Speaker 1: Pushkin. Just a year ago, it might have seemed strange
Speaker 1: for a black woman from England to record a country
Speaker 1: album in Nashville, But then Oldtown Road held down the
Speaker 1: top spot on Billboard's Hot one hundred for a record
Speaker 1: breaking nineteen weeks, and black folks started reconnecting with their
Speaker 1: country roots on Twitter. You couldn't have seen it coming.
Speaker 1: Take it from the Black kid whose first concert was
Speaker 1: Garth Brooks and was teased mercilessly for it. But Yola's
Speaker 1: having a great year, singing on stage with legends like
Speaker 1: Willie Nelson and Dolly Parton, working with Brandy Carlyle and
Speaker 1: the Highwomen, even getting a shot out from Kendall Jenner
Speaker 1: on Twitter. She spent years singing with folks like the
Speaker 1: Chemical Brothers, Massive Attack and her band Phantom Limb in England,
Speaker 1: but after connecting with Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys,
Speaker 1: her grand artistic vision came to life, soulful country the
Speaker 1: way it used to be. This is Broken Record Season
Speaker 1: three liner notes for the Digital Age. I'm justin Richmond.
Speaker 1: Just a quick note here. You can listen to all
Speaker 1: of the music mentioned in this episode on our playlist,
Speaker 1: which you can find a link to in the show
Speaker 1: notes for licensing reasons. Each time a song is referenced
Speaker 1: in this episode, you'll hear this sound effect all right.
Speaker 1: Enjoyed the episode. Bruce headlam met with Yola in New
Speaker 1: York over the summer. She'd been up late the night
Speaker 1: before doing a performance at YouTube Studio and Chelsea, but
Speaker 1: she showed up anyway with two members of her band,
Speaker 1: ready to play some songs, talk about working with Dan
Speaker 1: Arbach and about how surviving a house fire inspired her
Speaker 1: to write her new album, walk Through Fire. She opened
Speaker 1: with a song from that record, right out in the Country. Well,
Speaker 1: I was right out in the country by Yola. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Broken Record. Thank you so much for coming. Oh,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for having me, And thanks to
Speaker 1: your two bandmates who came along. Yeah, this is Anthony
Speaker 1: da Costa and Jerry Brannhat. Jerry is still grimacing over
Speaker 1: that last notdy hit on Defender. I liked it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, it was a it was a it was
Speaker 1: a choice. It was a choice, not an act one
Speaker 1: in the studio. Well, we know we like these. Uh,
Speaker 1: it was an emotional thing, you know. I was still
Speaker 1: I was still bleeding a little bit out on this
Speaker 1: roads yeah, I had one more little finger drop to do, right,
Speaker 1: one more thing to say. Yeah, if you do, you
Speaker 1: want to keep going because you could. If there's more
Speaker 1: to say, and the offender, please, could you guys clear
Speaker 1: the room at got some stuff to just let out? No,
Speaker 1: you wrote that song? Did you write that by yourself?
Speaker 1: Or was that? This one was co written by with
Speaker 1: myself and done our back. And we have made a
Speaker 1: habit of inviting fine gentlemen to help us write songs.
Speaker 1: Bobby Wood helped us write, and Joe Allen helped us write,
Speaker 1: and Dan Penn helped us write, and Pat McLaughlin helped
Speaker 1: us write, and so we were really spoiled rotten when
Speaker 1: it came to co writers in this case, Joel, Now,
Speaker 1: no disrespect to those other gentlemen. But you co wrote
Speaker 1: with Dan Penn. Yes, who wrote I'm Your Puppet? Yes?
Speaker 1: Do write woman? Yes, Dark End of the Street. Of course.
Speaker 1: For James Carr, I think yeah, And I haven't know,
Speaker 1: I haven't. Many gazillion other people sang that song, and
Speaker 1: obviously him and Spooner Aldham's represent rich reputation is just lifelong.
Speaker 1: So what was that like to sit in a room
Speaker 1: with Dan Penn. It was surreal, is what it was.
Speaker 1: The kids. I came into the room, and you know
Speaker 1: when you think, I swear I just saw somebody that
Speaker 1: I that I recognized just a little bit too keenly,
Speaker 1: and so you the first first you don't believe it,
Speaker 1: and then you're like, oh, okay, so that is who
Speaker 1: I thought I saw. Yeah, Now let me back up.
Speaker 1: What where was the room? First of all? So the
Speaker 1: room was easy I Sound studio in Nashville and that,
Speaker 1: yeah it is, yeah, And then what was the process
Speaker 1: of rating after that? Sit down at a table with
Speaker 1: guitars and start strumming at each other until I've started
Speaker 1: by telling a story supposed specifically in that session about
Speaker 1: house fire. I was in, okay, you tell us the
Speaker 1: story and then we'll go back to the writing room.
