Alison: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart, live from the WNYC Studios in SoHo. Thank you for sharing part of your day with us. On today's show, we're going to talk about musician Sly Stone, who just released a memoir. Variety calls it "alternately riveting and horrifying" especially those predatory music business practices back in the day. His daughter and co-writer will join me. We're also going to talk about two groups doing good in the city. One is for babies and one is for girls in STEM. We'll speak with writer Viet Thanh Nguyen about his new memoir. That's our plan. Let's get this started with the first track off new album.

MUSIC - Rhiannon Giddens: Too Little, Too Late, Too Bad

I see you on your knees as I go walking by

Begging, "Darling, baby, please, don't leave me high and dry"

Well, I tell you right now, my dear old used-to-be

That ship, it ain't just sailed, it's way on out to sea

Getting smaller every minute

It's too little, too late, too bad

I was the last chance at love you've ever had

Too many lies, too many alibis

Too little, too late, too bad

Alison: For the first time in her career, Rhiannon Giddens has made an album entirely of originals. You are the One features 12 songs written and recorded by Giddens, still drawing from her folk roots, but with a little more country, some rock, and pop mixed in there too. It's on the heels of her winning a Pulitzer Prize for her opera, Omar, about a real-life West African Muslim scholar sold into slavery in Charleston, South Carolina in the early 1800. That project, like some of her other work, shares a little-known history or revives a tradition.

On her new album, she mixes the new with the old new songs influenced by some greats, Nina Simone, Bonnie Raitt, Dolly Parton. Rhiannon Giddens is part of the WNYC family as the host of Aria Code from our sister station, WQXR. It's currently in its fourth season. We're so happy to welcome Rhiannon into the studio. Nice to see you again.

Rhiannon: Nice to see you. Nice to be here.

Alison: You've described yourself a number of times as a mission-based artist. What does that mean to you?

Rhiannon: It means that I try to decenter myself in the work that I do, and try to shine a light on stories that need to be told, and try to use my platform to clarify pieces of American history that I think are being twisted in ways that are very harmful and are very present, even though they start 400, 500 years ago. All of those things within an industry that's very much based on moneymaking and all of that. It's difficult at times, but I'm just doing the best I can.

Alison: Sometimes those misinterpretations are purposeful?

Rhiannon: Yes, absolutely.

Alison: So many people out there correcting the record, however, whether that's through art or through journalism, it's really important.

Rhiannon: Yes, it is. For me, it started with the banjo, learning that the banjo was an African-derived instrument that was invented by Black people in the Caribbean. My first realization, "Oh, my gosh, that's completely different to what I know." Then it's like, "Why don't I know that, and in whose best interest is it that I don't know that?" That's driven me for the last 15 years.

Alison: Do these missions tend to find you or do you go in search of them?

Rhiannon: A little bit of everything. I follow where curiosity leads me. I read a lot and I'll hit something in a book and then get another book and then follow the trail. Then sometimes, I'm offered an opportunity. Like Omar was an opportunity offered to me. I didn't even know his story. The folks at Spoleto said, "Do you know Omar, a Vincentian?" I was like, "What?" I'm from North Carolina and all of his American life was in North Carolina. I was like, "What?" or almost all of it. I was like, "How do I not know this?" That just gets me all hyped up and I'm like, "Yes, I'll do it." "Write an opera." "Yes." Then I'm like, "How do I do this?"

Alison: "Now, I have to write an opera." When you first began thinking about this project, was it always going to be an album original songs, or did some of these songs exist and you just have been holding them for the right time?

Rhiannon: Yes, all of them I've been holding for the right time because, as you mentioned, I do feel that mission. A lot of my work is really in that realm. I won't say it's a burden. It's something I gladly carry, but it's a weight. I have songs based on slave narratives. I'm describing really complex things in shows in five-minute bites, talking about minstrelsy and all this kind of stuff. I just realized I was getting burned out a little bit. It felt like it was just time to have a full band record and it was time to explore other sides of my artistry so I had these songs that had been waiting.

They didn't fit on the other mission-based records. They're just waiting. I said, "It's time. Let's expand the sound. Let's partner with a producer who can bring me into worlds that I have listened to and loved, but have not really made art in yet."

Alison: When you're writing your own songs, are you drawn to different material and different themes than the work of your mission-based work, which as you described, is a little bit heavy, in the best way?

Rhiannon: Totally.

Alison: When you were describing what you do, it made me think of being like a librarian. Like somebody who has a degree in library sciences who knows how to go find things and make connections and put them together. That's tiring work.

