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Evie Sands - Get Out of Your Own Way |
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Evie
Sands started her music career (writer puts hand over mouth and
mumbles, as it is never polite to discuss a woman’s age) that many
years ago, but you would never know it from her new album, her vocals
are crisp, the music more imaginative than many of today’s artists, and
that is not a slam on today’s musicians and songwriters, but rather a
nod to Sands. If you were not aware of all that Evie Sands has already
accomplished during her career, you might think she was just starting
out, because of her unbridled enthusiasm.
We wondered how she has managed
to stay on top of her game and with such a contagious, positive and fun
attitude.
“I trust in the music and then I let it go. I think it is probably a
combination of things. It is my ongoing and will be forever, my insane
passion for music, about making it, listening to it and breaking it
down. I enjoy it, but I like to figure out what is that stuff sonically,
what is going on and it is the enjoyment part of it. It is just ongoing.
It is just like I was born, and I started listening. I just get excited.
Then there is the striving to continually get better and all the skills
that are involved, whether it is continuing to be a better singer, a
better songwriter, better composer, a better musician, a better producer
and engineer. It drives who I am.
Sometimes I have something I really want to say. It might turn out to be
more R&B or Rock with elements of something else. It could be rootsy,
Jazz and whatever happens, I just go with it. When it feels right, and
it feels good… (she changes direction) …the first person I have
to please is myself. Once it meets the bar where I go yeah, yeah that’s
cool then I will bounce it off a couple of people whose ears I trust,
and I will just see how they respond.
I don’t know that there is any formula and I guess there is a bit of
luck in there somehow. I have never been a smoker and I am not into
drinking too much. I just never really developed the taste for real
alcohol stuff. In my case that could be a factor. I (might have) good
genes. I feel like I am five years old or eighteen if I have to go out
into the adult world. I guess you put all of that stuff in a slow cooker
and there you have it,” she says.
Get Out of Your Own Way
is the new full-length album from Evie Sands, her first released
recording since her EP, Shine For Me four years ago (2017) and first
full album in twenty years, when she last released Women In Prison.
With the first two tracks like “The Truth is in Disguise,” and
“Lovin’ You Enough,” you sit there and go why has this taken so long. On
“Lovin’ You Enough,” Evie Sands’ phrasing is impeccable, as the woman in
the story says goodbye to someone she once loved.
Her band is excellent, and her
vocals are still good.
About “Lovin’ You Enough,” she says, “It is kind of a bold or brave
thing when there is a relationship that at one time was really good and
then at least one person, which is the person singing realizes it is not
what it was and maybe it is on its last legs. It is not something that
they are looking to breakup, because they are no longer in love, but it
is recognizing that something that was once good, is now not so good. It
is on the line and they are not sure which way it is going to go, but
the brave part is loving the other person enough and (recognizing) what
they once had they no longer have, and it is time to say goodbye. Then
you walk away from it rather than living a lie and remembering the old
glory of what was there in the beginning. It is like the lyric says, “I
know I will be lonely / It’s not that I am looking to do this,” but
it is almost like asking their partner in the relationship to give them
a sign and let them know. If it is teetering right on the edge, there is
always the possibility it could lean back the other way and maybe pick
up steam again. It seems more like it isn’t. The song is about the
person preparing to walk away. It is not easy to do that.
It is one thing to be in a relationship with somebody who absolutely
wants to get out and if there was anything once there it is difficult,
because they know the other person wants the relationship to be ongoing
and it is going to hurt them. That is still difficult, if the other
person wasn’t horrible. This song is about having enough courage to
recognize what is going on and then moving on from it. Staying in a
thing that was once really great, isn’t good for either person.”
“Don’t Hold Back,” is a mid-tempo song with the missive “Don’t hold
back / Give it your all when you think you oughtta’ / Too many times
been stuck outside the door...” The song has a Country-Rock feel to
it, think along the lines of Poco or Eagles.
Depending on the song you are listening to the album has elements of
Rock, Country, R&B and Soul. Evie Sands presents a vast musical menu for
the listener to choose from.
“It is really who I am. I love music so much and I love so many
different kinds of music and expressions of music, including Classical
and Opera, which I was not exposed to as a little kid, but some years
ago I listened to some arias and things.
The first thing that got me going, was listening to the radio and
discovering the R & B stations and I think that shaped a lot of who I
am. I was exposed to a lot of music growing up, by my parents and my
brother. I heard everything. I guess when I write it, I write all kinds
of different things, musically speaking.
It is hard to pin down a basic foundation for me, but definitely R & B
and Soul music (are part of it) for sure. I loved Motown stuff and then
The Beatles hit, the English Rock scene and all of the psychedelic stuff
that started happening in the later sixties. I love all of that and then
it morphed into the seventies (music). I
also love all of the genre names that we could add.