Speaker 1: But yeah, what was the story itself? Well, we were
Speaker 1: just thinking about, okay, so what we'll be writing about,
Speaker 1: and they were just like, so, Dan was like, tell
Speaker 1: me a bit about yourself for them. I well, I've
Speaker 1: been talking about myself quite a lot over the past
Speaker 1: few days, but I suppose I haven't talked about this.
Speaker 1: I'm wasn't the house fire recently And He's like okay something,
Speaker 1: and I was like, yeah, well, it was kind of
Speaker 1: Christmas twenty fourteen going into twenty fifteen, and I was
Speaker 1: just getting ready, getting the house ready, wrapping some presents
Speaker 1: in your houses were in Bristol, Ukka, and so I'm
Speaker 1: wrapping and I'm getting ready to wrap this present for
Speaker 1: a friend of mine. That's a bioethanol burner. And it's
Speaker 1: a bioethanol burner. It's like a table centerpiece type thing.
Speaker 1: It lets out a little heat. You know, you've got
Speaker 1: a bit of bioethanol fueling it. It's like a natural accelerant.
Speaker 1: Under then it lets out a little flame, not too
Speaker 1: dissimilar to a candle. And so I just thought, let's
Speaker 1: make sure I've just got it's in the post, let's
Speaker 1: make sure it works. And it worked just fine. I
Speaker 1: put a bit of bioweth on in there. It worked
Speaker 1: just great. Problem was that the canister that had the
Speaker 1: bioweth on it had a little leak around the kind
Speaker 1: of cap, and so when I lit it, it worked perfectly.
Speaker 1: I was like, that looks nice, okay, and then the
Speaker 1: little bit of fire catches a little drip and it
Speaker 1: catches the caister. Caister goes up. It's been dripping on
Speaker 1: my dress as I kind of moved my hands towards that,
Speaker 1: and so my dress goes up, and I'm a human
Speaker 1: torch at this point, and I'm in shock, and so
Speaker 1: the first thing I'm thinking is I need to think
Speaker 1: of something worse than being on fire, which is quite
Speaker 1: a hard thought because it's not great. And so I'm
Speaker 1: really thinking how can I get out of this situation
Speaker 1: that I'm in, especially given that I'm in shock and
Speaker 1: I'm in static shocks. I'm not really moving or doing
Speaker 1: anything useful. And so I was like, Okay, let's think
Speaker 1: of something worse, because if I got over that, I
Speaker 1: can get over this. And I thought of kind of
Speaker 1: the life I was enduring, kind of pre twenty nine,
Speaker 1: pre thirty, which was just highly misogynistic, highly i'd say,
Speaker 1: like the brand of racism that purposefully disguises itself, so
Speaker 1: of a kind of a wonderful brand of missology, noir
Speaker 1: and abuse and neglect and all sorts of things that
Speaker 1: made that part of my life just an utter misery.
Speaker 1: And I kind of thought back on that time and
Speaker 1: I was like, you know what, I'd take my life
Speaker 1: now on fire any day of the week, and I
Speaker 1: started laughing so hard. I laughed myself out of stack shock.
Speaker 1: And then I stopped, dropped and rolled and put myself
Speaker 1: out like you're supposed to. And that moment of just
Speaker 1: clearing out really felt like a moment of just being
Speaker 1: able to start again and being free. And so I
Speaker 1: told this story to Dan Penn and Dan our Back
Speaker 1: and they looked at me like I was a mad woman,
Speaker 1: and I was like, well, we could write a song
Speaker 1: about that, and we kind of got onto writing the
Speaker 1: title track of the album. That's an incredible story. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this comes up and they say, let's turn it
Speaker 1: into a song. What was that? Like, how did you
Speaker 1: turn that into a song? Man? Well, Dan Penn's kind
Speaker 1: of doing this thing of looking up into the ether,
Speaker 1: kind of mumbling. I call it like the mumble right
Speaker 1: where you're not you haven't got a pretty disposed plan
Speaker 1: of what you're going to do, but you're just kind
Speaker 1: of searching for it. So it's a m and just
Speaker 1: like searching, and people that write this way will go
Speaker 1: mrmy mmy murm, and there's no sense to it. It's
Speaker 1: almost like babble, and then words come out of the babble,
Speaker 1: you know. And so yeah, sometimes you hear something and
Speaker 1: it's not what the person was thinking of saying, and
Speaker 1: so I think the song appeared that way. It's amazing
Speaker 1: to hear that. Dan Penn is a great song wrote.