Rhiannon: It is tiring work. I do consider myself a cultural archeologist or something. You know what I mean? It's a lot of digging and I love it, but yes, it does carry a lot of responsibility.

Alison: What do you get to write about when you don't have that hat on, when you have your, "I'm just going to write songs?" What are some themes that are attractive to you?

Rhiannon: Well, I'm so into strong women, obviously. The idea of, "You've been treated wrong," or, "This relationship didn't work out," or whatever, it needs to end with a woman either kiss off or, "I'm going to get my own strength together." There's quite a few like, "It didn't work out with a man's songs," but at the end of each one, it's like, "But I'm going to move on. I'm going to go to the next thing and I'm going to take my strength from what I've learned from this." That is important to me.

I never want the woman on the floor at the end of any of these songs. They need to be walking away going, "This might have not have been a great situation, but I'm going to get something better next time."

Alison: Get your Gloria Gaynor picture up there for inspiration.

Rhiannon: Exactly.

Alison: My guest is Rhiannon Giddens. We're talking about her new album, You are the One. Let's listen to a little bit of the title track, You're the One. Will you share a little background on this before we hear it?

Rhiannon: Yes, this one's a little different because it's one that really is a very personal song. A lot of the other ones draw from emotional moments that I've had, but then I spin them into just fables or stories, but this one, I wrote after the birth of my second child. My first child, I'd had pretty heavy postpartum depression for the first year. That puts a veil between you and your motions. When I had my boy, my second child, for some reason, I didn't have it that time. I was like, "Oh, this is what it feels like to have a newborn and not have that curtain in front of you."

I sat down and wrote the song, going from the grays of that kind of fog and haze into a new technical world. That's how I felt. Of course, I have all of that love for my first daughter, but it was just the hormones, all of those things, I felt them for the first time and I was like, "Oh, that's what they're talking about," so I wrote the song, You're the One.

Alison: Let's take a listen.

MUSIC - Rhiannon Giddens: You're the One

I knew you were the one, were my one and only

And I knew that you would always know me

Because you were the one who kept me from feeling

So sad and lonely in my life and

I never knew life could be so wonderful

That there could be someone who was so beautiful

And I never knew that I could be so free

To love someone like you and

I want to love you forever

And I'll be with you worse and for better

And I never thought I'd fall

But you're the one

Alison: That's You're the One. It's the name of Rhiannon Giddens' new album. I think most people who listen to WNYC know, but in case the few who don't, you were trained as an opera singer. What did you discover about your voice singing in some of the more pop styles, and also working with this producer, Jack Splash, who's worked with Kendrick and Alicia Keys?

Rhiannon: Well, nothing new, really. I wrote these songs over the last 14 years, so they've been in my voice. Like, You're the One, my son is 10 years old now. It's like these are all explorations. I've always been exploring ever since I left the operatic stage. The first band I was in was a Celtic band in North Carolina and they had to suffer through me learning how to use a mic and trying to take out some of that voice that I've been putting in for the last five years. It was a chance to put all of that together and also to match that with a bigger sound palette. That's what I hadn't really done.

It's a companion record to my first solo record, Tomorrow Is My Turn, which was all covers, but it was all people I was inspired by. A lot of those are the same folks that I'm inspired by. Now, in the course of this career, I've learned how to write and I've become a songwriter. It's not like a circle circle, more like a spiral kind of come around. My voice has definitely developed more since then, and I've learned more, but I've always been interested in having all of these styles live together because they come out of the same, the common American cultural well that all of the genres come out of. That's always been my thing, for sure.

Alison: How did working with Jack Splash--? First of all, why did you want to work with him?

Rhiannon: Well, because he had access to these different sounds and expansion of that sound palette and also he was somebody who was interested in meeting me halfway. He was intrigued by the acoustic instruments that I was bringing and the musicians that I was bringing. He loved the demos and he really wanted to come from where I was coming from and so it was important that it wasn't either all the way over to my side, over to his side. It was like we found this organic middle place which was what I wanted.

We did that by talking about it ahead of time, but also bringing-- I brought a group of musicians. He had a group of musicians, and then they all played together, which is not always done now because it's not the cheapest thing in the world to do, but I knew I was really committed to that. I was like, "If we need to shorten the time, that's fine, but let's have everybody together because that's where we're going to find an organic meld of our two approaches, rather than having to do it in the booth, having to do it with the knobs and the faders and the laying on tracks and things."

At one point, the first thing that we recorded was You Louisiana Man, and that was 13 people on the floor all at the same time. That's when we realized after we recorded that, we were like, "Oh, this is a sound. This is a thing." We could have only done that live.

