[MUSIC - Luscious Jackson: Citysong]

Kousha Navidar: This is All Of It. I'm Kousha Navidar, filling in for Alison Stewart. Our week-long celebration of the Public Song Project continues now. Five submitters came out on top of our judges rankings, and every day this week, you've been hearing from each of them, and we've been airing their songs. This weekend, you'll get to see them all live on the stage at Lincoln Center. It's part of The People's Concert, our free live showcase. That's at 6:00 PM on July 20th. Go to wnyc.org/publicsongproject for more info about that.

Up now, we're going to hear from the next one of our winners, Mal Petty. Mal is a singer-songwriter based in western Massachusetts, originally from the Hudson Valley. They're also a returning participant to the Public Song Project. Mal, welcome to All Of It, and congrats.

Mal Petty: Thank you so much. It's so exciting to be here.

Kousha Navidar: It's so exciting to have you and to be able to talk about your music. How long have you been writing and recording music?

Kousha Navidar: I have been writing since probably eight years old. Those tracks are lost to time, and I'm sure that they were recorded. My dad is a composer. It's been a while. That's about two decades and have been sort of recording on and off, playing on and off for many years, but really excited to participate in this particular project.

Kousha Navidar: How would you describe the kind of music you make or the kind of music that you're drawn to?

Mal Petty: I think singer-songwriter is a pretty broad category, but the influences of my music are largely folk-based. I grew up listening to a lot of music that my mom loved. I listened to a lot of James Taylor, Neil Young, and Cat Stevens, Yusuf Islam, these types of influences. I think having started writing so young, I was influenced by the pop scene of the early 2000s and kind of all became an amalgam.

Kousha Navidar: Influenced by your family, of course. Your dad plays piano on your submission for the project. How do you think about music as a way of connecting people?

Mal Petty: I think certainly for me, growing up, music was very much a part of a very natural, obvious part of my life. I didn't necessarily think of it as even a creative medium or as something that was synthesizing or connecting people. It was just so matter-of-fact and present. Now, understanding how many different types of projects like this one can crop up and center connection. It's much more present top of mind in terms of how music can really speak to people and bring them together, but it's maybe not something that I've thought too deeply about growing up. It just was so there.

Kousha Navidar: Yes. Top of my mind right now is your submission, I want to get to it. Before we get to your song, are you working on any new music projects at the moment? You want to shout out?

Mal Petty: I am. I went down to the Hudson Valley a few weeks ago and laid down almost a whole live album, essentially, of all original music that I'm hoping to release sometime this fall. With dear old dad, who also helped me with this, I just called him up and I said, "I can't wait any longer. I'm going to come down and record this music." He was like, "That's fine. Don't make a big deal out of it. Just come on down." That'll be out hopefully sometime this year.

Kousha Navidar: Awesome. Wonderful. I look forward to it. You were a part of the project last last year. You sent in a cover last year of Wayfaring Stranger, which is a traditional song. Let's quickly hear a clip of it.

[MUSIC - Mal Petty: Wayfaring Stranger]

Kousha Navidar: This year, you adapted a poem for your recording. It comes from 1920, and it's by the poet, Margery Swett. How did you find this poem?

Mal Petty: I knew this year that I wanted to do an adaptation of a poem, submitting a traditional. Last year, I was like, "Well, this is a well-known." It's almost like I wanted more of a creative challenge. I had started sifting through media that had come into the public domain that year and started working through sources, like to the lighthouse, and eventually, decided I was going to use a poem, adapting a book is harder. I was actually looking for Carl Sandburg poetry. I landed in Volume 15 of poetry magazine, which had a ton of Sandburg in it.

I was just clicking through. It was an online resource, so the digital format, I didn't even realize when I had gotten to Margery Swett's poem. I think I read through it twice and even maybe played a draft melody over it before I realized it wasn't a Carl Sandburg poem. Either way, I said, "This works well."

Kousha Navidar: Still like it. Yes, just serendipity. That's interesting because a lot of the songs we get for this project are covers, but poetry adaptations are a different thing. You have to write your own melody. How did you approach that?

Mal Petty: Again, spending so much time trying to make a paragraph from a book work with different melodies. By the time I got to Swett's poem, the rhyme structure, the cadence of it worked really nicely with my style. I think it was almost kind of a very simultaneous process in terms of seeing this poem, registering this poem, and then playing over it. It wasn't necessarily as conscious of melodic process as I was trying to do with the other media that were always felt a little too abstruse and not as convincing by the time. When I got to Swett's poem, it was totally different.

Kousha Navidar: You said that the melody kind of started coming to you when you first read it, maybe second time you read it. How close was that first melody to the final version that we were about to hear?

Mal Petty: I would say the verse, what you would call the verse of this song, that melody was pretty instantaneous. What you'll hear, I know all your listeners probably have this poem in front of them right now. You'll hear this kind of tonal shift into the chorus. The chorus melody took a little bit of extra time because I really wanted it to reflect that shift in poem and tone. Sorry. Then also just have the guitar part also reflect that altogether. I would say it was still a fast process, but I gave a little bit more of intentional thought and a little bit more time to how that chorus was going to go.