Speaker 1: That's how he just sits down noodles and nonsense lyrics
Speaker 1: and well something merges. Yeah, but it's almost like you're
Speaker 1: looking for vowels and then there's a meaning somewhere kind
Speaker 1: of in the recess of your mind, you know. And
Speaker 1: what you're doing is you're searching for that elegant meaning
Speaker 1: in the recess of your mind. Is that of trying
Speaker 1: to muscle it with the prefrontal cortex, you know. And
Speaker 1: I think like some of like the most elegant ways
Speaker 1: of writing come from just esthetically moving through things that
Speaker 1: feel like they belong together, and moving through vows that
Speaker 1: feel like they belong together, through kind of feelings that
Speaker 1: you're searching for that feel like they need to be said.
Speaker 1: You know, Do you ever feel something blocking that even
Speaker 1: in a room with other writers, Like it depends how
Speaker 1: comfortable you are in that environment. If you feel comfortable,
Speaker 1: then like there is it's just a conversation. It's just connection.
Speaker 1: You know, it's the same when you can get so
Speaker 1: much more out of everything you do, writing it, doing
Speaker 1: a vocal, be it, playing a show. The more that
Speaker 1: you feel connect to the people that you're working with,
Speaker 1: that more you see your potential rise. And and so
Speaker 1: like that's everything that I'm trying to do with my life,
Speaker 1: certainly since is make deeper connections to people that I'm
Speaker 1: working with and make a more familial energy, and that
Speaker 1: familiar ergy always leads back to me being more productive. Like,
Speaker 1: there are instances in which I've found myself in these
Speaker 1: environments where I've surpassed what I thought I could do
Speaker 1: that day. Now, in the case of that song walked
Speaker 1: Through Fire, did you really able to finish it that day? Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like we wrote thirty songs thereabouts in a space of
Speaker 1: about five days. When we were in a song like,
Speaker 1: the flow was supernatural. We'll be back with more from
Speaker 1: Yola after this break. We're back with more of Bruce's
Speaker 1: interview with Yola. Now, people who've heard your songs on
Speaker 1: country music stations maybe wondering trying to place your accent
Speaker 1: in the Southern United States. I know, because there are
Speaker 1: around ours in my accent. If I say the word are,
Speaker 1: you can hear it are and that's also seeing it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a hint of where I'm from. You see Bristol,
Speaker 1: Bristol of black Beard the Pirate. No, less, I didn't
Speaker 1: know that. Yes, he's the accent. So people think Bristolian
Speaker 1: sounds like pirates. On contrair, Pirates sounds like Bristolians. So
Speaker 1: now were you Were you born in Bristol? Yes, okay,
Speaker 1: And which for people that on a Bristol it's on
Speaker 1: the west coast coast. It's like a port town, port city,
Speaker 1: not too far from Cardiff and Whales, so it's on
Speaker 1: the west about two hours drive west of London. Tell
Speaker 1: me about growing up in Bristol. So I went to
Speaker 1: high school in Bristol, but I grew up I suppose,
Speaker 1: kind of elementary school in a small town still in
Speaker 1: the kind of postcode, but twelve miles outside of Bristol.
Speaker 1: And we were one of a very small number of
Speaker 1: people of color in that environment. And it was a
Speaker 1: very right leaning town at the time or village at
Speaker 1: the time. And so like the usual things that you
Speaker 1: kind of get used to in life of that stare
Speaker 1: when you walk into any shop and kids learning kind
Speaker 1: of the N word from their parents, and their parents
Speaker 1: having maybe the wherewithal to not say it with the kids.
Speaker 1: Not quite, but you know, everyone's saying it when you're
Speaker 1: not there kind of thing, which is very British way
Speaker 1: to be. You know, we're not very out and out
Speaker 1: with our prejudice. It's all just everything you ever try
Speaker 1: and do is kind of slightly affected slash heavily affected
Speaker 1: by people's opinions, people's assumptions of you. People's surprised that
Speaker 1: you can speak the English language clearly. And what was
Speaker 1: high school like that? While I was like the poor
Speaker 1: kid in a kind of well a borderline almost rich
Speaker 1: kid's school, not quite. I tried going to a regular school,
Speaker 1: and it costs. We just didn't have any money. We
Speaker 1: used to kind of like get food out of the
Speaker 1: supermarket bins and stuff, and my mom had like four
Speaker 1: or five jobs at any one time, and I was
Speaker 1: a latchkey kid, you know. And so it was one
Speaker 1: of those situations where it dawned on us that trying
Speaker 1: to pass an entrance exam and go to a school
Speaker 1: where you could get everything paid for might actually buy
Speaker 1: me some meals. We could actually eat without having to
Speaker 1: kind of lean on any of the neighbors to buy
Speaker 1: extra kind of avon makeup. My mum was also a
Speaker 1: n avon lady, and I'd like that anyway in which
Speaker 1: you could lean on people. It was just like the
Speaker 1: hustle was real with that woman. I mean so yeah,
Speaker 1: like anything that gave us, like maybe a little her
Speaker 1: a bit more breathing space would was seen as a benefit.