Alison: My guest is Rhiannon Giddens. The name of the album is You're the One. You have one of our favorite people, Jason Isbell, is on the record and the song, Yet to Be, and it's this love song. Why did you want to work with him on this album? Why this particular song?

Rhiannon: Well, I've known about Jason, obviously, and we're Twitter friends. I've actually never met him, [laughs] which is hilarious, in person.

Alison: Oh my gosh.

Rhiannon: I admire him so much and we'd exchanged some messages and there was a few things that didn't pan out. Then this came on and I was just like, "Man, he's walking the walk and he's living his life in the way that I admire." I like working with people like that. Then, of course, he's a great musician and a great songwriter and all that so I said, "Would you be interested in seeing this?" and he knocked it out of the park. It's a song about an interracial couple. It's a song about people coming from two different parts of the world so I knew I needed another voice in there to create that narrative of two voices coming together and he was gracious enough to lend his voice to it.

Alison: I think he's got an authenticity to his voice, and not just to his person.

Rhiannon: His spirit, which is what comes out. This is why I wanted to work with him because I'm just like life is too short to be working with posers. You know what I mean? I don't care how good they sound. If they're not living their life in a way that's authentic, then I'm not interested.

Alison: Life is too short to work with posers needs to be a shirt. Let's listen to Yet to Be from Rhiannon Giddens with Jason Isbell.

MUSIC - Rhiannon Giddens: You're the One ft. Jason Isbell

She was born on a farm, working the clay

She ran off when she was 16

Down a long country road with nowhere to go

She knew that she had to leave

She hopped a one-way train with a ticket to ride

In the third class back with the others

She watched the farm fade away, just hoping and praying

She'd have a better life than her mother's

It's a long, long way from where we've been

The here and now is better than it was back then

Today may break your heart, but tomorrow holds the key

We've come so far, but the best is yet to be

He was born on the farm, but he didn't want to stay

His daddy said he was a fool

So he crept away in the dead of night

And got a steamer out of Liverpool

Well, it's far, far away from the green fields at home

Alison: That's Yet to Be, Jason Isbell with Rhiannon Giddens. I've interviewed Jason a few times and he's really candid about how his sobriety made a huge difference in his career and in his art. What was a big life change or a big decision you made that you know has made a difference in your art?

Rhiannon: I mean the big touchstone for me was leaving the operatic world. Although, I didn't know I was going to be coming back to it [laughs] through the back door. I was leaving that world as a full-time performer and entering in the folk world, but doing it in a way that was connected to an elder. Learning that the banjo was an African-American instrument and being able to study and play with and absorb the music of Joe Thompson, who was one of the last Black fiddlers of the old tradition, where he had been passed down as an oral tradition father to son or brother to brother or whatever that lit back to the time of slavery.

He was holding onto this family tradition nobody and his family had picked it up. Here, the original Carolina chocolate drops came in, Dom Flemons and Justin Robinson, and got to play with him for years. He was 83 or 86, I think, when we met him. Being able to start my whole acoustic career with that as its centerpiece was really important because it made everything that followed have to follow, "Okay, what does this mean? Why am I doing it?" It just set everything in the right place to survive in the music industry, which is so destructive.

You have to have this kind of core of why you're doing it and so Joe is in the center of that. It was originally telling his story, sharing his music, and then it turned into this wider thing of trying to illuminate these untold stories of American music and American culture. I feel like that was my crossroads where I ceased being a vocalist or just a vocalist and I turned into an instrumentalist and a storyteller down this path and I'm so grateful. So grateful.

Alison: What's it like for you to hear someone else like Jason sing your songs?

Rhiannon: Oh, it's fun. I was like, "Oh, yes, that's great." Now when I do it live, I take a couple of [chuckles] the way he went through it. I was like, "That's a great way through that line." I love it. It doesn't happen a lot because a lot of my songs up till now have been very culturally specific, but I'm hoping to hear some of these songs may be done by other people and to see how they fit and that would be delightful.

Alison: You wrote a song, Another Wasted Life, about the suicide of Kalief Browder, I think people in New York know the story, but a young man who had been detained on Rikers for years. He was accused of stealing a backpack. The charges were later dropped. His story is one of those just a heartbreaking story. What about it led to a song? When did you write it?