Kousha Navidar: Wonderful. We're going to see you at Lincoln Center on Saturday. About to hear your song, before we play it, anything else you want to say about the song, about this project?

Mal Petty: I just also want to mention that the subject matter of this poem spoke to me as well. Most of my daytime work is as an advocate for survivors of domestic violence with a nonprofit agency in western Massachusetts named [unintelligible 00:07:48]. This poem really resonates in the sense that it centers self-determination and hope. That is the kind of work that I do daily. It's something that was just a really wonderful thing to find in addition to a poem that worked well as a song.

Kousha Navidar: Let's hear that song. Mal, congratulations. Thank you so much for submitting to the Public Song Project, and we'll see you on Saturday at the Lincoln Center.

Mal Petty: Awesome. Thank you.

Kousha Navidar: Thank you. This is Mal petty with their musical adaptation of the poem Winter Wife by Margery Swett. Here it is.

[MUSIC - Mal Petty: Winter Wife]

The white hills smoke with snow

And it is well for you

Who make so poor a lover,

Who give my hands such little tasks to do

For, were the doorstep bare,

And the path not drifter over,

My heart would need no cover

I should go

Go and never care,

Fling out my arms and run

Glad in the wakening sun,

Wild in the singing air,

Race with my blowing hair

But the weight of the winter is on the door,

And the snow has driven me near to you

It might be well if you'd love me more

And tell me I am dear to you,

Although it is early to understand

For how is there any knowing

The road I will be going

When a free wind is blowing

Over the opened land

Kousha Navidar: That was Mal Petty with their musical adaptation of the poem Winter Wife by Margery Swett. After the break, we'll hear more about the Public Song Project from WNYC's John Schaefer, who was a judge. He'll talk about his approach to listening to these public domain adaptations, and we're going to hear some excerpts from a few of his favorite submissions. Stick around. This is All Of It. I'm Kousha Navidar, filling in for Alison Stewart. Before the break, we heard from Mal Petty and the song, Winter Wife, which is an adaptation of a poem by Margery Swett from 1920.

My next guest is a name all you WNYC listeners will recognize, our very own John Schaefer, host of New Sounds and Soundcheck. John was one of our judges again this year for the Public Song Project, and we're lucky to have him join us now to share some of his personal favorite submissions, the ones that didn't quite make the top five, but we want to shout out anyway. John, welcome to the show.

John Schaefer: Thanks, Kousha.

Kousha Navidar: Thanks for being a part of the Public Song Project again this year. What were some of your takeaways from the songs that you listen to this year?

John Schaefer: I was really looking for people who were doing something new with these old songs, but there were also some entries where people were just doing very kind of effective 1920s versions of these 1920s songs. I found, to my surprise that, I was enjoying songs I didn't actually think I liked because people were playing them so well, or in some cases, so unexpectedly.

Kousha Navidar: Wow, and I think we're going to hear some of those coming up. Before we do, I got to ask you, you're WNYC's main music guy. You've been behind so many incredible music projects for this station. When you think about the Public Song Project, what's something that you appreciate about it, and what made you want to participate in it?

John Schaefer: Well, I just love the idea that something that's 100 years old is not seen as a museum relic. It's not just an artifact of history, that these songs live on, and that if people look at the sheet music or go to an old recording, they may hear something that sparks their own imagination. I love that idea.

Kousha Navidar: It's kind of that continued conversation. Music is a constant conversation.

John Schaefer: Right. Artwork is never truly finished. There's always something new to see in it or to hear in it or to bring to it.

[00:13:59] Kousha Navidar: That's beautiful. Okay, so let's get into some of the songs. First up is Mack the Knife, which entered the public domain this year. This version we're going to hear comes to us from Nolan Thornton. You described this song as "genuinely original". You have to keep reminding yourself of what the song is as the melody is twisted beyond recognition. How did Nolan twist the song?

[00:14:04] John Schaefer: In his own description, it's kind of a bossa-punk thing, if I'm remembering correctly, is the way he described it. It was just like, "All right, dude, if you're going to describe Mack the Knife that way, you better live up to it." I think he did.

Kousha Navidar: I love that. Bossa-punk. Let's hear it.

[MUSIC - Nolan Thornton: Mack the Knife]

Kousha Navidar: All right. That was Mack the Knife. That is the calliope you never want to put your kids on.

[laughter]

Kousha Navidar: I love the synth vibrato that you hear there. It just kind of gives it that energy.

John Schaefer: Yes.

Kousha Navidar: That was by Nolan Thornton as well. Let's go to Shortnin' Bread. It's a song originally from the 1890s, submitted to us by a duo who go by Blackbird. Tell us a little bit what stood out.

John Schaefer: Before, when I said I found myself listening to songs that I thought I didn't like. Really, this is the song I was thinking of.

Kousha Navidar: Oh, wow.

John Schaefer: Shortnin' Bread, I mean, come on. It's like a playground rhyme or something. Yet, they have turned it into something really quite different. I'm not even sure how to describe it other than to say, "Listen."

Kousha Navidar: Let's listen. Here it is.