Speaker 1: And me and my sister were a stone called nerds,
Speaker 1: and so we did that entrance exams too, like I
Speaker 1: did a grammar school kind of thing. My sister went
Speaker 1: to a girls' school and we had to pass over
Speaker 1: I know, I think like ninety something percent to be
Speaker 1: able to get everything taken care of. We had to
Speaker 1: do that and also be sufficiently poor enough, and we
Speaker 1: knew we had poor covered. How did the interesting music
Speaker 1: start the birth canal? Yeah, just straight out straight out
Speaker 1: like singing and speaking well simultaneous. And so I don't
Speaker 1: have a living, living memory of not singing. And I
Speaker 1: used to dance a lot as well, and so just
Speaker 1: I had a very much like a performing arts kind
Speaker 1: of feel as just like I'm talking three and four,
Speaker 1: this is just normal for me. To what we be
Speaker 1: singing just everything like whatever was in the charts. So
Speaker 1: I could be singing like something that was like R
Speaker 1: and B like oh and I say, not rhythm and blues,
Speaker 1: but like modern R and B like Brownstone or something,
Speaker 1: and then I could be singing Elton John and then
Speaker 1: I could be singing Navana, and then I could be
Speaker 1: singing like there was no kind of continuity, and the
Speaker 1: charts weren't really like that. It was very like you
Speaker 1: could be anywhere kind of Certainly in the UK, the
Speaker 1: charts were all over the shop. You could have like
Speaker 1: Beck and be York in the charts and then just
Speaker 1: something unbelievably poppy and then something unbelievably country. It's funny
Speaker 1: because the charts here or not like that. The churches
Speaker 1: are very regulated by AR and they were like they
Speaker 1: are like that in the UK a lot more now, yeah,
Speaker 1: but in the nineties it was like a free for all,
Speaker 1: and so it kind of manufactures eclecticism, and I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people from maybe my generation specifically experienced that,
Speaker 1: having like the most crazy kind of mixtapes where you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: I really love caress One and I really love Blood,
Speaker 1: how's this school, going to go together, you don't care,
Speaker 1: you know, And so I think that gave people license
Speaker 1: to release music that maybe was a little more kind
Speaker 1: of left field. And what was the country music that
Speaker 1: got your attention? Then? Ah? Well, for me, Dolly got
Speaker 1: my attention. My mother was a Dolly fan, and so
Speaker 1: that got me early doors. Do you remember what the
Speaker 1: Dolly song was that you? Yeah, it was Joe Lene.
Speaker 1: It was the album Joelene that got me straight away.
Speaker 1: And I was like, I just loved the feel of it.
Speaker 1: I loved the groove of it and pleading nature of it.
Speaker 1: I noticed when I sang it, it didn't feel when
Speaker 1: I used to kind of sing R and B, it
Speaker 1: didn't feel natural in my body to sing. And then
Speaker 1: I'd sing Jolie and it felt more natural in my
Speaker 1: body to sing. And I was like, that's weird, and
Speaker 1: I'll just put that to a side. Let's deal with
Speaker 1: that later. That's a whole can of worms. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was a whole can of worms. Although like, certainly when
Speaker 1: I got older, it dawned on me that that was weird.
Speaker 1: Apparently that was weird. It felt more natural to sing
Speaker 1: those songs. And I was into Aretha. I listened to
Speaker 1: a lot of Aretha's like a child. My mom was
Speaker 1: into that as well, and that really like again, like
Speaker 1: it's impossible not to be fascinated by her as a
Speaker 1: singer and as a writer and a player. But I
Speaker 1: saw more similarity between certainly the kind of the spiritual
Speaker 1: side of her music, the gospel side. Young Gifted in
Speaker 1: Black was probably the first record that I kind of
Speaker 1: got attached to because I never heard anything addressed to
Speaker 1: a black child before. And how do you sing in church?
Speaker 1: Did you go to church? I'm I'm from England. It
Speaker 1: ain't the same. It's all like all things by dam
Speaker 1: Beatif it's so stiff, there are churches that are a
Speaker 1: bit less stiff. But it isn't. It's not our green
Speaker 1: I'll tell you that right now. When because you played
Speaker 1: right in the country, which has that southern kind of
Speaker 1: American feel and the way Southerners feel about the country
Speaker 1: in wide open spaces here you grew up in the
Speaker 1: sort of suburbs around Bristol. Yeah, that whole frame of reference.