Rhiannon: I wrote when I learned about not only was he detained, he was put into solitary for over two years. Then when he was released, he committed suicide. Those are the things that really made me just, oh, furious, grief-stricken, all of the things. I wrote the song right after I heard about the story, and then I put it away. When this record came, it was coalescing. I knew that I wanted that song to be the mission within this record and be the centerpiece, and I knew that I wanted to use it to raise awareness of the problem of innocent people sitting in jail and being forgotten.

Alison: Let's hear Another Wasted Life.

MUSIC - Rhiannon Giddens: Another Wasted Life

Another day, another youth

Another story-mangled truth

The commentary uncouth and full of cloudy grease Does it matter what the crime

If indeed there was this time?

He's given solitary time

An institutional caprice

Alison: All right. Just listening to that. Someone else you need to sing with Natalie Merchant.

Rhiannon: Oh, yes.

Alison: I could see you guys ripping that song.

Rhiannon: That'd be amazing. We know each other and stuff and we talk about that. Talk like, "We should do something together." It's going to happen someday.

Alison: Also want to say you partnered with the Pennsylvania Innocence Project for the video-

Rhiannon: Yes.

Alison: -for this and people should definitely check it out. I do want to go to the other end of the spectrum because this song has made me laugh and smile and you know what I'm talking about. You Put the Sugar in My Bowl. It starts like super bouncy and sassy and it's very flirty and then you get down to business about women seeking pleasure.

Rhiannon: Yes, it's homage to all those double entendre songs from the '20s, where they were just like saying it and saying it.

Alison: Let's listen.

MUSIC - Rhiannon Giddens: You Put the Sugar in My Bowl

Well, they try and they fail

No matter what the style

There's only one runner goes that extra mile

Nobody fits me like you do

Not one man measures up

Now there's them that say a woman doesn't know her own mind

She must be meek and biddable, graceful and kind

She mustn't ask for what she wants the whole night long

Well, there's them that like to say that, and them that are wrong

You put the pepper in my dish

And the joie in my de vivre

You're the key to every wish

And the cure to my fever

Alison: Joie de vivre. Hilarious, that song just like comes with a feather boa.

Rhiannon: [laughs] Next time. For the reissue, we will put a feather boa in there.

Alison: Is that a character you're playing or is that a part of you?

Rhiannon: It doesn't matter. You know what I mean? I get to this place where it's all the same and it's just when I'm singing that song, I am that person and it is a part of me because I couldn't have written it otherwise.

Alison: I wanted to mention you'll be touring next month with the Silkroad Ensemble. You're the artistic director, the project is American Railroad. Would you tell us a little bit about it?

Rhiannon: It's using the story of the Transcontinental Railroad, which is a massive economic explosion, the connecting of the two coasts but what we don't often talk about is the people who paid the price and the people who built the railroad. It's using that framework to allow the incredible talented members of the ensemble who come from all different cultures to create works that are inspired by the stories of the builders, like the Chinese, workers on the West side, African Americans, and Irish folks, and other people from other parts of Europe who were considered throwaway members of the of society, of the underclass, who were gave their lives in a lot of instances.

Then also the indigenous people whose lands were taken and whose lives were forever disrupted by the building of the railroad. We've invited, Pura Fé who is in an indigenous musician who's very well known in, should be more well known in the wider world, but who's a fantastic musician to partner with us and to we're really excited about the tour. It's in November and we're going to be putting this massive show on its feet for the first time with all of these incredible cultural influences.

Alison: That's so exciting. Aria Code for its fourth season?

Rhiannon: Yes, it's so exciting it's back. I know people kept asking me and I was like, "I'm hoping soon," and now it is.

Alison: Is there one piece you're excited for listeners to hear this season?

Rhiannon: The Dead Man Walking that was an incredible, it's such an important story and I know they're doing the HD of it and so it's such an important opera. I'm so glad that it's finally come to the Met and that it's more people are going to know about it.

Alison: The album is called You're The One, Silkroad Ensemble. The project's American Railroad, Aria Code is the podcast. My guest has been Rhiannon Giddens. I'm going to ask people to think about 13 people sitting on the floor playing as we go out on You Louisiana Man.

Rhiannon: They were sitting on the floor, but they were all together in a studio. That's what I meant by on the floor. All together playing, figuring each other out, and smiling like lunatics. It was so fun.

Alison: Thanks for coming to the studio.

Rhiannon: Thank you.

MUSIC - Rhiannon Giddens: You Louisiana Man

You turned my head, tripped up my mind

You Louisiana man

You burned my bed, lit up my sky

You Louisiana man

I never knew that things were going to get so far

I never knew it

I never knew that you were going to break my heart, you

You Louisiana man

 

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