My earliest years were in New York (where she was born), but then
we moved to Los Angeles, when I was fourteen or fifteen. It is where I
have been for most of my life,” says Evie Sands.
Get Out of Your Own Way,
was produced by Evie Sands and released on her own label R-Spot Records
and it was engineered by Steve Refling. Teresa Cowles plays electric
bass; Jason Berk is on guitar and Eric Vesper is the drummer. Evie Sands
plays keyboards, electric guitar and is the lead vocalist. Other artists
who appear on this album are background vocalists Isobel Campbell and
Willie Aron for the song “If You Give Up,” Kurt Medlin (percussionist),
Adam Marsland (electric piano) and Steve Refling provides background
vocals on some songs.
“I go in (to the studio) and the vision for the song is already there.
With this particular album it is new school and old school and I really
wanted to record all of the tracks with everybody live together. There
is a certain energy and excitement. I call it a school of fish, when one
moves then a thousand follow.
I have learned that by being really prepared it gives me the most
freedom to change something completely when I get into the studio. It is
because I know what I want to do, and I know what is going to happen.
When those moments of spontaneity happen, I go oh that is really cool.
Let’s do that. It is some improvisational thing that happens. I talk to Steve, so he knows what instruments to setup and that we are going to be recording. He may tweak some things about recording (maybe) the drums a certain way and he will talk to the drummer. They might change the snare. He will setup the mics the way he wants. I have worked with him for a long time and there is a great trust there and he has good ears. When we are in the middle of recording, instead of me having to stop and listen to each thing, I trust Steve to be efficient. He knows I am really open, because he is someone who has things to say, and he knows I am open to listen to it.
Someone told me years ago don’t be afraid to make a mistake. When you
are in the studio, feel free in that moment to try things. That’s
exciting. In the recording process if there is a part of somebody that
isn’t comfortable and isn’t free, I think it lessens potentially what
can happen when music is recorded.
I think when you have musicians in the (same) room, you play and you
listen to each other and it is live, it has a certain energy to it. It
is really exciting and fun. I really, really enjoyed doing this new
album and all of the tracks are like that. It is all of us playing
live,” she says.
The title track, “Get Out of Your Own Way,” came to Evie Sands, while
she was meditating and when she got home, she grabbed her guitar and
started to write the song. The song is 4:59 in length and it was not all
that long ago that radio stations refused to play songs that exceeded
three minutes, and if we went back far enough, they would not play songs
longer than two minutes or 2:30 in length.
“In the early, early days of Rock and Roll, in the fifties and the early
sixties, records were 1:58, or 2:00 or 2:15. At a certain point it was
like do not cross over the three-minute mark, because top forty or
popular radio will not play it.
Then it became a little more open and a little freer form and records
could be over three minutes, or it might be four minutes or so. There
were also some radio edits when intros or outros were edited. Now it is
like the pendulum has swung the other way and if you don’t grab somebody
in six to eight seconds, they are on to something else. It is like a
TikTok universe. There is so much available from so many sources and
vying for everybody’s attention that a lot of people have not developed
the ability to grasp something that is literally more than a soundbite.
Records now are generally getting shorter and sometimes there is not
even an intro. They start ahead of where the downbeat starts if it is
sung or if it is rap. They are cutting out this and cutting out that and
it is bang, bang, bang.
I saw this yesterday, just for giggles, the prediction is by 2030
everything will be down to two minutes or under for music. For me that
doesn’t thrill me, because I love music and I love inventive ways,
whether it is a great intro or what happens in a song and if they can
write another verse or they can tell the story with a bridge or a
breakdown or something. The idea that cut it or crop it that isn’t a
trend that I am too excited about.
“Get Out of Your Own Way,” is definitely not the six seconds in and out.
There are some edits I could do to make a single version out of “Get Out
of Your Own Way.” I had some stuff that was longer, but when I got to
mixing it, I decided it was too long. I changed a little bit of the
arrangement, so it wouldn’t be as long. It is nice to be artistically
free and to serve the song and serve what it feels like. The reality is
the trend is going the other way, sadly,” says Evie Sands.
We asked her to take a moment to talk about how she approaches arranging
a song, “I think part of it comes from the song itself. Sometimes if I
write a song and even if I don’t have all of the words yet, I can hear
it and it starts playing in my head like a record. I can just hear what
it sounds like. I still have some things to fill in like finalizing the
music or finishing the lyrics. That is the first template that dictates
where to start in terms of an arrangement.
I am just so blessed that I have an amazing band and we are best of
friends, so it is really fun. I will have a foundational thing to start
with, so what I am giving them makes sense and it has some cohesion to
it. Then I will tell them what I am hearing or what is going on. In some
cases, it is the lines, riffs or chord voicings. I will then let a
musician add their own life to it. Sometimes it is exactly what I heard
or the part that I wanted them to play, but then they will add something
of their own. It may be some nuance and how we interplay with each
other,” she explains.