Speaker 1: Did you find in Dolly Parton and a lot of
Speaker 1: country music? What did that mean to you growing up?
Speaker 1: Because you're in a very, very different place well kind of,
Speaker 1: and so Bristol if you, if anyone that's visited Bristol,
Speaker 1: it falls away to countryside somewhat immediately. And so even
Speaker 1: though I wasn't very far outside, it doesn't take five
Speaker 1: minutes from the edge of Bristol for it to be
Speaker 1: instant countryside. And so by the time you get twelve
Speaker 1: miles out. At the time of me growing up, anyway,
Speaker 1: I was in a village that was maybe two horseshoes
Speaker 1: of houses, one of which had a shops kind of
Speaker 1: linking one horse shoe to the other, a set of
Speaker 1: shops and like you could count them on both hands.
Speaker 1: It was not a big place, and then predominantly surrounded
Speaker 1: by small farms and a high school and that was it,
Speaker 1: you know. And so my kind of growing up environment
Speaker 1: was very much kind of climbing trees and whittling and
Speaker 1: fishing and hide and seek and tall grass fields and
Speaker 1: such things that were not city kids ways of growing up.
Speaker 1: So that part of country music, the wide open spaces
Speaker 1: that made sense to you. Yeah, that was just how
Speaker 1: I grew up. You know. We didn't really have any stuff,
Speaker 1: Like I had friends that had like, you know, toys
Speaker 1: and things I had one bald, my little pony that
Speaker 1: we used to call my little skinhead. My sister will
Speaker 1: love this. Yeah, she used to eat plastic and my
Speaker 1: mum was like, your sister eats plastic, so you can't
Speaker 1: have my little pony with hair. And I'm like, it's
Speaker 1: the whole point of the thing. Why would you do
Speaker 1: this to me? Anyway, she shaves the thing's head and
Speaker 1: so and then promptly my sister starts chewing one, of course,
Speaker 1: and so I'm like, great, that's that's the only nice
Speaker 1: thing I had. Why can't we have nice things? Do
Speaker 1: you want to do another song? I'd really love to.
Speaker 1: We'd like to do that title track for you please.
Speaker 1: This one is called walk Through Fire. That was the
Speaker 1: title track off Yola's new record, walk Through Fire. We'll
Speaker 1: be back with more of an interview with Bruce after
Speaker 1: the break. We're back with Yola and Bruce. You are scheduled,
Speaker 1: I think to play at the Rieman. Yes, the Rieman,
Speaker 1: the Home of country music. That sure is what it is.
Speaker 1: What do you think that's going to be? Like, I
Speaker 1: have no idea. You are you know country music has
Speaker 1: not historically had a lot of black performers and typically
Speaker 1: the ones. I guess other than Charlie Pride have people
Speaker 1: who've made their bones and other in other like Tina
Speaker 1: Turner did did a good country album. Ray Charles of
Speaker 1: course did Sisters points. That's true, Yeah, that fairytale songs
Speaker 1: were real. Arthur crud Up, I guess back in the
Speaker 1: day staples to a degree, Huh, I guess that's true too.
Speaker 1: You've got some staples in your voice that definitely was
Speaker 1: a massive influence. Maybes helped me understand my voice because
Speaker 1: I didn't hear a lot of people that were, you know,
Speaker 1: at that gruffiness, and so I felt like a bit
Speaker 1: of a vocal weirdo. She helped me out in that way.
Speaker 1: Have you met her? Yes, we played Luck Reunion together.
Speaker 1: What was that like? Amazing? It's on Willie Nelson's ranch,
Speaker 1: and we all did like a last song and she
Speaker 1: invited her everyone up from that's been playing that stage
Speaker 1: of that day, which were all women, all singer songwriters
Speaker 1: in their own right and amazing musicians, and we got
Speaker 1: up and we sang with her, and invariably each one
Speaker 1: of us hugged her before we went off, just like
Speaker 1: just like drawn into the majesty of her kind of
Speaker 1: warmth and her kind of very natural way. Yeah, she's
Speaker 1: the saying never meet her heroes unless your heroes mayvis
Speaker 1: is right? Is the saying is it important to you
Speaker 1: that country music, mainstream country music embraces what you do?
