’m working through something I’ll basically hit record, and I’ll play and play and play for about 10, 20 minutes sometimes. And I’ll play it back to myself when I’m done. I’ll be trying to see what it is that I’m trying to say to myself. And then in hindsight, if I think there’s a message in there or a moment in there I feel people can get something from, then I write a song around something that already exists, that is positive or meaningful. If that makes sense.
Bowlegs: So do the songs help with nerves on stage?
SEV: Well, when I get stage-fright, it’s more about the vulnerability of really wanting to connect with someone and telling them a pretty deep part of yourself and hoping that they can connect with it. And, of course, the underlying fear is hoping that everybody just likes it. And I’m really proud of my songs – that is not what makes me nervous. It’s really the wanting to connect with an audience.
Bowlegs: An audience as a whole, or a particular person?
SEV: My songs used to be about one particular person, but for me the important thing about this record is that it’s not just about this person, but about me reflecting on part of that, and trying not to relive my mistakes because of one bad experience. Some of the songs are about friends, relationships and all that, but it’s all very relative. Whether it’s about me or about somebody else, it’s really about how I take my past experiences and grow.
Bowlegs: Tell us how you ended up working with The National’s Aaron Desner as producer on this record.
SEV: I first met him because … I reached out to him because he covered a song of mine with Justin Vernon, at a festival, and my friends played it to me while I was on tour. I was just about to record another record at the time [Epic] and I thought, ‘Oh my God, maybe they’ll want to play on this record with me’. So I wrote them to find out what they were up to, and they were actually incredibly busy, with their records that were already out there! But Aaron wrote me back and said, ‘When you’re ready to start demoing new songs, get in touch”. He has a studio in his garage, and he said he would be happy to help me. So, some time passed, and I finished some demos and sent them to him, and we just kept in touch. We ended up recording some more songs after he realised I had demos.
Bowlegs: It’s like musical pen-pals!
SEV: Hah! That’s exactly what it was like, totally! And after that we met up a few times and discussed our ideas and how we liked to work, and it ended up with us working together much closer than I thought we could.
Bowlegs: So did the nature of the partnership help the process?
SEV: It ended up being part of it. It was a little nerve-wracking because we were both touring a lot, and we didn’t have as much time as we would have liked, but at the same time it was fun to get this done in between tours. One of the things that made me nervous was that the album might seem a little scattered, because we were both running around so much. But I feel like it ended up being a strength of the record. The different time frames helped each song sound a little bit different from the others, even though the overall production is the same.
Bowlegs: It seems to sound deeper, more sonically heavy.
SEV: Yeah, we tried to reference 70s records from people like John Cale and Patti Smith, where a lot of the songs are based on drones. I sang in a deeper register for half the album, more than I’m used to. So with all that in mind, we definitely wanted to see a ‘heavier’ record.
Bowlegs: The droning aspect of Cale and Smith production seems to have appealed in particular.
SEV: The drone thing started when I was writing a lot of melodies with my harmonium. When you play the harmonium it’s really one constant sound, almost like chanting. You sing over one note. It’s the closest to sounding like a human voice of any instrument that I’ve ever played. It was almost like harmonising with myself, so I wrote plenty of the melodies that way. With Patti, I feel that she had a lot more of the drone thing, and a lot more in the chanting style of singing than John Cale. So, we were aware of those songs, but we didn’t try to do the things that they would do. We wanted that style in the back of our minds.
Bowlegs: And other people wanted it for you too: you seem to be in love with your label, Jagjaguwar.
SEV: I think they really allow the artists to do whatever they want to do. They never drop artists, an artist has never left. They give a lot of freedom, and it’s really like a family. Everybody’s friends on the label, and they really know how to nurture the people that they work with, whether it’s someone in a band, or someone in the warehouse, or the management side. They’re just really, really good people who are fans of music. And it’s not genre specific. They put out so much interesting music, and everyone that I’ve met through them has been a beautiful person.
-Interview by James Milne-
