Interview: Yola Carter

Fresh from a fabulous gig at the Wardrobe Yola Carter releases her debut EP as a solo artist (sampler here). It’s the precursor to an album and has had a long and well-travelled gestation. Carter tells us all about the recording and the songs, as well as exploring her inspirations, writing process and plans for world domination.

Where and when did you record the EP?

The main session was at Eastcote studios in London in 2015. I went there and just fell in love with the place with all its vintage equipment and tracked four songs there. I thought that’d be enough for the EP, but something was missing. Nearly a year later I demoed up some tracks for the album that’ll follow this EP and two songs I recorded without drums leapt out at me. One (Heed My Words) I started recording in Nashville spring 2016 when I was out there on a long trip across the States and I brought it home and finished it in Bristol at HCH Studio and then recorded Dead And Gone. I was toying with a few ideas before that for what to add, from a full band version of Orphan Country to an acoustic and vocal only track. But then I just listened and the songs chose themselves.

Who played on the sessions?

As the EP was recorded over a longer period of time, I had a few set ups during that time. What You do, Home, Fly Away as well as the aforementioned Orphan Country were all recorded at Eastcote studios with Nuala Honan on rhythm & backing vocals; Beth Porter on Cello; Aaron Catlow on fiddle and Kit Hawes on lead & backing vocals. All singer / songwriters in their own rights, good friends and busy and talented people. I gotta say I had no idea what it was going to turn into, I barely knew what I was doing production wise, but this was supposed to be my learning curve come what may. I think I needed space to be clueless and in that void be forced to find my inner producer. Then fast forward to 2016 and over to Nashville Heed My Words was recorded with Shelby Means on Double Bass and backing vocals and Joel Timmons on Guitars and backing vocals otherwise known as the duo Sally & George. I just went over to the studio and played the songs on my guitar and they picked the songs up that day. It was a really relaxed time and slow moving in 30 degree heat. When you hear that whammy bar bend on the track that’s how we were feeling, it was hot as hell. Then I got back home and was doing demos with Harry at HCH: we did a lot of demos and we work so well together I had to include some of what we did on the record. He made the Nashville session sit with the rest of the demos we’d done and we did Dead and Gone where he played bass, rhythm guitar, and did backing vocals and Kit played lead guitar.

How’s progress going with the LP?

It’s complete madness to be honest. The EP was an EP not an album for a reason. It was my first year of performing live, so I wanted to get something out quickly to say “I’m here” but also to say “Before you get your assumptions going as to who I am, THIS is who I am”. It’s important enough to do this as a woman in music but it’s doubly more important if you’re a black person doing Country-Soul and Americana in this climate. I wanted to set my stall out and prove that songs that I wrote and produced could turn into a proper thing. Of course I did not expect to get into American Songwriter Magazine’s top 50 songs or NPR’s top 100 or the countless other accolades, or to be in any chart or publication that it contested internationally. The fact that I have is still something that’s hasn’t quite sunk in.

Can we look forward to a fabulous Bristol launch party?

I’ll be on the road when the record hits the stores physically so it’s gonna be like I eloped with the EP, so maybe we’ll do a wedding reception when we get back off tour. There are a few plans in the offing for a bigger show for the home crowd like that.

What comes first for you, the lyrics and the idea for subject matter or the melody and tune?

There’s a song we play live called Free to Roam and I started singing the bass line and drum pattern to myself. I couldn’t play the bass line but I knew exactly how it would go. Then the melody and some words started appearing in a murmur that turned into “Silently break the bow, fall into the deepest sleep” all of a sudden I knew I was writing about the passing of my mother that month. I don’t always know what’s coming. Sometimes I’m sat on the couch practicing something, not a song. Maybe just working on my basic tone or a picking pattern I’d like to use one day, and I stumble upon some chord or progression that makes me see that chord in a different light, then that murmur turns up again through which a meaning is trying to assert itself. Sometimes I’ve been to a show or I’ve talked to someone and I have a feeling I need to vent and I just express how I feel about the situation in a rhyming verse or two. I’ve got to be quite pissed off to do this though. I imagine Bob Dylan wrote Like a Rolling Stone like that. Sometimes I’m singing a murmur while washing up and there’s no words or chords and I have to retrospectively figure out what goes round it. It changes all the time.

Who would you say were your biggest influences in terms of lyrics?

Most of the time I don’t think my influences get as much of a look in with my lyrics as they do with melody. Melodically I definitely go through some Mavis Staples and Gillian Welch times. Every time I meet someone who writes lyrics a lot, I ask “what happened?” I mean I write cos life was without unconditional love and understanding for a very long time, or because I don’t know who to confront to fix a situation that’s bigger than myself. I can’t channel someone else when I feel like this, I just have to say what I need to say. Hopefully it comes out sounding good.

And who do you look to for musical inspiration, who writes the killer tunes you admire the most?

Apart from The Staple Singers and Gillian that I mentioned before, Emmylou Harris, Neil Young and The Byrds play a big part in how I like songs to sound and to the instrumentation. I also love Little Feat and The Band for their feel and groove.

Difficult question but what’s your favourite in amongst your crop of current tunes?

I’m one of those people that is always looking forward as a writer, so often I’m most excited by where I’m going more than where I’ve been but lyrically I’d say Orphan Country, I’d say Dead And Gone for the recording of the track and live Free to Roam cause it soothes me every time I sing it and reconciles a difficult relationship in my life to something brutally truthful yet loving.

Do you have a song kicking around that you KNOW will be a great tune but you can’t quite get right?

Yeah, but we’ve played it right before in one of its incarnations. In those situations I just wait ‘til it comes to me. It always sorts itself out one way or another.

What song really comes to life when performed on stage?

What You Do: when I play the song live I play it with a full band, so it’s a real road trip chugging kinda tune live.

The world’s been in turmoil more than ever this year, got a yearning to write some old fashioned protest songs?

I have, I’ve just gotta get these albums out so you can hear them. I write as a means of protest but also to talk about issues that are ignored. Now it seems that politics and ignoring any demographic that isn’t white and male go hand in hand so, “Yaaay for me” right?!

What’s the biggest misconception about your songs?

That I co-write most of my songs. I don’t. I write the majority on guitar at home on my lonesome. Of the songs from the set on this tour I’ve cowritten one of them. I’ve just recently this autumn started co-writing with a couple of the players I tour with most regularly, but it’s taken this long to get round to it, they’re great musicians so they’re busy. I love both processes, but it’s so much quicker writing alone so a lot of songs come out that way.

What’s the plan for 2017, how are you going to achieve world domination?

This is a weird question because 2017 was never supposed to be a world domination year. 2016 was not supposed to be a meteoric rise year, so all I’m gonna do is play shows and find a home for the album I’ve written and the one I’m currently writing. Once there’s no barriers between how quickly I can get music out and tour it the rest should look after itself. It kinda is, after all none of this attention I’ve been getting was expected so early. I just want to be able to write and create, the world will do what it will.

All pix John Morgan