Speaker 1: For me? I'm eclectic, and I say that word all
Speaker 1: the time because it's true. I love classic pop music
Speaker 1: as much as I love classic soul music, as much
Speaker 1: as I love classic country and classic rock music. So
Speaker 1: it's so important to make sure that I'm accepted everywhere,
Speaker 1: not just exclusively within that. I don't think sonically, when
Speaker 1: you listen to this record, that's the only thing you
Speaker 1: hear by any stretch of the imagination. It's just that
Speaker 1: it maybe pokes out more because I'm a woman of
Speaker 1: color that people are like, so country, and I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: what about the other things? But it sticks out that
Speaker 1: much because of who I am. You know, if I
Speaker 1: was someone else, maybe less. So when you started being
Speaker 1: a professional in music, how did you approach it? What
Speaker 1: did you do well? The first professional job I probably
Speaker 1: took was jazz gig. I had a friend in school.
Speaker 1: Actually i'd going to a different school, but I had
Speaker 1: a friend in school who had a like someone she
Speaker 1: grew up with who was also a kid and played sax,
Speaker 1: and they were kind of looking for someone to sing
Speaker 1: on this show. And they'd had their singer drop out
Speaker 1: or something, and so they just were they were looking
Speaker 1: for somebody. And I kind of got the call. They're like, hey,
Speaker 1: you know you love that you sing all the time?
Speaker 1: Do you want to come and do this show? And
Speaker 1: I was probably about fourteen time, and I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm a kid, How am I going to do this
Speaker 1: show again? I was Okay, my friends, you know, sixteen,
Speaker 1: his mom's going to be taking him. So I'd go
Speaker 1: with him and his mother and do these jazz gigs
Speaker 1: and they standards. You'd be singing or yeah, and sometimes
Speaker 1: it was standards. It's a lot of like Elephantzgerald type stuff.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe a little etta, but lots of ella.
Speaker 1: Then just maybe some kind of ad libbing type stuff.
Speaker 1: I'd done none of this before, and I was very
Speaker 1: fortunate to have a lot of talented people in the environment.
Speaker 1: We had one of James Brown's kind of famed players
Speaker 1: living locally, and so there was quite a strong jazz
Speaker 1: scene there, and some of the players from Port's Head
Speaker 1: also played kind of jazz as well. The band put
Speaker 1: his head supposed to work her up, and so there
Speaker 1: was always kind of quite certainly in Bristol you'd have players,
Speaker 1: and certainly on my UK band side, people that played jazz,
Speaker 1: and then people that played an afrobeat band, played in
Speaker 1: a English folk band, played in a bolk and folk band,
Speaker 1: played in like a country band, and played in a
Speaker 1: rock and roll band. People always had very kind of
Speaker 1: eclectic backgrounds, so you could go, hey, we need to
Speaker 1: play this with something that feels like disco, and they're like,
Speaker 1: straight in, we need to and now it feels like
Speaker 1: a country waltz, so that's fine. So like my start
Speaker 1: out in kind of jazz was probably a good fit,
Speaker 1: unbeknown to me at the time, for broadening my palette further.
Speaker 1: And then when did you start breading and performing your
Speaker 1: own work. Well I kind of moved from that too,
Speaker 1: having like a school band that did mostly rock covers,
Speaker 1: and then I started top lining. And since this was
Speaker 1: like DJ producers that I bumped into that we're looking
Speaker 1: for vocalists to write content and deliver and sync content,
Speaker 1: and so it was for me that was so explain
Speaker 1: what top lining is to be. It's like lyrics and melody,
Speaker 1: and so the DJ producer environment, certainly for a long time,
Speaker 1: I imagine it's still the same now. Was you'd have
Speaker 1: someone they'd be creating an instrumental backing track that they've
Speaker 1: been djaying for a while in clubs, and then they'd
Speaker 1: want to release it, and sometimes they'd be feeling that
Speaker 1: there was something missing, like maybe a vocal top line,
Speaker 1: lyrics and melody of some kind, and so you were
Speaker 1: there to put a song to that backing track. And
Speaker 1: so I first started with some school friends and then
Speaker 1: we got like a show at the local kind of academy,
Speaker 1: which was point about a thousand two thousand kind of capacity,
Speaker 1: depending on how they arranged it, and I was just
Speaker 1: kind of singing top lines that i'd kind of come
Speaker 1: up with and ad libbing all sorts of things. And
Speaker 1: I got picked up by DJ who we were supporting,
Speaker 1: and I started writing top lines for him and a
Speaker 1: bunch of other people. So at that time I also
Speaker 1: managed to get into a band called Phantom Limb, and
Speaker 1: in that environment, I wrote all of the top lines
Speaker 1: and it was all guitar based, and I was like,
Speaker 1: oh thank God. And because I'd kind of start at
Speaker 1: kind of fourteen. By the time I got to twenty one,
Speaker 1: I was like, thank god, you know, as opposed to,
Speaker 1: you know, feeling any kind of level of pressure or
Speaker 1: anything being the only top liner in that outfit. But
Speaker 1: we weren't necessarily the most prolific of band, But we
Speaker 1: wrote two albums, and I think that did a wonderful
Speaker 1: job for me, having an environment to at least start
Speaker 1: on the path of this journey of involving the things
Speaker 1: that I grew up listening to, my love of Elton John,
Speaker 1: my love of classic soul, classic rock, classic country music,
Speaker 1: classic pop music. I think it took longer for classic
Speaker 1: pop and classic country and maybe even some classic soul
Speaker 1: to make its way into the first record. Was it
Speaker 1: difficult to get your ideas across then it must and say,
Speaker 1: I'm influenced by Elton John? What about this in this? Yeah? Exactly,
Speaker 1: you know. And there was like a lot of kind
Speaker 1: of prejudice towards people that weren't kind of straight, white,
Speaker 1: cis gender men and in music and so like, there
Speaker 1: were all sorts of things that I was just never
Speaker 1: going to get across. But luckily I was eclectic enough
Speaker 1: that there are enough things within the straight white guy range.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of music guys you could draw. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's loads of music like by straight white guys. I liked,
Speaker 1: you know, and like you know, so like it was
Speaker 1: it was possible to contribute and still be somewhat inspired.
