Amy Ray

Emory University

Musician

Didn’t It Feel Kinder started a year ago in Durham, N.C.-a place I find musical resonance in ever since I met up with The Butchies in 2000. For this project, I started with Melissa York, the drummer from the now defunct Butchies. Mel kept saying, “Amy, I really want you to work with Greg Griffith.” Greg Griffith is Mel’s musical co-conspirator since the punk days in NYC and he is sort of a renaissance man of all things musical. I was ready to find someone to challenge me. I knew Greg’s production work with The Butchies, but honestly was just going on Mel’s word. So we met up, we played through a few songs together-Mel drumming and Greg on Bass (keys and guitar too) and wearing the producer’s hat. Something must have clicked cause we set up another session, this time at Greg’s home studio in Greensboro. Greg immediately raised the bar for me. I could tell he wasn’t totally familiar with my prior recordings and this gave me a sort of uncomfortable freedom. I kept thinking, “Why do I want a producer, this is just what I am trying to get away from, I just want to do my own thing and fuck up and have fun?” But as Greg’s ideas came to fruition, it just felt inevitable.

In musical terms, I didn’t even really know what I wanted this record to be. I knew I wanted it to be a wide-open vista, the prairie at twilight, a mountain road at 3am, a heartbreaking news broadcast. I wanted to use every voice I had inside me, every voice I had come across and absorbed. I didn’t want to be limited by habit or insecurity or gender or place. Sometimes I sang a song right the first time, and some songs I sang over and over until I found the voice. I wrote tunes out of my range and kept them there because that was where they wanted to be. I let the songs control the experience. I couldn’t even tell you what tied them together until we were done with the final master. The common bond was something musical this time, some lesson in melody and rhythm.

Kaia Wilson always hears the meat of the song and then plays it in some punk ass way on her guitar. Melissa always wants to know what I am singing about, where the soul is. I understand the song better after she plays drums with it. These two had been with me since the first solo record and I knew I needed what they had to offer. Greg’s bass playing was as integral to this cd as his production. His confidence created a stability that offset even the most fragile song. There were songs on this record that didn’t find themselves until Tomi Martin put his guitar tracks down. I knew that he would play the perfect groove for “She’s Got to Be.” But, in some cases, like “Birds of a Feather,” I had no idea where the song was heading, until he played on it. I remember so vividly sitting in the control room listening to him just sort of jam to it and then all of a sudden notes just started playing out of him and it was the song as it was meant to be. We were all just stunned.

I had been obsessively listening to a new band called Arizona. They’re like a cross between Led Zeppelin and The Shins, and throw in some Judy Garland too. They ended up living in Asheville, (via Brooklyn and Atlanta) and working, sleeping, and recording at this funky studio called Echo Mountain- vintage gear in an old church in the South -a perfect recipe for me. I asked them to be the guest band on the record-do a couple tunes together as a collaborative effort. The first song we did together, “Out on the Farm”, was a cynical little number about the music business, which I knew they could bring to life. We worked at Echo and their engineer/producer, Danny Kadar, ran the session. I fell in love with the studio, the band, and Danny. The month before, Mel, Greg, Kaia, and I had done 4 days of recording down in Atlanta, but the studio was pretty cranky, so we decided to change our course and work between Greg’s home studio in Greensboro and Echo Mountain in Asheville with Danny in charge of engineering. When we needed extra instruments or voices, we found the guys in Arizona. It seemed there wasn’t a sound we needed that they couldn’t come up with. When it came time for harmonies, I wanted to go for it, really spend time on arrangements, and not shy away from them, just as a point of distinction from the Indigo Girls. So I put it all in Garage Band and just laid down what was going on in my head. Brandi Carlile came in and brought it all together. She morphed her voice into different styles and personalities to fit each song.

Amy Ray
4-13-08
(see myspace.com/amyray for full letter)