Evie Sands ranks up there with the likes of other legendary storytellers
such as Woody Guthrie and Gordon Lightfoot.
“I am not the first person to say this, but sometimes as songwriter I am
a short story writer. The song isn’t about me, but it is something I
have observed, or it is somebody else. (There are) times it is about me,
something I have experienced, and it is very personal. I didn’t
intentionally do any of that, it is just how the songs got written,” she
says.
Evie Sands has come a long way from the young woman who in the
beginning, as a teenager kept her music career a secret from everybody,
but her best friend.
“I wanted to keep it a secret, for two reasons that are really tied
together. Kids can be really cruel and mean. They can make fun of
somebody else’s dream and trash it. They will pass it around like a
ball, ha, ha, ha. The thing is music was and still is plastered between
my eyes and stuck on my face ever since I was two (Editor’s note:
There is a visual for you!). It was always the lifeblood of what has
driven me. I did not want to say anything, because I wasn’t doing it to
say oh look at me or this is going to make me popular with the guys or
girls. For guys it was like you are on the sports team so that makes you
cool. It wasn’t that. Absolutely, I didn’t want anybody trashing or in
any way messing with my focus or my dream and my whole existence, so the
only one I talked about it was my best friend. My first record was on
the radio and I was sitting with different friends and my best friend
blurted it out. She said I can’t keep it a secret and she pointed to me
and said that is Evie. The song was “Take Me for a Little While.”
It was an incredible feeling. The first few times and I might be in a
car and a record would come on a radio, I thought that is so cool. It is
like everything stands still and the world just stops. This is amazing.
Friends of mine will sometimes find airchecks from well-known DJs at the
time when they would be announcing playing one of my records,” she
recalls.
The fifth song on the album Get Out of Your Own Way, is “My
Darkest Days,” with reflective verses that remember a time, when one
feels like packing it in and just giving up on life, but the chorus is
triumphant and celebrates in a grateful way that she found her way
through those dark times. During the more reflective verses the
musicians play for subtly and on the chorus, the music becomes louder
and stronger, becoming a musical metaphor for the mood.
Evie Sands, talks about the song, “It partly comes from my own
experience. It is also a mixture of some other people that I was close
with and I saw what happened and what was going on with them. It is a
mixture of it. It is basically being as down as one can be or at the end
of your rope. The person has looked for answers and none have come. They
have tried all kinds of different things. Even in that song there is the
bit about no matter how dark it was for someone they always kept a
little light on inside to keep any kind of sanity. Even though it went
down to almost nothing, in the song the person realizes they have come
out the other side of it. They are at a point, (and she quotes the
lyric), “By
the grace of God I know at last I’m here and looking back.”
“After Tonight,” puts Evie Sands in the same sentence has such revered
songwriters as Laura Nyro and Carole King. The layered vocals, the
orchestration and the incredible beauty of this song contrasted with
lyrics that spell the end of a relationship, draw the listener into the
story and perhaps reflecting upon their own personal experiences. Evie
Sands’ soulful vocals paint the picture of heartbreak.
“The song is about a breakup. It is a relationship that has fallen apart
and the person that is singing is the one who was left behind. They find
themselves at the end of an unwanted breakup. It is the despair over it
and the loneliness. It also ties into a little bit bigger picture. The
person feels that in a larger sense this is another thing that isn’t
going well. They are making a line in the sand and they just know after
tonight there is bound to be something good and there is bound to be
light. They are not going to look back even if it is hard and difficult.
They are going to be positive and turn everything around.
If I listen to music or I am watching a film or reading a book or
whatever, if it doesn’t do something for me, make me happy, make me sad,
make me cry, make me think, inspire me, make me feel good or make me
feel bad and if I don’t get anything out of it is a waste of time. It
just lays there flat like a one-dimensional thing,” she says, and this
song is an incredibly powerful, emotional experience for the listener.
In addition to Evie Sand’s producing her own albums, she has become a go
to producer for other artists, such as Holly Near (Speed of Light).
Her songs have been recorded by Gladys Knight (Love Gives You the
Power), Dusty Springfield (You Can Do It), Beth Orton, Beck, Jazmine
Sullivan and Missy Elliott.
You can listen to “Beautiful Lie,” from Evie Sands’ Get Out of Your
Own Way
here and “The Truth In Disguise,”
here. The entire album can be
listened to here.
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I
never look to chase the trends. I have learned that is a losing game. By
the time we see and hear things, it already took a while for those
things to be created and released, so by the time we say that must be
the kind of stuff people want to hear and by the time I could get it out
there it would be a day late and a dollar short. It would be old news.
Also, it wouldn’t be honest, because for me making music is all about
being connected to the heart. It is a combination of my heart and
honesty. There is also the little bit of the artistic muse that visits
us. Sometimes stuff comes and I don’t know where it comes from. It is
like a channel.