Speaker 1: But I was definitely hobbled by my inability to go further.
Speaker 1: But I think still wrote some beautiful songs. I still
Speaker 1: rate those songs massively in my journey of towards what
Speaker 1: we're doing now? And that did that lead directly to
Speaker 1: your your first eph now? I took three years out
Speaker 1: kind of by week time we got through kung fuing
Speaker 1: all the isms out of my way. Certainly in that
Speaker 1: environment anyway, i'd lost all love for music. I decided
Speaker 1: to just spend time horse riding and drinking cocktails most
Speaker 1: of the time, I think. Really, I was also kind
Speaker 1: of teaching at the time and lecturing vocal biomechanics at universities.
Speaker 1: And how did you teachers? Did you is that something
Speaker 1: you learned at college? How did you learn how to
Speaker 1: work your voice? Well? I had bilateral vocal nodules, which
Speaker 1: are essentially like corns that grow on your vocal cords
Speaker 1: through resistance, invariably at the front of the voice box
Speaker 1: where the chords are closest and are not always recognized
Speaker 1: as But until you go to speech therapy as a
Speaker 1: stress related disorder, did you just notice one day that
Speaker 1: you were having trouble singing or is it speaking voice
Speaker 1: as well? Yeah, like I had, I started losing getting
Speaker 1: gaps in my range. You go from the bottom and
Speaker 1: be like, oh oh, and there's just nothing there. And
Speaker 1: when I realized that there was gaps in my range,
Speaker 1: I was like, I've never had that before. And so
Speaker 1: that whole period of my life. It dawned on me
Speaker 1: when trying to recover that there are people that knew
Speaker 1: a lot about speech therapy. There are people that knew
Speaker 1: a lot about how to stylize singing, but there weren't
Speaker 1: a lot of people that knew about the kind of
Speaker 1: muscular biomechanics of singing that were in music. There are
Speaker 1: people that did Alexander technique that knew about the kind
Speaker 1: of osteopathy of it, some people that got into the
Speaker 1: psychology of it a little bit with NLP, but certainly
Speaker 1: not to the level of sports psychology and performance psychology
Speaker 1: and neurolinguistic programming that involved the muscle therapy you needed
Speaker 1: to kind of get the muscles into the right kind
Speaker 1: of condition. Then the kind of biomechanics of what I
Speaker 1: was doing, both muscularly and with kind of the ostio side,
Speaker 1: and then eventually starting on the kind of psychological side
Speaker 1: and how that can kind of pay into how your
Speaker 1: muscles react, and on kind of doing this. I couldn't
Speaker 1: sing for a year and a half when I lost
Speaker 1: my voice, and I couldn't speak for two months, so
Speaker 1: I didn't really have a lot on when you were
Speaker 1: approached by Dan Auerbach from Black Keys about producing this album. Yeah,
Speaker 1: now you didn't know what that environment was going to
Speaker 1: be like. No, I did not. Did you meet with
Speaker 1: them and sort of suss out what you thought it
Speaker 1: might be like, Because if you're that dependent on environment,
Speaker 1: you know it could work. It could be everything and
Speaker 1: me a lottery. But that was the entirety of Maya.