[MUSIC - Blackbird: Shortnin' Bread]

One for the money

Two for the show

Three to get ready

Now four to go

Mama's little baby loves shortnin', shortnin',

Mama's little baby loves shortnin' bread,

Mama's little baby loves shortnin', shortnin',

Mama's little baby loves shortnin' bread

Three little children, lyin' in bed

Two were sick and the other 'most dead

Sent for the doctor and the doctor said,

"Give those children some shortnin' bread."

Mama's little baby loves shortnin', shortnin',

Mama's little baby loves shortnin' bread

Kousha Navidar: That was Shortnin' Bread by the duo who go by Blackbird.

John Schaefer: Shortnin'. Don't hit that G because it's shortnin'.

Kousha Navidar: [laughs] Thank you so much for correcting me on that. Shortnin' Bread by Blackbird.

John Schaefer: Doesn't that sound like if the Grateful Dead had done shortening bread? That's what it made me think.

Kousha Navidar: The thing that makes evoke, that's giving Grateful Dead is that I could listen to that for a very long time. Probably doing some other kind of activity in the background. I feel like it would be perfect for that. Let's go on to another song that's actually been done in two different ways. We're going to look at Sometimes I'm Happy. That song is from a jazz singer named Svetlana Shmulyian, who's another returning submitter. This year, she recorded Sometimes I'm Happy, which is a 1927 song. What do Svetlana and her band do well on this recording?

John Schaefer: What they do well is to do this song as if it were still 1927. I mean, this really is in the style of the day. She does a kind of weekly gig with her band, so they're really quite adept at this. I just found it a very convincing recreation of what this song. Might have sounded like almost 100 years ago.

Kousha Navidar: Wonderful. Let's listen.

[MUSIC - Svetlana Shmulyian: Sometimes I'm Happy]

Sometimes I'm happy, sometimes I'm blue

My disposition depends on you

I never mind the rain from the sky

If I can find the sunlight in your eyes

Kousha Navidar: Quick shout out to Svetlana and her band. If you like their sound, you can find them at The Back Room Speakeasy, where they've performed every Monday night. John was mentioning this since May 12, 2012, with a quick break during COVID. Next up, we have another version of Sometimes I'm Happy.

John Schaefer: Same song, yes.

Kousha Navidar: This one's from Addie Stan, and it uses just a ukulele. It's way more DIY. What made it work for you?

John Schaefer: Because it seems so simple at first, but there's a kind of interesting, kind of jazzy twist on the melody that makes it very different from the kind of straightforward approach that we just heard.

Kousha Navidar: Let's listen.

[MUSIC - Addie Stan: Sometimes I'm Happy]

Sometimes I love you, sometimes I hate you

But when I hate you, it's 'cause I love you

That's how I am

So what can I do?

I'm happy when I'm with you

Kousha Navidar: You know what I love about listening to those songs, back to back? Either way, that Sometimes I'm Happy, that sense of longing, it still comes through.

John Schaefer: Yes. It's now overlaid with a kind of veneer of nostalgia as well because both singers are kind of looking back, even though one of them has taken a slightly different approach.

Kousha Navidar: Do you think that nostalgia comes from the ukulele or the voice or what?

John Schaefer: Well, there is something about that combination of this simple string instrument and a kind of simple, unadorned vocal thing that just sounds like music made at home, the way music was made for most of human history before recordings came along. I think we have a kind of baked in nostalgia for that simple, homespun sound.

Kousha Navidar: Looking at the clock, I want to get to a couple more. Next up is another returning submitter, Nathaniel Bellows, who adapted the 1926 poem, Pattern by Dorothy Parker. What makes a good musical adaptation of a poem for you as a listener, do you think?

John Schaefer: First of all, service to the text. Nathaniel Bellows, in addition to being a musician, is also a poet himself and has had a lot of his own poetry set to music. He knows how to treat a poem right. This starts off as a kind of guy with guitar thing and then soon turns into something a bit more intricate and complex. I found it a really interesting arrangement.

Kousha Navidar: Let's listen to it.

[MUSIC - Nathaniel Bellows: Pattern]

Over young are you to guide me,

And your blood is slow and sleeping

If you must, then sit beside me

Kousha Navidar: John, there are so many more songs that we could get to, but I'm looking at the clock and we're going to run out of time, so we're going to have to pause it there. All of these songs and more, the ones we didn't get to, will be available on our website. We are at wnyc.org/publicsongproject. For now, let's thank you, John Schaefer, WNYC's Soundcheck and New Sounds' host and a judge for the Public Song Project. John, really appreciate your participation.

John Schaefer: Fun to be here. Thanks.

Kousha Navidar: Tomorrow, we'll debut our last winner of the 2024 Public Song Project. Don't forget, Saturday is our concert at Lincoln Center. You'll get to hear all the winners and more musicians performing live at the free concert. 6:00 PM at the Underground at Jaffe Drive. Doors open, 5:30. First come, first serve. Remember, you can go to our website to hear all of the songs this week that we are showing. It's wnyc.org/publicsongproject. That's it for today. We'll see you here tomorrow.

 

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