Speaker 1: That's more about my vocal performance. So it's about muscular outs,
Speaker 1: as it were, Like to a certain degree, creatively, you
Speaker 1: can feel stifled too, but it's muscularly like my range
Speaker 1: can extend quite massively in the right environment and so
Speaker 1: it's more muscular than its creative. And I've been in
Speaker 1: a lot of situations, and probably the first thirty years
Speaker 1: of my life in at least a number of situations
Speaker 1: that weren't conducive to me feeling joyful, but I definitely
Speaker 1: got through, so I knew that even if it was dreadful,
Speaker 1: I'd survive. I was lucky that we had so much
Speaker 1: crossover musically that I was just like, I can finally
Speaker 1: relax that we're going to be moving creatively in the
Speaker 1: right direction. And it's not. That's not been something that
Speaker 1: I've been able to find very easily people that want
Speaker 1: to pursue this kind of crossover, the kind of gray
Speaker 1: area between classic soul and classic rock and classic pop
Speaker 1: music classic country music in the way that I want
Speaker 1: to When did you know it was a good environment?
Speaker 1: I think for me when we were talking, so we
Speaker 1: had we didn't meet up, but we had a talk
Speaker 1: on the phone, and that really felt like, I know
Speaker 1: that we're going to be creating like this sound that
Speaker 1: I've kind of been searching for ever since I was
Speaker 1: listened to my mum's records as a four year old.
Speaker 1: So when you're writing songs, do those kind of arrangements,
Speaker 1: Are they in your head while you're writing that? I
Speaker 1: think not all the time, Not all the time. I
Speaker 1: think some certainly with this situation, like you're working your
Speaker 1: way into figuring out what you want, what the song
Speaker 1: wants to be itself. I think we did a great job. Certainly,
Speaker 1: me and Dan made a point of not going in
Speaker 1: with any preconceptions of what we thought the song should be,
Speaker 1: not trying to force our own agenda onto the song.
Speaker 1: You weren't thinking this is going to have a Glenn
Speaker 1: Campbell vibe. No, you'd find it. You'd find it. It
Speaker 1: would speak to you once you'd written it, it would
Speaker 1: start speaking to you in that way. And like, maybe
Speaker 1: it ain't easier had I'd done a production of that,
Speaker 1: because I kind of had a little bit of a
Speaker 1: of a sideline kind of starting out producing, and so
Speaker 1: I delivered that pretty much fully demoed up, and that's
Speaker 1: not too dissimilar to the version that I did. Obviously
Speaker 1: weigh more money way into it. I'm like, but you know,
Speaker 1: it's structurally it's very very similar to the demo I
Speaker 1: put together. But I think just with all of the
Speaker 1: aching beauty and finesse that Dan is brilliant to adding
Speaker 1: to a song now once. So you've got this album that,
Speaker 1: in many ways was the music you had in your
Speaker 1: head growing up. Does that mean the next album become
Speaker 1: something else? Or is this a style you want to
Speaker 1: stay with? You know. I'm thinking of an artist like
Speaker 1: Katie Lang, who did first three or four albums were country,
Speaker 1: and then she did something very very different I have.
Speaker 1: Do you know what the philosophy continues. I think the
Speaker 1: philosophy is less about mimicking a stylistic and it's more
Speaker 1: out not forcing what wants to come out. I think
Speaker 1: there's one thing that hopefully comes across. It's that I'm
Speaker 1: truthing real hard all the time, and that needs to maintain.
Speaker 1: That's the thing that I feel connects me to people
Speaker 1: when I'm singing, connects people to the work when they're
Speaker 1: listening to it. I think at any point I start
Speaker 1: trying to manufacture what I think I should be doing,
Speaker 1: then I start distancing myself from that connection that I'm
Speaker 1: building now with people. Well, you've worked very very hard
Speaker 1: at this for a long time. Yeah, this must be
Speaker 1: very satisfying. It is. I've said no to a number
Speaker 1: of things that could have been lucrative a lot earlier
Speaker 1: at their hand of what I thought I could do
Speaker 1: given the right environment. And so I'm very satisfied to
Speaker 1: be where. I am very grateful to be where. I
Speaker 1: am very grateful to Dan for everything that he's given
Speaker 1: me the platform and the environment to do. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm a happy girl. That was Yola and her
Speaker 1: band playing some songs from a new record walk Through
Speaker 1: five produced by The Black Keys Dan Auerbach. You can
Speaker 1: check out more of your music by visiting Broken Record
Speaker 1: podcast dot com and subscribing to our playlist for this episode.
Speaker 1: You can also sign up for a behind the scenes
Speaker 1: newsletter while you're there. Head to I Am Yola dot
Speaker 1: com to keep tabs on when Yola will be heading
Speaker 1: through your town. Broken Record is produced with help from
Speaker 1: Jason Gambrel, Jacob Smith, and Milabelle. Our theme music is
Speaker 1: by the great Kenny Beats. Stay tuned for next week's
Speaker 1: episode with why Clefts John, This is Broken Record. I'm
Speaker 1: justin Richmond.